Scott Bathurst is a historian of the sport in some aspects.
While some write stories and others take pictures, Bathurst has found another canvas entirely. The driving force behind t-shirt printing powerhouse Classic Graphix sees the front and back of a race shirt as a place where drag racing memories stay alive long after the engines go quiet.
Bathurst also runs the Red Line Shirt Club, the monthly subscription service he purchased from the estate of founder Randy Ranew, who died in 2021. Ranew launched the original club in February 2012 with support from some of drag racing’s most recognizable names, building a following around shirts that celebrated the sport’s past rather than chasing only what was new.
Recently, that history nearly hit a wall.
Technical issues tied to the club’s aging website infrastructure forced the operation into a shutdown that lasted months. The pause created uncertainty not only for subscribers but also for a service that had become a quiet archive for drag racing culture.
For Bathurst, losing the club was never just about losing another business line.
There are race cars people remember. There are drivers people remember. Sometimes there are shirts people remember too.
So instead of allowing the operation to fade away, Bathurst decided to start over.
The Red Line Shirt Club has returned as RL Shirt Club, complete with a rebuilt platform and a reset membership process. As the official shirt printer for CompetitionPlusStore.com’s Heritage Line, Bathurst has continued placing himself in a role that extends beyond merchandise and into preservation.
The frustrating part was not necessarily the shutdown itself. It was how suddenly it happened.
Bathurst said the foundation beneath the business simply disappeared.
“The company that we were using that ran the credit cards and when it ran the credit cards, they printed the shipping labels for us, which is the same company that the people before us had used for like 10 years,” Bathurst explained. “They closed their doors at the end of July, no real notice to us. So we tried to scramble to find somebody to fix it.”
The problem did not stop there.
“The first three or four companies we went to after two weeks, they said, ‘This technology is so old the way it was built we don’t know where to start.'”
Anyone who has spent time around drag racing understands the feeling.
Sometimes a broken race car is easier to fix because at least the parts are sitting in front of you. Technology failures tend to be different. They leave people staring at screens instead of engines.
Bathurst eventually found a path through another shirt-of-the-month operator who recommended a company willing to tackle the problem.
That process tested patience.
“We finally found a company through another guy that has a shirt of the month club,” Bathurst said. “He said, ‘They can do what you need done, but you have to be very patient because they take a long time.'”
“And it has taken longer than a long time, but we are back with a whole new website and everything.”
CLICK HERE –Â JOIN THE CLUB TODAY
The rebuild solved the technical problem.
Now comes the harder part.
Bathurst essentially has to rebuild the audience from scratch because previous members must create new accounts and sign up again under the new RL Shirt Club system.
That creates challenges when part of your audience has been around drag racing long enough to remember Lions Drag Strip, Orange County International Raceway, or the days when hero cards and souvenir trailers were a bigger attraction than social media.
“We have to just get everybody to resign up and any new member just signed up like you were first time member and we will start shipping right away,” Bathurst said.
He understands that some former subscribers may never see the notices.
“Because now we have to basically rebuild it from scratch,” Bathurst said. “Meaning, some of those old guys that are on there, they may not resign up, they may not even check their email all the time.”
That concern sounds less like customer retention and more like somebody trying not to lose old friends.
There is a difference.
For the relaunch to work, Bathurst needs more than a repaired website. He needs people to find their way back.
Returning members and new subscribers now sign up through RLShirtClub.com, where a large “Join the Club” option walks users through the process. Membership starts at $25 monthly for sizes small through XL and $28 for larger sizes, with six-month and annual subscription options available.
Bathurst said flexibility mattered because not every drag racing fan wants another long-term obligation.
“The new website is rlshirtclub.com,” Bathurst said. “And when you go on there, there’s a big red box at the top that says join the club and it’s a pretty easy process.”
“But if you join month to month at any point you can take a break and sign off for a while or just continue to get them, whatever you like.”
CLICK HERE –Â JOIN THE CLUB TODAY
For Bathurst, the shirts themselves were always the point.
Not the subscription model. Not the website. Not the billing process.
The shirts.
“Oh, a huge relief,” Bathurst said of finally relaunching the club. “I mean, for one, I felt bad for all of our customers, but this is a business that we need to make money. So at the end of the day, that’s what everything’s about, but I just love the idea of getting old drag racer T-shirts but not having to buy somebody’s used old shirt on eBay.”
“That you can get a brand new shirt with a pre ’80s design on it with some of the people that started the world of drag racing.”
The answer explains plenty.
Bathurst has always come across like someone who understands nostalgia is not simply looking backward. Nostalgia is preserving something before it disappears.
His own connection to the sport started long before Classic Graphix became an established name.
“Sure, 100%,” Bathurst said. “We started printing shirts in our garage in 1988 and the first thing we did was the Lions Drag Strip shirt.”
“So that’s where we started was we were drag racing fans, a family that grew up at the track and all of that stuff.”
The story sounds familiar to anyone who has spent enough time in racing.
Start small. Figure things out as you go. Hope the next opportunity shows up.
Bathurst and his family bought a shirt press and learned by trial and error.
“I had a buddy that was making some hats and wanted to get shirts made,” Bathurst said. “So we just went out and bought a shirt and put in a shirt press by hand, put it in the garage and started making T-shirts just by trial and error figuring out how to make them.”
Then drag racing entered the picture in a bigger way.
“And so then we started and I met Tom McEwen at a car show once and he started getting me hooked up with different drivers.”
The next part still sounds like a fan talking.
“The first guy that called me, I answered the phone and it’s Ed, Ace, McCulloch wanting me to print T-shirts for him.”
“For me as a fan of drag racing, that was a pretty cool deal to be hooked up with him.”
Bathurst sells shirts.
What he really seems to do is keep memories from becoming old photographs in a box somewhere.
