“There Are Some Really F***ed Up People”- Outspoken Insider Publicly Blasts Winston Cup Museum Proprietors

It’s been over a month since news broke that the unofficial Winston Cup Museum in North Carolina will be shut down forever. But the tremors of that shock are still being felt. Following a long legal battle with the owners of Winston Cigarettes ITG Brands, the unofficial facility is set to auction off its exhibits at the Mecum auctions in Florida in January 2024. This situation has not sat well with former NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace.

Kenny Wallace has been a vocal community member and has often raised his voice to preserve NASCAR culture and history. He slammed the decision by ITG Brands to forcibly sever a connection between the fans and NASCAR’s glorious past.

Kenny Wallace slams companies for not celebrating NASCAR’s past and shutting down historic museum

Winston was the official Cup Series sponsor from 1971 to 2003, and the museum holds cars and memorabilia from the same era. It all changed when RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company sold Winston Cigarettes to ITG Brands in 2017. The motivation for ITG’s lawsuit is that the company claims to own everything branded as Winston’s property.

The ongoing lawsuit started earlier this year. ITG has since filed three lawsuits against museum owner Will Spencer since its takeover. While two of them had been dismissed in court, the third attempt seemingly reached a settlement to rename the museum, as per a Sportsnaut report.

Kenny Wallace recently expressed his disappointment over the shutdown of a piece of NASCAR history on Twitter. Tweeting his critical thoughts about the acquisition, the 60-year-old wrote, “There are some really f***ed up people/companies in the world. How can you not celebrate your past? WINSTON proudly marketed the fans for years. They could have “Found a way.” I wonder if the @NASCAR museum / HOF is able to use ANY WINSTON signage?”

Spencer earlier claimed that ITG Brands had taken over the cigarette manufacturing company but not over the Winston Sports Marketing company, which became non-functional in 2003. However, the legal tug-of-war has been too much for him to handle, and he had to concede the case last week.

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The museum was never affiliated with NASCAR and continued to operate in Winston-Salem from 2005 to 2023.  The museum was set to experience a rebranding soon, but the lawsuit has destroyed any hopes of the same.

Will Spencer’s video forced ITG Brands to take immediate legal action

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Will Spencer collaborated with YouTuber Mitchell Stapleton to show the world the museum’s condition and describe the legal pressure the operation was under. Following Spencer’s reposting of the video, ITG Brands filed a lawsuit on December 8, asking the business court to hold Spencer guilty of propagating “disparaging and defamatory” content.

The video posted to the Winston Cup Museum’s Facebook page on December 1 was removed soon. Spencer could have faced up to 30 days of jail time and a fine of $500 if found guilty of criminal contempt. While Stapleton covered the topic of the lawsuit extensively in his video, ITG responded with an official statement that claimed Spencer’s comments to be false and misleading. The company stated, “Throughout the course of this litigation, and especially after ITG filed its motion for preliminary injunction, Will Spencer made multiple false statements to the media to make himself out as the victim and ITG as the bully. More broadly, the narrative that Mr. Spencer is the victim of anything other than his own greed is not true.”

ITG Brands also used Spencer’s legal misconduct in previous instances as a reason to hasten the resolution of the issue. In addition to slamming the YouTube video, the organization also claimed, “Given defendants’ prior conduct, ITG knew Mr. Spencer could not be trusted. Thus, ITG requested, as a condition of settlement, that defendants’ agreements be entered as an order of the court punishable by contempt. As expected, Mr. Spencer has now failed to honor his word.”

The resulting legal expenses have been too much of a hassle for Will Spencer to continue. Owing to this, the historic museum, which has been the home of a major part of NASCAR’s history, has shut down. If fans wish to get a chance to own any of the exhibits from the museum, the Florida Mecum Automotive Auction will be selling them to the highest bidder in January.

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