The Jetson Wagon was the pace car for the Chili Bowl Nationals midget car races. The car is famous in auto racing circles.
Flea Ruzic was cruising around his hometown of Springfield, Ill., several weeks ago in his 1989 LTD Country Squire, showing a friend some historic sites. Mostly, they were experiencing the cush of the 34-year-old station wagon’s thick padded velour upholstery and the glide of a vehicle as wide as a living room and longer than many garages.
Ruzic, a 49-year-old former race driver who’s now a master fabricator of open-wheel race cars and parts, was having a great time until the lights of an Illinois Secretary of State Police vehicle flashed from behind.
“Generally, the Secretary of State Police guys are (bleep)holes and slam the book at you,” Ruzic said, recounting his “visit” with the officer:
“Know why I pulled you over?” the officer asked.
“Because I don’t have a seatbelt on? Because my friend doesn’t have a seatbelt on?”
“Nope. It’s because the license plates on this thing are three years expired.”
“If you’re going to write me a ticket,” Ruzic told the officer, “then you’ve got to sign the guest book.”
“A car with a guest book?” the officer asked.
Ruzic tried to explain that the car was up-to-date on its registration but it didn’t seem right to put new license plates on such a classic.
“I wish you’d told me something different than that,” the officer said, looking at the Country Squire and its oxidized blue paint, fading fake wood grain, a badge on the right fender saying “Police Interceptor” (oops!), and a windshield banner identifying it as the “Jetson Wagon.”
“What is this thing?” the officer asked.
“It’s an ’89 station wagon,” Ruzic said. “Officer, this car is rather famous.”
The officer didn’t seem impressed, and Ruzic braced himself for a citation.
“If you’re going to write me a ticket,” he told the officer, “then you’ve got to sign the guest book.”
“A car with a guest book?” the officer asked.
Ruzic told him the history of the wagon, that many well-known people in American auto racing had driven it and how it had become a crowd favorite at dirt tracks across the Midwest.
“I’m telling you, this car is famous,” Ruzic said. “It’s been to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s house. Ryan Newman has driven it.”
The officer must have been a racing fan because he signed the guest book and not a ticket, then told Ruzic, “You know what? Just get the (bleep) out of here!”
That’s the latest tale in the life of a well-traveled wagon whose adventures are reflected in its patina, along with its own Twitter account (@jetsonwagon).
Dale Earnhardt Jr. with the Jetson Wagon
Jetson Wagon owner Flea Ruzic, and Flea with Earnhardt.
Meet Rip Jetson
Ruzic bought the wagon for $500 in 2016 after a friend, Kansas City-area race driver Tucker Klaasmeyer, noticed an online listing for sale at a nearby title/loan business.
“Tucker sent me a picture of this station wagon and I said, ‘Man, that’s (bleeping) cool. Buy it! I’ll pay you for it at the race next weekend,’ ” he said.
Paperwork Ruzic found after buying it makes him believe the previous owner had been deported to Mexico. All that mattered to him is that the wagon was in the hands of someone who appreciated it and planned to drive it to race tracks and have fun with it.
The wagon is a late-’80s land yacht that chugs gas, leaks oil and transmission fluid, and spews character with its turbine wheels, power windows and door locks, tilt steering wheel, third-row facing seats, AC that blows cold (for now) and a speedometer that needs a conversion chart.
“When it says 35 mph, that means you’re going 45,” Ruzic said. “Fifty means 54, and it’s about right when it’s at 70. I’ve got it calibrated so when you’re at highway speeds you don’t get pulled over. But once it gets past 75 it starts getting slow again. When it says 80, you’re actually at 77.”
Ruzic named the old Country Squire the “Jetson Wagon” based on his alter ego from his racing days. He often would enter races as a driver named “Rip Jetson from Cornbelt, Iowa” when he preferred his real identity not be known.
“I didn’t want to sign in and suck and everyone would know it was Flea driving,” he said. “The Jetson thing, well, that sounds fast. And the Rip part, there was a sprint car racer named Rip Williams. I thought Rip was a badass name.”
(Side note: Ruzic won’t divulge his given name, other than to say it’s a fourth-generation name and he got tired of people at family gatherings shout it and have he, his dad and granddad all respond at once. So, he’s been known as Flea since he was young.)
The Jetson Wagon became so popular at the tracks that racers would ask to borrow it for any number of reasons — to make burger runs, or shuttle race car parts, or just joy rides. Ruzic showed up at one track with a full sprint car frame strapped to its roof, thus the crease in the luggage rack.
It has been used as a pace car at the prestigious Chili Bowl Nationals midget races and a race-week rental car for NASCAR star Ryan Newman at the annual event in Tulsa. It’s the most photographed Country Squire in racing, having become the focal point for pictures in dirt track victory lanes and the famed yard of bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“People will see it on the road and take pictures,” Ruzic said. “I get messages from people all the time.”
The keys are always in it
For anyone who’d like to drive it, the keys are always on the floor near the driver’s seat. Ruzic doesn’t fear the Jetson Wagon will be stolen because racers and race fans generally are a good-hearted crowd.
“About everybody knows the keys are in it if you want to take it,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to steal a station wagon like that and get away with it. Somebody’s going to find it.”
All he asks is that whoever takes it signs the guest book. And, of course, leaves the keys on the floor.
Not long after Ruzic bought it, there was so much interest in the wagon that several people in the racing community asked to buy it. It spawned an idea: Ruzic would sell the wagon for the $500 he paid for it to someone who’d keep it a couple of months and pass it on to a new owner for $500, and on and on. After a few years, hopefully with a rich history and a full guest book, he would get the wagon back, auction it and donate the money to charity.
The auction part hasn’t happened, but the Jetson Wagon has delivered memories and stained the driveways of several well-known figures in racing.
Casey Shuman with his newborn daughter; Karsyn Elledge at a fast-food drive-thru, where the car’s window wouldn’t roll down.
The Jetson Wagon can haul plenty of passengers, or a sprint car frame.
When race driver Casey Shuman owned it, he drove his wife and newborn daughter home from the hospital in it. Shuman brought the wagon to the Chili Bowl Nationals, where young midget-car driver Karsyn Elledge fell in love with it. Her dad, Jimmy Elledge, bought the wagon and Ruzic drove it to their home in Mooresville, N.C.
“Once I saw it, I told my dad that we had to be the next people to own it,” said Karsyn Elledge, whose uncle is Dale Earnhardt Jr. “I was freshly 16 and I had a nice jacked-up Jeep with nice wheels and tires, but most of the time I chose to drive the wagon. It was a blast; my dad and I did some nice burnouts. It felt like you were in a time machine. The driver’s window didn’t roll down, so every time I would go through a drive-thru I would have to open the door.”
The day she took possession, Elledge couldn’t wait to show it off to Dale Jr.
Well often imitated never duplicated. Jetson wagon pacing the field for 4 abreast. @ripjetson9 @jaxspeedway @WorldofOutlaws pic.twitter.com/X3egwW5wS4
— Scott Long (@slong1313)
April 30, 2021
“We brought it by Junior Motorsports first because we knew Dale was going to love it,” she said. “He has an appreciation for old cars, and he thought it was pretty cool.”
The Elledges owned the wagon nearly two years, then passed it on to NASCAR driver J.J. Yeley, who also had seen it for the first time at the Chili Bowl.
“Everyone in the sport knows the vehicle, and to see it at one of the biggest races was a pretty cool tip of the hat for the Jetson Wagon,” Yeley said. “It was awesome to have a nostalgic, head-turning vehicle.”
Yeley’s daughter, in sixth grade at the time, wanted him to drive her to school in it.
“Here we are in the Jetson Wagon, dropping her off in the car rider line,” Yeley said. “It’s not the cleanest, coolest, newest vehicle, but she was so excited about it. When I had it, you needed to make sure it got a quart of oil every other tank of gas because it had a leak. You never needed to change the oil because it never spent enough time burning it. It was always fresh, going in the top and coming out the bottom. It’s not a shiny new penny, but it started every time I needed it and it ran fine.”
On its third 302
Others who owned the Jetson Wagon were race track promoter Roger Slack and open-wheel race team owner David McIntosh.
Each person was encouraged to do something that improved the wagon during their ownership. The Elledges replaced the original horn with one that sounded like the Dukes of Hazzard General Lee. Yeley added some Mexican horse blankets to the seats and had classic pinstripes painted on the front, back and sides of the wagon, the final touch being an image of cartoon character Elroy Jetson above the left taillight.
“The paint’s so used up on the thing I was worried it wouldn’t stick,” Yeley said. “I washed it four or five times before I took it over to be pinstriped.”
The Jetson Wagon is back in Ruzic’s hands, the odometer reading 23,000 miles (you can add a “1’ in front of that number), running on its third 302-cubic-inch engine since he bought it in 2016. He estimates he has spent about $12,000 on his $500 acquisition.
“Originally it would do burnouts, but with all the motor changes it ended up with a vacuum leak that nobody’s been able to find,” Ruzic said. “I think it’s running on seven cylinders now.”
Star open-wheel driver Kevin Thomas Jr. scans the track at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. The wagon at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
That doesn’t seem to matter, nor does the transmission that slips a little when accelerating to cruising speed.
The Jetson Wagon is still on the road, bringing joy to race fans who recognize it and good memories to those lucky to have owned and driven it. That’s always been Ruzic’s objective, that it have a positive impact.
His ultimate goal remains unmet. He’d still like to auction it for charity, but life and the demands of his business, Millennium Components, have kept him too busy.
“I’m good at doing stuff but horrible at capitalizing on it,” Ruzic said. “It’s been to Charlotte, it’s been to Indianapolis Motor Speedway and had its picture taken on the bricks. Dale Jr. sat in the car, Ryan Newman used it as his rental car and it paced the Chili Bowl. It was Casey Shuman’s little girl’s first car ride and it went to a father-daughter dance.”
Is there value in that, even for a well-traveled 1989 Country Squire? Hopefully.
After all, the Jetson Wagon’s story was good enough to escape a ticket from one of Illinois’ toughest cops.
