O/T Are Jack Haghman or Lujie Lesovsky still Alive?

Hey,

Can anyone advise, are either of these car builder/fabricators still
with us?

Thanx,

S****ey Devils C.C.

 

Damn!!! Someone else on here know who Lujie was!!! How bout Kuzma? Myron Stevens? I will ask someone who would know tomorrow but I am pretty sure Lujie is no longer with us.

 

Roy,
Lujie is gone as are most of the killer fabricators of his era, glad that Watson is still around

Roo

 

Are you asking about Jack Hagemann, an aluminum fabricator from the Bay Area? If so I can help. John

 

Lujie is gone. He was a neat guy.

Met him while he doing some work at Bill Stroppe's Shop in Long Beach, CA.

While I was there, he removed a dent from a motorcycle fuel tank by only metal working from the outside . Needless to say I asked questions and stored some of that education for use another day .

 

Hey,
Yeah, I beleve that's the same Jack, sorry to have butchered his good name. Killer race car fabricator. A majot talent in metal.
I didn't know that Lujie worked for Stroppe, wow!

S****ey Devils C.C.

 

Can't say Lujie was working for Stroppe, but he was working in the shop. I think he was free lancing at the time. This was in the 80's. I was doing some tire testing with Ford and they always used Stroppe's place to work outa'. Always something cool being done there. AND ..... there was the shop dog, named "Freeway".

 

Here are some pix of a Luije car from Indy in the early 60's. It was originally driven by Elmer George (Tony's dad) and later by Mel Kenyon and in fact is the car that Kenyon crashed at Langhorne when he got badly burned. We restored it to its original form with the Ferrari GP style nose. It had Watson panels on it when Kenyon drove and when it came to the shop is was just as it had been pulled of the track at Langhorne.
The car was part of the California Roadsters display at the Petersen a few years ago. The shot of it at Indy was from a pre race parade prior to (I think) the 1992 event. The driver is the late Duke Nalon.

Roo

 

Hey,

Wow, great photos, and look at that great metalwork!
Lujie was one of the greats!

S****ey Devils C.c.

 

Tell us about the Midget too

 

Roy,
we did the midget after the roadster, also for Tom Mittler. The car was purchased as a complete package but we could not trace its history. Judging by the long notch in the right side of the hood it may have at one time had a Falcon motor but when it came to the shop it was Offy powered. The car was in average condition with ****py bodywork and the typically sagging Kurtis frame. We blew it apart the day that it arrived and straightened the frame first. Then the hood was too short to reach the nose so I lengthend it, knocked out a bunch of bondo and took out all the dings. Johnny Pawl(sp?) supplied a new front axle and radius rods as well as a nerf bar package and we rebuilt everything else ch***is wise. I put Mittler's initial in the front nerf because it seemed like the right thing to do. Jerry Weeks did the seat and oil tank. We replicated the original doubled side panels and belly pans and then made everything shiny.
Butch and Sonny brought Louis by one day (I think that it was the last time he came back for the 500) and he liked it. With no idea of the history of the car we simply painted it to match Tom's roadster but when Johnny P saw it he asked if we had found Elmer's old midget. He said that his memory was fading but thought that Elmer had a car that looked similar.
It was a fun project and it came out looking great,

Roo

 

Both cars are absolute "Killers". Quality looks superb.

 

Group:
Jack Hagemann Jr. Is still working, currently on the recreation of Tom Ivo's Barnstormer dragster. Ron Johnson is funding the project . Find info at the bottom of home page on cacklecars.com.
Dwrfab Don Ross

 

Speaking of Lujie Lesovsky, here's a car I've had some experience with. I had the pleasure of warming it up at a local bullring in the early 70's. It was built by Lujie in '61(?) at the Speedway garages for Elmer George. Foyt owned it later on (it was called the Traco Chevy) then it went to the Twin Cities and was the Wagner Plumbing car driven by Jerry "Scratch" Daniels and Jerry Richert. After a couple more owners it ended up in retired a barn in Milltown, WI. I made a couple of attempts to buy it to restore but the owner was reluctant to sell it at the time.

Later on it was sold to a fella named Schneider in the Twin Cities. Here's where I lost track of it and the rumors start. Schneider was supposed to have shipped it to California for Lujie to restore. That was several years before Lujie p***ed away. I don't know if the restoration was ever completed or the whereabouts of it today.

 

Here's another view of the Lesovsky-built Traco Chevy.

 

just found this posting, Lesovsky is a distance Uncle of mine(my mother is a Lesovsky) glad I found this, thanks for posting

 

Thanks for posting the pics, I must be a little weird but the guys who built the cars were more interesting than the guys who drove them. There is a video from 1980 or so of Myron Stevens building a track nose, a torch, a hammer, a dolly and some aluminum. I've got a copy on vhs somewhere around here, need to put it to dvd.

 

Hey oldgoaly,

I'd be interested in buying a copy of that dvd.

Thanx

 

+1

Ed