Features VINTAGE SPRINT CAR PIC THREAD, 1965 and older only please.

The #45 car looks like a Championship car with a shortened wheelbase to sprint car size to me.

 

Here's a pic of Hector with Scratch Daniel's behind the wheel of the Black Deuce taken in Tampa 1964. The pic is from Dave Westerman's collection

 

I guess that's why Kelly Miller's super looked this way

 

You bet he likes that style, me too.

I've read that ironically the body of The Sweet 16 is not a roadster restoration but an Indy Style Kit from the 60s.

 

I don't get on here much and it's really hard to keep up and follow the threads sometimes. But, I saw where someone was mentioning the Don Gillette Pontiac sprint car and mention of the Leitenberg car. Here's a pic of the Gillette Pontiac.

Also, I thought that the Leitenberger car became the Long brothers car that Larry Dickson drove in 1962-63. Not a very good photo of it but this is it at the Dickson Rendering plant in 1963

 

ATTENTION!!!
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Not really suppossed to do this kind of "propaganda" here but I know you fella's will REALLY dig these Shirts!!

Take a second and look what my buddy "Mud" at GOODSLEEVE ART and APPAREL has started. Some pretty neat shirt designs, a couple cool posters and A LOT MORE TO COME!!!!

...Also, those of you who have asked where to get my SHAW shirts can get them here!!!

http://www.goodsleeveaa.bigcartel.com/


Thanks fella's! and stay tuned for More VINTAGE SPRINT CAR shirts and posters in the NEAR future!


Joshua Shaw

 

Nice pic of Jake Vargo himself standing in front of his car. He is wearing the white pants, and Ernie McCoy is in the seat.

 

I was at Salem in 56. Was also there when Gill Hess got killed. That was bad because it did not ahve to happen and his Son was one of the fiest to get to him. Leon Huble was the first to go out of the ballpark and live[broke his back, but he came back to race untill early 60's] the next[I think] to leave and live was Sessions driving for Leffler, who fired Sam as he was leaving the track in the air. People forget how bad it was on the HILLS over the years.
Jim Graybeal

 

wvjimmie,

Compare the Gillette photo against this picture of Bill Brown from 1958. Notice the reinforced front radius rods, custom kick out on the rear radius rods and the louvers on the front and rear belly pans - same car.

 

Jim,

I talked to Freddie Agabashian about Sweikert's accident and he said, "His ego killed him". He couldn't stand to have Elisian beat him. If you remember Ed was running side by side with Sweikert and Sweikert could'nt get past him.

 

That makes a good story, but the truth is that a small mistake at the high banks can kill you. It's merely a matter of chance whether you get hurt badly or not when something happens in auto racing, particularly so on the high banks where you have high sustained speeds and limited sight lines, particularly through the corners; then throw in the less than smooth surface, and you are right on the ragged edge most of the time.

 

I remember my dad saying at Winchester he would come off of 4 and aim for a spot in 1. He said the front straight was so rough your eyes would bounce and you couldn't focus.

 

No, that is not the same formula as used in champ car racing back then. He ran IMCA shows.

 

Imagine this style "run what you brung" chassis, with a CANAM style body covering the wheels, racing at Indy. Too unsafe? Gary

 

It was a known fact that nobody liked racing with Elisian, let alone losing to him.

 

Bobby,

That's not a story that is the word from Freddie Agabashian. Johnny Boyd (Sweikert's best friend) told me the same thing, Sweikert called Elisian, a "Black eye on the sport".

 

I like the nose

 

It has a sprint car tail, too.

 

I didn't mean that Agabashian was full of crap, merely that what he percieved as Bob Sweikert not wanting Elisian to beat him may have been just a small mistake that led to a tragic accident. I didn't know Elisian was held in such low esteem by his fellow racers. Why was that? I only read about him being a "hard charger" that didn't always use the best judgment.

 

Bob,

Elisian was a hard charger but he seemed to be in the middle of things when people got hurt and died. Bill Vukovich,called Ed "Drool".

 

Bob, Do you remember the one tv race at Winchester, when they put down a bunch of oil dry and when they threw the green, coming off four there was so much oil dry flying around you couldn't see the nose of your car? Didn't know what was in front of you but worried if you lifted you'd get run over I was pretty pissed because they only did it because of the live tv, guess that show's how much they cared about us drivers

 

Bob A lot of people blamed him for Pat O'Connor's death, and wrongly blamed for Sweikerts death I think that is the main reason he was so disliked.


A.J. Foyt Talks of the Accident

In his 1983 book "A.J.", Foyt recalls the first Indy 500 he competed in - 1958. He spoke about how the only veterans that would help him were Pat O'Connor and Tony Bettenhausen. O'Connor gave him tips and showed him the best lines around the speedway. Here is an excerpt about the 1st-lap accident:

"They got to the turn. Rathmann backed off slightly, and Elisian, who was in the groove - that's the only reason Rathmann backed off; there was no place for him to go- well, Elisian was in too deep and too fast. I saw Elisian's car bobble slightly. That's the sign of trouble at Indy. There just wasn't time to turn the car. He slammed into Rathmann and the force took both cars into the concrete retainer wall. Rathmann's car was chopped in two; parts from Elisian's car were sailing everywhere.
I saw Reece slow down, and then Bob Veith hit him, sending Reece's car directly into the path of Pat O'Connor. Son of a *****. O'Connor's car went up and over and sailed fifty feet in the air, and when it hit the track on the other side, upside down, it burst into flames.
Everything was happening so fast. But I could see everything, and I remembered everything I had heard in the driver's meeting. 'If you see a car spinning on the start, look for a place to go,' they had said. 'Be careful of the first lap,' they had said. 'Watch the lead cars," they had said. I did all of those things, and it was happening. Just like they had said.
I thought, Oh, ****, I've come this far and it's all over. I didn't even make a lap.
I looked for a place to go. There were cars sideways in front of me, so I spun my car to keep from hitting them. There was a hole and I sort of pulled myself up straight in the seat, trying to make myself as thin as I could. Somehow I thought it might make the car thinner. While I was sideways, I saw a car go up over another car and flip right out of the Speedway. I found out later it was Jerry Unser going over Paul Goldsmith.
My car was still sliding through the hole between Johnny Parsons and Tony Bettenhausen. I got through without touching a thing. The slide had scrubbed off a lot of my speed, like I hoped it would. The car was still spinning to the right, so I turned the wheel right and it started to straighten out. And then I saw it. A clear track ahead.
I had made it.
The yellow lights were all on, of course, so I kept it at about 100 miles an hour. When I got back around to the crash scene, I counted fifteen cars that were involved. They were sending traffic above, below, through, anyplace you could go without hitting a car or a broken part or a tow truck or an ambulance.
O'Connor's car was still burning.
I tried hard not to look at it. ******* it, I didn't want to look at it.
The next time I came around, the fire was out, but it was still smoking. I looked. ****. Why did I look? Pat's arm was frozen in midair. Everything was black. His car, his helmet, his uniform, everything.
Son of a *****, I thought. I wasn't sure I was tough enough for Indianapolis. It was going to take some thinking.
It took them twenty laps under caution to clear the debris from the track. Long after his car and his body were taken away, I could see Pat's arm sticking up in the air. I felt sick. When I came by the pits, I could see Ed Elisian sitting on the pit wall. His helmet was off and his head was in his hands.
I wondered how it could have happened. But I knew the answer just as well as any of the drivers. You race all month with a guy and you build up this rivalry. It almost becomes a hate. But it isn't. Only race drivers feel it. Maybe som people feel it on the highway. There are just some people who don't like to be passed. But in racing it builds up so much stronger. It becomes an obsession. I guess that's what happened to Elisian and Dick Rathmann. They just got overcome with the obsession to beat each other.
The rest of the race was hollow for me. I was running as hard as I could, but I wasn't comfortable. I was petrified, to tell you the truth. And I've never said that before. I ran hard; I just didn't feel like I had in other races. The spirit wasn't there."
"I vowed one thing when I left Indianapolis: I would never get close to any race driver again. And I've stuck to it. I've never run around at night with any of the other drivers. I've always been by myself. A lot of people think I'm stuck-up at times, but it's not true. It's a bad thing to see a driver get killed - real bad - but you just have to walk away from it and not let it play on your mind. You can't have something like that on your mind when you're out there going 180 miles an hour. I found that out."

 

Wow...powerful stuff Roy.

 

Didn't hey have some of these at Bristol when the record was broken by an upright sprint car?

 

Fantastic post Roy. Thanks for taking the time to share that with us.

 

I don't like posting stuff like this but here is Sweikerts fatal accident, it only shows part of it but I don't see how Elisian could be blamed for this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CntA0p5i0dI

 

Bobby;
There are many ways to describe Elisians style, but the best one was to say that he was a very dirty driver!!!
The sancioning body even kicked him out at least once. Its just good we never had too many like him.

 

Joe Scalzo, (who is known to umm change history) in a story he wrote he said when Elisian had his fatal accident the car was upside down and Elisian was trying to get out the car cauht fire and (this is the Joe Scalzo version) the drivers wouldnt slow down so an ambulance could get to the scene. I don't believe this is true

 

Ed was an American racing driver, mainly competing in the National Championship. He died in a crash at the Milwaukee Mile. n the 1955 Indianapolis 500, he stopped his car in a futile attempt to help Bill Vukovich when Vukovich's car crashed and burned during the race. He is the only driver in Indy 500 history to stop a non-damaged car to help another driver. He received a sportsmanship award for his efforts, as well as the wrath of the car owner. In the 1958 Indianapolis 500, Dick Rathmann and Elisian started the race on the front row, with Jimmy Reece on the outside of the front row. Elisian spun in turn 3 of the first lap, and collected Rathmann, sending them both into the wall, and starting a 15-car pileup. According to AJ Foyt, Pat O'Connor's car hit Reece's car, sailed fifty feet in the air, landed upside down, and burst into flames. Although medical officials said that O'Connor was probably killed instantly from a fractured skull, he was incinerated in the accident, in full view of fans and drivers. Widely blamed for the accident, Elisian was suspended by USAC for the accident (reinstated a few days later), and was shunned by the racing community. Rumors spread that Elisian tried to lead the first lap in order to pay gambling debts owed to a syndicate. In June, 1958, Elisian was involved in a multi-car sprint car crash at New Bremen Speedway in Saint Marys, Ohio, which claimed the life of Jim Davis. While absolved of blame in the incident, Elisian's unpopularity with drivers deepened. In August 1959, Elisian entered the USAC Indy car 200 mile race at the "Milwaukee Mile," known in those days as Wisconsin State Fair Park. Driving a metallic green Watson-style roadster owned by Ernie Ruiz, he crashed on lap 29 when he spun in oil from AJ Foyt's engine. The car hit the wall, rupturing the fuel cell, and rolled over. Some sixty gallons of fuel caught fire, and took over 9 minutes to extinguish. Allegedly, the other drivers failed to slow down in order to prevent fire fighters' effort to extinguish the flames, but the red flag was not displayed until the fire was well underway. Elisian burned to death in the flames.

 

Ed Elisian was a scapegoat for a lot of things that happened back then. The only thing Elisian did that day was be in front of Sweikert. Everything I`ve read says that Sweikert could not stand Elisian,in a rivalry that went back to their T roadster days in Cal.

I thought it was Sweikert who called Elisian Drool,but I could be wrong about that.

I`m pretty sure AJ Watson has a much higher Opinion about Elisian than most writers,etc.






Also as we know, Scalzo is a colorful author,who doesn`t always let the truth get in the way of a good story.
One nutball theory I read said Elisian caused the 58 wreck because he made a huge bet that he would lead the first lap.
I believe there were two drivers Elisian and Dick Rathmann who share the blame,not just Elisian,for what transpired. Neither one was likely to lift first.