While LegendsNation.com (“LN”) was launched in April of 2007 to become the premier source for Legend Cars and Bandolero news and information, the story of LN started many years before.
In the mid-1990s, Midwest racing enthusiast and communications specialist Jason “Stix” Buckley would travel down south to Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, to enjoy NASCAR racing from the grandstands. On several trips, he took photos and video of scale cars, not really knowing too much about Legend Car racing. However, he was intrigued, and even shot video of the first-ever Bandolero practice in 1997 at CMS in front of the NASCAR crowd, and the first-ever Legend Cars race during the opening weekend of Texas Motor Speedway on the front stretch oval that same year in Fort Worth, Texas.
In 1998, Buckley moved to North Carolina to further his passion for motorsports, and after a stint in California with an entertainment and video game company (where his online community concepts helped the company launch MySpace, the “unofficial start” to social media), he returned to North Carolina, starting Motorsports Lounge (“ML”), which became the largest official forum discussion website for race car drivers, teams, tracks and series. Under ML, Buckley would attend the Summer Shootout Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway, taking videos and photos of the action, which garnered the attention of 51 Sports and Speed 51 owner, Bob Dillner. With 51 and ML being the two primary sources for news and discussion on Legend Cars and Bandoleros, Dillner brought Buckley into the fold in 2007 to launch and run Legends Nation as the only stand-alone source for the scale car racing.
LN gained national attention as the number one source for all the LN scene, and in 2010, Buckley brought LN under his own STIX FX Entertainment brand to focus further on the website. At the same time, Buckley brought on Lindsey Marantos (Marks), to assist with LN coverage at events such as the Summer Shootout Series, Thursday Thunder at AMS, Winter Nationals in Florida, and the Legends and Bandolero national events (held at various tracks across the country), including local track event. Gaining international attention and growth outside of just the Legend Cars world, and with the addition of other news sites geared directly to Legend Cars and Bandoleros, STIX FX Entertainment made the decision a few years later to market LN under a rebranded Motorsports Lounge website to cater to all racing. However, soon after, all specific news sources for Legends and Bandoleros shut down, leaving an empty hole in the industry once more. Seeing this, Buckley and STIX FX Entertainment decided to scale back the coverage to just the scale car world, closing ML down, and relaunching Legends Nation in 2015. The return of LN after being offline for a short stint was extremely well received by the public.
During the 2015 racing season, Buckley was hired out from his own company, STIX FX Entertainment, by his long-time client Ben Rhodes, the 2014 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East champion (and graduate of Bandolero and Legend Cars racing), to manage his Comms, PR, and social media as he continued his racing career. Not wanting to terminate the LN name and brand as it was back on the rise, Buckley turned over Legends Nation to racing enthusiast and former LN reporter, Brian Nagy. Under Nagy, LN moved into the pay-per-view broadcast realm, highlighting racing action live online. This continued until the end of 2021, when U.S. Legend Cars International decided to take the live PPV broadcasts directly under their wing. Between them and other independent news media organizations dominating the live streaming broadcasts, LN was closed down, and the brand went silent.
During the 2022 season, Buckley, who had changed career paths and relocated to Texas, approached Nagy about Legends Nation, and a desire to bring it back. In March of 2023, Nagy agreed to turn ownership of LN back over to Buckley, and a few days later, it was announced Legends Nation would be coming back online with Buckley back in the full ownership role of the website and brand. On April 2, 2023, Legends Nation “soft” relaunched to the accolades of the drivers, teams, tracks, series, and fans of the sport.
The premier Legend Cars and Bandolero news media and informational source will continue to grow over the coming months and years, providing promotion to some of the best racing in the world.
