(January 4, 2012) 1957 was a banner year for Glenn “Fireball” Roberts. The 28-year-old had been racing stock cars in NASCAR for the last several years, and while he did well the previous season, he would compete in more races (47), win more races (nine), and place in the top five in more races (22) than in any other season in his 15-year career.

The car he did all that in was the 1957 Ford that Mecum plans to auction off at its Kissimmee, Fla., event Jan. 24-29. More than 2,000 cars will be on the auction block during the week.

Wearing Roberts’ famous number 22, the Ford was initially owned by Peter DePaolo Engineering and racked up six of those nine wins — including one in the convertible division — as a part of Ford’s official race team. Yet when the AMA ban on racing came down in early June 1957, DePaolo disbanded the racing team and gave each of the team’s drivers their own car and truck to haul the car.

Coming off a win at Concord Speedway in October of that year, Roberts qualified on the pole at North Wilkesboro, the next-to-last race of the season, but crashed on lap 61 after leading every lap prior. Roberts switched to Chevrolets for 1958 and then to Pontiacs for 1959, only returning to Fords for his last couple of seasons.

What happened to the car afterward isn’t clear, but according to the auction description, the car was discovered in a forest just north of Charlotte in the late 1990s and subsequently restored to its post-AMA ban configuration in the early 2000s using a 312-cu.in. Y-block V-8 and column-shifted three-speed transmission. It’s also a so-called “zipper top” car, meaning that even though it was originally a hardtop, its roof was removable to allow it to compete in NASCAR’s convertible series races.

According to the description, the car was authenticated by Roberts’s widow, Doris, during the restoration.

— Hemmings Daily Blog