Art was a genius. He didn't need a college degree. He had intuition and experience to guide him. Also, he was a heck of a parts scrounger.
Damn. Compound boost . . . shifts out of 1st gear at 300 mph . . . did not graduate high school . . . did all of his own welding and fabrication and design . . . built Anteater while racing Green Monster and apparently running the feed store . . . this guy was a force of nature. He and Walt's mechanical genius and tireless work ethic reminds me of another famous Ohio brother team, the Wright brothers. Fantastic. Thanks for this.
The story that I have read a couple of times is that Art paid luigi lesovsky to do the body, which seems out of character for Art.
I guess you didn't watch the video . . . 'cuz at the 11 min 20 sec mark, Brian Lohnes explained that in July of 1960, Art brought the car to (Ludwig) Lujie Lesovsky in Southern California to build the body . . . and that this is where the Petersen photographers shot all the "build photos":
I don't care if it gets FEATURED ... just don't want the video to get deleted like the two other times I posted one of Brian Lohnes' Hot Rodding history videos.
Amen, brother. Maybe folks are put off by the idea of watching a 37 minute video - here's an idea: Start the video at the 2:20 mark and just watch the next 4 minutes, that'll give you a pretty good idea. You can also cut out many minutes by fast-forwarding through his reading of many newspaper articles, you can scan the shot of the article.
Awesome vid! Thanks for posting. I’ll just say as a mech Eng and someone with a creative streak, I’m very impressed, and can confirm that a formal education is designed to suck any creativity one might have right out of you,
I had read this book as a kid, I should buy it. Art Arfons, The Fastest Man On Wheels. https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Frederic-Katz/dp/B0007IWJ4K
I posted his book down this page. I read it when I was probably in 6th grade from the school library. He would source JET engines from the literal scrap yard and make them run and work.
Art was a true hot rodder. I have a short biography about him published by Fred Katz in 1965. It tells the story of his work with the jet engines. For testing, he chained the engines to two giant oak trees in his backyard. He didn't dare use the afterburner for fear that the trees would be torn out of the ground. The police had calls from three miles away with reports that a plane had crashed.
I bought this book, probably in about 1965-67. Price printed on the flyleaf is $2.75. Still have it, along with a whole bunch of other titles collected over the past 60ish years. My mother was the local librarian and was able to get inter-library loans as well. I read every car and racing book I could get my hands on. I never cared for the coffee table picture books. I wanted to read the inside stories and history of racing. When I was young I was interested in the drivers. As I have aged, I find the stories of the car builders and mechanics much more interesting. Best are the guys who built and drove their own cars like Art. The stick and ball guys have Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, etc. I've got Art Arfons, Smokey Yunick, Dan Gurney, Mark Donohue, Holmon-Moody, Travers & Coons, Harry Miller, Clay Smith and I could go on for a long time. There may be a lot of people doing some pretty big things now---but they stand on the shoulders of giants.
OT, but we had a guy in our Land Cruiser club who bought an old Soviet era jet engine and strapped it on the bed of his LC pickup. Some hilarious vids of it are on YT. Crazy SOB! Lol!
My grade school had a separate bookcase, all biographies. They had green covers. Sports heroes, giants of industry, etc. I read books on Chrysler, Ford, Eli Whitney and the Wright Brothers. Sort of shaped my destiny in life without a doubt.
Likely the same set of books my school library had. They were kind of a dark teal green with red and yellow letters. There were a lot of titles, I would estimate well over 50. I read every one, except for the few they had about women. It wouldn't have been seemly for a boy to be reading "girl's books" back then. Like you, reading has shaped my left in many ways. Send me a PM if you're interested in talking about books. I have way more books than I need, but not as many as I want.
A friend was in jet engine school in the Navy with Arfon's kid. He said he was always in trouble with the instructors for telling them how to set up the fuel controller for more performance - definitely not the do by the book Navy way.
The Jalopy Journal
