On a crisp November afternoon in 1982, Marty Robbins made a choice that would define his legacy. At 57 years old, with a heart scarred by three previous heart attacks, the country music icon strapped himself into a purple-and-gold Buick Regal at Atlanta International Raceway. It was the 35th and final NASCAR Winston Cup start of his life—a decision that baffled his doctors and family but fulfilled a passion stronger than any warning.
Robbins had been racing against medical advice since his first major heart attack in 1969 and an early triple-bypass operation in January 1970. After a third heart attack struck in January 1981, he scaled back to a single ARCA appearance at Talladega that August. But watching the circuit from the grandstands proved harder for him than recovery. “I’d rather be out there than watching,” he once said, and his actions backed those words.
To get back onto the superspeedways for the 1982 season, Robbins turned to an unlikely ally: NASCAR legend Junior Johnson. Johnson, who normally built machines exclusively for championship contenders like Darrell Waltrip, made a rare exception out of friendship. He supplied Robbins with a 1981 Buick Regal from his Ronda, North Carolina shop—a chassis Waltrip had campaigned during his 1981 championship run—and painted it in Robbins’s trademark magenta and chartreuse. The car carried the number 22, since Robbins had relinquished his longtime No. 42 three years earlier so Richard Petty’s son, Kyle, could carry the family number into Cup competition.
Robbins first entered the No. 22 Buick in the Firecracker 400 at Daytona on July 4, 1982, qualifying 31st before an early mechanical failure ended his afternoon. Three months later, on October 11, 1982, he stood on stage as Roy Acuff inducted him into the Country Music Hall of Fame—the pinnacle of his musical career. Just three weeks after receiving that honor, he arrived in Hampton, Georgia, for the Atlanta Journal 500.
Starting 37th in the 40-car field alongside veteran J.D. McDuffie, Robbins ran the opening laps around the 1.522-mile banking before an early incident and ignition failure sent the No. 22 Buick behind the wall, placing him inside the bottom ten finishers just ahead of Dale Earnhardt. But rather than packing up and leaving, Robbins pulled off his helmet and spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the Atlanta garage area, laughing, posing for photographs, and shaking hands with crew mechanics and fellow drivers. None of them knew they were telling him goodbye at a racetrack for the last time.
Returning to the road with his band, Robbins performed what proved to be his final concert at the Taft Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 1, 1982, while his soundtrack single “Honkytonk Man”—from the Clint Eastwood motion picture in which Robbins had also appeared—climbed inside the Billboard country Top 10. The next morning, December 2, Robbins suffered a massive fourth heart attack at his home in Brentwood, Tennessee. Following emergency quadruple coronary bypass surgery at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, he passed away six days later on December 8, 1982, at age 57.
At his funeral in Nashville, mourners from the Grand Ole Opry sat alongside members of the NASCAR garage. Cotton Owens later worked with the Robbins family to restore his 1978 Dodge Magnum for permanent display at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame museum in Talladega. When the NASCAR Winston Cup Series returned to Robbins’s home track, the half-mile Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, on Saturday night, May 7, 1983, track officials and NASCAR renamed the ninth race of the season the Marty Robbins 420 in his honor.
Before the 20,000 fans in the Fairgrounds grandstands watched the green flag drop on the TNN television broadcast, Robbins’s son, singer Ronnie Robbins, climbed into his father’s purple-and-gold No. 22 Buick Regal and drove it around the half-mile oval for the pre-race parade lap. Fittingly, Darrell Waltrip drove his Junior Johnson-prepared car to the pole position and led 382 of the 420 laps to win the inaugural memorial race by a full lap over Robbins’s longtime garage friend Bobby Allison.
Marty Robbins lived his life at full throttle—on stage, on the track, and in the hearts of everyone who knew him. His final lap was not just a race; it was a testament to the unyielding spirit of a man who refused to slow down.