By T.J. Buffenbarger
When I was five years old the first sprint car I ever sat in resided in the shop at Dowker Engines in my hometown of Charlotte, MI. Butch Dowker was the man that lifted me up and sat me in the driver’s seat. It was the first of a lifetime of visits to the shop just off of Island Highway. It was part of the fuel that fired the passion for sprint car racing that eventually brought me to starting the site.
Butch was a vital part of the sprint car community in the state of Michigan and beyond. It seems like growing up the Michigan sprint car community for the longest time gravitated around Charlotte. Dowker was the ringleader building the engines and cars that at one point powered a majority of those teams. The term eventually was coined as the “Charlotte Mafia”. In those terms I guess you could call Butch one of the “Don’s” of that that group.
Through it all living in Charlotte or even after moving away I was always welcomed back to the shop to chit chat. Even as recently as 2010 I had stopped by the shop as Butch was working last moment on a customer’s engine in the car to see how things were going. Every visit was enjoyable to the shop and people that oozed racing history for over half a century. If the doors were open and I had a moment, I was likely going to swing in and see what was up.
One of the most memorable visits was n preparation for the Pay Less Little 500 one season the night before the team left for Anderson. Butch had a car up on the scales doing final measurements with the rest of the team before putting it in the box that night. I was allowed take photos and post them in preparation for our Little 500 coverage, which Butch was anxious to get photos of following the session. The stories told that night were epic to say the least.
Every visit I managed learn something I didn’t know from Butch. At the race track we didn’t chat much other than before the race because that was business for both of us. Before the race though we would quite often visit and talk over what was going on with AVSS or something else on the racing scene. He was interested in where I had traveled to and often would have a customer he would inquire to how they were doing.
Later on in his life Butch was always pulling out photos of his street rod and ideas of what he wanted to do with it. After dealing with race cars his entire life the street rods had become a new challenge and was a tremendous outlet to his creativity.
It’s going to be very strange to stop by Dowker Engines and not see Butch there. Needless to say I will think of him and Max every time I swing by Island Highway while I’m home and see the white brick building that not only built cars and engines, it helped build my passion.