Lia's Phone Call Kept Garbarino From Retiring

It was a ’46 Plymouth. “It was pretty much taking the muffler off the thing,” Bob Garbarino says of his first race car. “I think it had the seat that came with the car. We went to Waterford Speedbowl and messed around in the bomber class a little bit.”
After about “half-a-dozen races,” Garbarino said to himself  “there’s got to be more to it than this.”
Shortly after that, his first modified appeared, a ’33 Willys coupe.
The 40-year plus story hit a crescendo last year when Long Islander Donnie Lia drove Bob and Joan Garbarino’s car to the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship.

WINNING COMBO: Donny Lia (left) and Bob Garbarino celebrate the 2007 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Championship. (Chris Troutman/Getty Images)

The modified is still magic in much of the Northeast. Despite its now regional nature, it remains the oldest division in NASCAR and there is a definite glory in winning the championship.
Lia, a talented but fiery driver in need of a ride, coaxed Garbarino out of retirement. The businesslike, almost always reserved Garbarino and the excitable Lia had a perfect marriage — six wins (11 top fives) in 16 starts.
Garbarino had told his guys he was finished. “Then this young guy calls me up,” Garbarino begins. “He says ‘I got a problem. Maybe you can be my solution and maybe I can help you.’ Without that call, I would have been done.”
He is now “probably done.”
Only Lia’s return to the modifieds (he’s working on a Craftsman Truck deal) would postpone that decision. If there is a “Hollywood Ending” to it all, know that Garbarino, a seasoned warrior who is unabashedly in love with the division’s history and lore, was never anything but in control.
It was the first title for Garbarino, a Mystic, Conn., marina owner. His cars, numbered V4 (borrowed from a Johnson outboard motor), have been known as the “Mystic Missile” for more than 40 years. 
Early last season Lia, after signing hero cards, told Garbarino, “My God, this car has a life of its own.”

VICTORIOUS: Bob Garbarino (right) celebrates a victory with Donny Lia at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. (Howie Hodge Photo)

Garbarino, who came to NASCAR in 1967 and was on hand when the present “Tour” format started in 1985, doesn’t hide the satisfaction Lia’s observation brings him.
There was a time when a lot of cars had names — the Woodchopper, Old Blue, the Cookie Machine, the Stump Jumper for instance. “It didn’t matter who was driving them, the car actually had fans,” Garbarino says.
The catchy nicknames — Charging Charlie, Steady Eddie, the Rapid Roman — are gone as well.
Critical of “how racing has been sanitized, bleached, subject to politically correct language,” Garbarino still insists the modifieds have done the best job in holding on to its history and traditions. “The minute you step away from our series, you don’t see any of it,” he offers. “All you see is a corporate America image — clean, polished.”
Bugs Stevens, a former Garbarino driver, was one of the former national champions at the recent NASCAR Modified Banquet. “I said to the people at my table, ‘Before Bugs gets off the stage, he’s going to grab somebody’s butt’,” Garbarino says. “I’m waiting for it and it’s making my night and then it happened. That doesn’t happen at the Waldorf-Astoria.”
NASCAR adopted the “Tour” concept for the modifieds in ’85 but, Garbarino insists, “it wasn’t their idea.” A group called the New England Drivers and Owners Club started pushing for it 15 years before. “We needed something to make the modifieds special,” says Garbarino, “and somewhere along the line NASCAR agreed.”
Prior to 1985, winning a NASCAR Modified championship involved running at least 100 races a year.
The story, the names, the hard battles (more than one with NASCAR) are part of Garbarino, all part of his concern with how he’ll face a future without a race car.
“It’s been my life,” he says. “I have never even thought about racing on any other level.”
The championship though, Garbarino emphatically insists, “is not an accumulative thing.”
It is “recognition of a great team over 16 races” and to look at it any other way “would not be fair to that team.” When the year is over, he says, “It is over.”

WINNING DRIVE: With Donny Lia behind the wheel, Bob Garbarino's V4 visited victory lane six times en route to capturing the 2007 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Championsip. (Howie Hodge Photo)

If it had never happened, “there would be a little void but I still would have had a great time,” Garbarino continues. “It is on its own plateau, but I certainly had a lot of other great experiences.”
While Lia “has taken the Missile to a place it has never gone before,” he is on the end of a long list of talented V4 drivers. Dick Watson, Brian Ross, Leo Cleary, Stevens,  Rob Summers, Gene Bergin, Satch Worley, Tim Connolly, Chuck Hossfeld and Jerry Marquis all won for Garbarino.
“I can honestly say all those guys are friends of mine,” he boasts. “I was fortunate to have a lot of good drivers.”
Garbarino says his father “was never wrong” sizing up people. “He would talk to somebody for five minutes and then say ‘stay away from that guy’ or ‘it will be OK.’”
While he insists “I didn’t inherit enough of that,” Garbarino was no neophyte when Lia called.
From the start, Garbarino made it clear “he was probably different from most of the people [Lia] had been involved with.” 
He wanted Lia to know “what he was coming to,” and that “guilt by association” was something Garbarino wanted no part of.
Never, not once, did he have a problem with Lia, who had driven family-owned cars prior to joining Garbarino.
It was a perfect ending to a great story.