4/19/2025
Bloomington Speedway
Cale Kern: It's all in the details
Cale Kern: It is All in the Details
It would not be hard to imagine that Cale Kern built the first bicycle he ever owned. Not only has he been hanging out in a garage since birth, but he has forever been surrounded by mechanically gifted people.
Born to parents Claude and Sara in 1968 there has never been a time when racing in some form was not a presence in his life. Claude Kern who opened a machine and speed shop in Bedford, Indiana was first enamored with drag racing. He would take his 1940s era Willys dragster to all of the local strips and often was in the company of his best friend. Karl Kinser had a passion for speed as well and like Kern was a wizard in the garage. In fact, around 1959 Sara Kern decided to buy a 1929 roadster from Kinser as a gift to her husband. To this very day Claude and Sara attend hot rod meets where they are proud to show off their pride and joy.
Karl would eventually take an interest in sprint cars, while Claude turned his attention to stock cars. The two men still took the time to share ideas. Taking pride in his father’s accomplishments Cale Kern says, “a lot of the things that were on Karl’s cars were built in my dad’s shop,” he says, “The first torque tube in and out box prototype was built by my dad. Then Gambler got a hold of them and started mass producing them.” Sadly, Claude did not have a patent on his innovation.
When Claude made the transition from drag to stock car racing he soon had plenty of reasons to smile. He put together a great racecar, and because of that he attracted top talent. “My dads’ driver for years and years was Jim Curry,” Cale says, “and one year he won every feature at Brownstown.” Curry, a National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame inductee is a three-time Jackson 100 winner and the all-time leader in late model wins at the track. Additionally, Jim and Claude are members of the Brownstown Hall of Fame. Kern would also win a Brownstown title with Kenny Simpson and then kept it in the family in the early 1980s when he fielded a car for his nephew John Gill. By this time Cale was doing all the maintenance on the car, while his older brother Travis built the engines.
Claude’s boys also followed him to the dragstrip and spent plenty of nights at Brown County Dragway, Speed’s New Hope Dragway, and occasionally ventured to Indianapolis Raceway Park. When electronics became more important in the straight line world, Cale reasoned it was time to move on. “We had a 1967 Camero 4 speed car,” he says, “and that wasn’t going to work out for us.” So, at 24 years old he decided to get his racing fix elsewhere.
Cale Kern and his girlfriend (and then wife) Bridgett were regulars at Bloomington Speedway and given the evolution of his father’s career it seemed natural to move towards oval track racing. One day with the dragster in tow he parked near the pit entrance and decided to take a closer look at one of the street stocks. “I was looking at Mark Barber’s car, “he says with a laugh. “and he came out and said, ‘hey, get away from my car. What are you doing?’ I pointed over to my car and told him that this was the kind of racing we do. He seemed okay then. On the way home I told Bridgett that his car may have had a bunch of illegal stuff on it.”
By 1991 he was ready to give stock cars a try. “Bob Cummings in Oolitic bent the cage for me,” he says, “and my wife and I built the car.” The last half of the previous sentence bears repeating as it will become a reoccurring theme in this tale. As for a number he decided that 77 would suit him fine. “That was my dad’s second car number,” he says, “Kenny Simpson had that number when he was a track champion at Brownstown. They had two 1970 Chevelles that looked exactly alike one was 75 and the other was 77.
His first race came at the Martin County Speedway in Loogootee. As first performances go there were things to build upon “We got the car done and the motor running, but we were late,” he recalls. “Somehow we had the wrong rod bearings, so we had low oil pressure. My brother and I pulled the pan and put the right rod bearings in it. We missed the heat race, so we had to start on the tail of the consy, but I finished second and made the feature. In the race I overheated, but I had made my first feature.”
Cale proved to be a quick study. That same year he scored his first ever win at Paragon Speedway, but he did it the hard way. “I had never been there before,” he says, “and Lee Hobbs and all those guys were there. I qualified well, won my heat and started in the second row. Then I spelled out of the third lap and had to go to the tail but still won. I took the lead with about two laps to go.”
Soon he was a consistent winner and vying for track championships. The 1993 season was one of his very best. That year the Central Indiana Street Stock series was launched and included races at Bloomington, Paragon, Twin Cities Raceway Park (North Vernon). Martin County, Green County (Owensburg), and Terre Haute. Some of the best in the business were on hand every night. When the points were tallied he had topped the stellar Scott Patman for the championship. By virtue of missing the first two races at Bloomington any chance of a title was out of reach, however, he chased Patman all season long. There were other big moments. The following year he claimed $1000 and a huge trophy at the Mark Clark Memorial at Twins Cities. Only a crash on the final points night thwarted his claim on the top spot in the standings at the track.
Kern would eventually move to late model racing and found the groove quickly. He competed with the Northern All Stars and did well. Then his life changed. When daughter Carlee was born she fell right into the family pattern. “She didn’t have any choice,” Cale says with a laugh, “I have a picture of her lapping the valves on a flathead Ford engine while standing on a milk crate. She was just four years old.”
It wasn’t long before it was clear that the Kern’s had a real athlete on their hands. Carlee excelled at softball, volleyball, and basketball. Travel sports and just the normal school athletic schedule was time consuming. Cale’s machine work, restoration, race car, and hot rod business were enough to keep him hopping. Racing would eat into the precious time he had and would draw him away from time with his daughter. Since being a father was more important than racing, he pushed the pause button on that phase of his life.
Then a funny thing happened. He had purchased a street stock from an individual who had raced maybe a dozen times, and in 2008 he took it to Bloomington and finished fourth. Then it sat. Four years ago, Carlee told her father that the car had been out of commission long enough. Perhaps taken by surprise Cale told his daughter, “If you get it out and get the body fixed I will build a motor for it, and we’ll race. So, we did go out about six times that year. We probably didn’t have any business racing, but we did, and we made all the features.”
Carlee raced some herself, but the Southern Indiana University engineering student appears to enjoy working on cars far more than taking a turn behind the wheel. How good is she in the shop? She is the proud owner of a 1963 Chevy truck she built with her dad. “She welded the frame, built the motor, and put the chassis together,” Cale says, “I did the bodywork.” He doesn’t mask his pride in what she accomplished.
It’s a beautiful piece but it is what one expects to roll out of Cale Kern’s garage. He has been in the hot rod business full time for twenty years and his cars have won numerous awards and have been featured in scores of magazine articles. A 1963 split window Corvette just left his shop, and he is also working on a 1969 CTN original short bed truck. In what he terms “full builds,” he has a 1958 Chevy Cameo style truck in the works, and he just finished a 1959 El Camino with a 409 five speed engine.
If that wasn’t enough he is also involved in Autocross racing, a discipline that some may not be familiar with. He fell into this segment of the industry in an unusual way. “I was doing a little work for this guy, and I used a little dirt technology on his truck. I had a quick change rear end, wide five wheels all the way around and lo and behold he just absolutely kills them. Everybody was like what in the world is on that car. Josh Leisinger a guy from South Dakota had me build a 1964 Corvette from scratch. It is an all-tube, all-out racecar. It has been the top car for about the last ten years. We have won the Holley LS Fest East, West, and South all in one year. I think we have won the thing eight times in cars, and twice on the truck side.”
Cale Kern is a very busy man, but he still has the urge to race. Last year he wrote 22 races down on his schedule and ended up lining up 24 times. He added events as he began to realize that he was well up in UMP points – a matter he had previously not considered. “Toward the end of last year, we got to where we were running well,” he says, “and we decided we wanted to do enough races to be in the UMP deal. Regionally we ended up fifth and were six in the National deal.” Could he contend for the title in 2025? It certainly is possible. “I love racing,” he says, “we have our car from last year and we have worked all winter long to make it faster.” Finishing up the engine was the last item on the agenda, and he looked forward to having Carlee home from college to complete the task.
Is all this talent just in the Kern genes? Maybe. However, he learned a lot from two important role models. Claude Kern is 83 years old but still goes to work every day. Then there was Karl Kinser. Cale often worked on Karl’s trusty old truck and spent enough time in his garage to learn almost by osmosis. There was one key to Kinser’s success that Kern feels may be overlooked. “To be around him and to be around other shops you understood that the guy just outworked everybody,” he notes, “That’s why he won. It wasn’t money. I was at his shop one time, and they unloaded a whole truckload of Weld Wheels. He unboxed every one of them and put it on a lathe and checked the run out. He did that for every wheel. If it wasn’t what he wanted he put it in the box and sent it back.”
Beyond basic talent why are some more successful than others? It’s rarely a matter of luck. More often it is attention to detail. It is also a consistent willingness to work hard. In the end these two factors often separate the good from the great. This is the lesson that has guided Cale Kern’s career on and off the racetrack.
Kerns family photos - including 2008 Hot Rod of the Year
Article Credit: Patrick Sullivan
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