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Old 09-21-2016, 06:42 PM   #165
ChrisBlair
Buick 455 Fan
 
Drives: 1970 Buick, 2012 1SS LS3
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Boston MA
Posts: 5,957
...this thread? Still?

Guys, "shade" has been in use a long, long time to denote taking advantage of, skirting (as in 'shading the rules'), etc. Longer than anyone here has been living. The kids just picked it up out of the dusty corners? Yaaaayyy, kids, meh.

I personally first read the term in the early '80s while reading a Car Craft article on Smokey Yunick, in regards to his 1966 Chevelle that inspectors targeted for numerous technical violations in NASCAR. Accused of breaking the rules regarding fuel tank size, they made him remove it, whereupon he drove the car back to his pit with no fuel tank. The legend goes he had put enormous ID fuel lines in the car and kept them pressurized; the tank was completely legal. He was a notorious "shader of the rules" because if the rules didn't specifically say he couldn't do it, he did it. Example- no belly pans in NASCAR per the rules. He modified the floor plans so that they were deeper and wider, producing the same effect. It was not a belly pan, it was the floor!
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