"Pop" Dreyer big car at PRI 2018 

One of the features at the 2018 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show in Indianapolis the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum presented the “Hoosier Thunder: Indiana’s Short Track Heritage” exhibit. The display included a 1937 Dreyer Special Sprint Car which is similar to the car driven by Everett Saylor, shown as a tribute to those years of racing and leading car builder “Pop” Dreyer.

Floyd “Pop” Dreyer began as a motorcycle sidecar-racer, owned an Indian motorcycle dealership in the early nineteen twenties and quit when he was married in 1925.   worked as a welder at Duesenberg and worked on Frank Lockhart’s ill-fated land-speed streamliner. After Duesenberg closed, Dreyer started his own shop in Indianapolis.    

"Pop"  began to build motorcycle powered midget race cars .big cars (today known as sprint cars), junior racers for kids, overhead valve conversions for Ford engines and magnesium wheels.  The entire front row of the 1931 Indianapolis 500-mile race was occupied by cars that all wore bodywork built by Pop Dreyer. 

Everett Saylor won the 1937 CSRA (Central States Racing Association) championship in a Dreyer-built Sprint Car while Dennis “Duke” Nalon won the 1938 AAA (American Automobile Association) Eastern Big Car title in a Dreyer chassis, and Jackie Holmes won the 1949 AAA Midwestern big car title behind the wheel of a Dreyer.  

In 1953 Dreyer sold his patterns and racing parts and invested in a motorcycle dealership, and in 1959 Dreyer became the ninth Honda dealer in the United States and the first east of the Mississippi River. Today Dreyer Honda remains in business the oldest continuous operated Honda dealer in the nation.  

Floyd “Pop” Dreyer has recognized for his accomplishments and contributions to racing with inductions to the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame, National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame, the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Motorcycle Hall of Fame, and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.