Simply put, the Gary Balough-driven “Batmobile” was the car that changed the face of DIRT modified racing overnight after decades of incremental evolution.
Already a three-time Super DIRT Week winner (1976-78) in Anthony Ferraiuolo’s sleek No. 73 Gremlin built by Grant King, the Floridian returned to Syracuse for the 1980 Schaefer 200 with a modified eons beyond the wildest dreams of the DIRT faithful. 
“As soon as I saw that car, I knew I was racing for second place,” declared 1979 winner Jack Johnson.
A collaboration of winning sprint-car driver and modified designer Kenny Weld, Indiana-based fabrication ace Don Brown, king engine builder and former racer Whip Mulligan, former NASCAR star Pete Hamilton and a host of other outstanding talents, the car was nominally a Lincoln Continental. 
While the other cars — mostly Gremlin bodied — were as narrow as possible, the 460-cubic-inch Chevrolet-powered No. 112 was extremely wide with tapered “wings” between the roll cage and door panels and flexible skirts at the bottom of the doors. It also had an extremely high roof, as the rulebook had a minimum but not a maximum, height.  Aerodynamics had come to DIRT.
When Balough qualified at 112.65 miles per hour, more than four miles per hour faster than front-row companion Sammy Beavers, his competition unraveled. Some screamed that the car had an unfair advantage, while others worked furiously, building “new” bodies overnight. 
Merv Treichler returned with a roof raised well above the roll cage, Frank Cozze, Kenny Brightbill and Buzzie Reutimann installed panels to push the doors way out and Billy Taylor’s car, wheeled by NASCAR ace Geoff Bodine, sported a huge internal wing. But it was all in vain.
Balough built a two-second lead over Dave Leckonby on the first lap and ran away from the field, leading 98 of 125 laps. Eddie Lynch inherited the lead when Balough made his pit stop, with Cozze and Reutimann both leading briefly before Balough ran them down. Reutimann finished second, ahead of Cozze and Bodine, with Ken Brenn fifth in the first “conventional” modified. 
But what hurt the most was that his competitors felt Balough had never gone as fast as he could and was just playing with them. 
Balough and Weld, among the most talented racers ever, both vanished from the sport for years as they served prison sentences following federal convictions for the drug trafficking that paid for their racing endeavors. Balough eventually returned to Syracuse in 2000, but struggled on a wet track and did not qualify. 
DIRT rewrote the rulebook for 1981, limiting body dimensions with rules that led to cars that closely resemble those raced today. But it’s safe to say that every DIRT modified, 358 modified and sportsman car built since 1980 is a descendent of the No. 112 Batmobile.