American Canadian Tour

The American-Canadian Tour (ACT) is an independent regional stock car racing series based in the northeastern United States, and Eastern Canada. The American-Canadian Tour was founded in 1979 and conducts professionally-run stock car racing events across New England and Quebec.

In 1979, famed television and radio journalist Ken Squier and business partner Tom Curley formed the North Tour sanctioned by NASCAR for Late Model Sportsman-type cars. Stars of the day included New England drivers Beaver and Bobby Dragon, Dave Dion, and Dick McCabe; Canada’s Jean-Paul Cabana and Claude Leclerc; and invaders Robbie Crouch of Tampa, Florida and Chuck Bown of Portland, Oregon. With sponsorship from companies like Coors, Molson, Skoal, STP, Valvoline, and General Motors, the North Tour visited the short track showplaces of the northeastern U.S. and Canada: Vermont’s Thunder Road; Maine’s Oxford Plains Speedway, Connecticut's Stafford Springs and Thompson; Sanair Super Speedway near Montreal, Cayuga Speedway in Ontario, and Dover Downs International Speedway in Delaware. Southern stars Butch Lindley, Bill Dennis, Harry Gant, and Tommy Ellis were frequent visitors to NASCAR North Tour events, along with national icons Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, and Dale Earnhardt.

After the NASCAR sanction dissolved at the end of 1985, Curley incorporated his roster of teams into the independent American-Canadian Tour in 1986 and made a total changeover from the NASCAR Late Model Sportsman to the Pro Stock cars used throughout the country. In 1987, Curley’s ACT aligned with Rex Robbins’ American Speed Association (ASA) of the Midwest and Bob Harmon’s All-Pro Series of the southeast, forming the Stock Car Connection. The SCC visited high-profile tracks in Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Nazareth, PA, and Nashville, and saw visitors that included Darrell Waltrip, Mark Martin, Bobby and Davey Allison, and Rusty and Kenny Wallace, along with short track legends Dick Trickle, Butch Miller, Mike Eddy, Bob Senneker, Steve Grissom, and Bobby Gill.

With General Motors stepping up its commitment to ACT in 1989, the GM Motorsport National Stock Car Series was formed in Canada, offering large purses, even larger point funds, and coast-to-coast television coverage. Budweiser created the Bud Triple Crown as part of the GM Series, and paid Junior Hanley over $50,000 in 1991 and again in 1992 for sweeping the series. During Hanley’s ACT Championship years from 1991–93, the Ontario driver earned more than $700,000 in winnings.

The current American-Canadian Tour Late Models utilize a modern, cost-effective program that creates thrilling side-by-side action and has built one of the leading short track series in North America. Beginning in 1992 and taking center stage in 1996, the Late Models have introduced many innovative concepts used in several disciplines of short track racing.

ACT developed one of the first “spec” engine programs in 1999 as a cost-saving option for local and regional racers. After successful testing in the early 2000s, most teams, tracks and promoters both regionally and nationally have made the switch. The “spec” engine program expanded to include a Ford option in 2010 and added the popular GM ‘602’ in 2018. A similar cost-saving “spec” program exists with Koni and QA1 shock absorbers as well as a uniform Hoosier Racing Tire utilized by the Tour and its partner tracks.

For their efforts in the growth of stock car racing, both Squier and Curley have been inducted into the New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame and the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame. In 2004, ACT founder Tom Curley was voted by more than 1,000 race promoters across the continent as the Auto Racing Promoter of the Year. In 2018 Ken Squier was ceremoniously inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina for his contributions to the growth of the sport on a national, and international, level. ACT lost its leader in May of 2017 when a decades-long battle with COPD claimed Tom Curley. Ken Squier died in November 2023 after battling multiple health problems for several years.

In November 2017, the American-Canadian Tour changed ownership for the first time in its storied history as former racer Cris Michaud and Vermont businessman Pat Malone took charge of the sanctioning body after partnering to purchase Vermont’s Thunder Road earlier that season. The partnership also purchased New Hampshire’s White Mountain Motorsports Park in 2019. In recent years ACT has competed at tracks across New England, Quebec, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. Partnering with the Maine-based Pro All Stars Series (PASS), the two sanctioning bodies have co-promoted events at Thompson Speedway (CT) since 2020.