History Putting a Face with a Name: Cars and Drivers in the 1950s

Bill Quirk and Bob Powell: Whiz Kids with Fibergl***
​

I stumbled on this delightful photo of a young North Hollywood teenager at the wheel of his home-built dragster on Calisphere. My grandkids would probably use words like sick, rad, dope, or epic to describe the photo. There’s a generation gap in the language we use. Calisphere is an online gateway to over 2 million digitized items, including photographs, from various repositories in California. During my professional career as a historian, I used it numerous times to illustrate scholarly history articles that I wrote. Now that I’m no longer a working schmuck in the history business, I mostly write stuff that I’ve been p***ionate about my whole life—like drag racing history.

Bill Quirk is the North Hollywood teenager who helped build the Luggers Car Club dragster. That short-lived car club was established in 1954 in North Hollywood, but only lasted about a year before dissolving. The photo of Quirk behind the wheel of the club’s dragster appeared in the August 19, 1954, issue of the Valley Times. That issue published three other photos of Quirk.


Dennis Farlow was the Luggers club’s president. As their spokesman, he attended the first meeting of the North Hollywood Youth Coordinating Council. He was the sole representative of a car club at that meeting. “There are a lot of hot rod clubs in San Fernando Valley and no place to drag,” Dennis said at the meeting. “We need a drag strip.” Nobody seemed to know what he was talking about, and nobody seconded his motion.

The time wasn’t right, but the idea that he voiced took root a few months later when other clubs began voicing the same thought. Burbank, San Fernando, and Glendale established their own timing ***ociations with the express purpose to push for a drag strip in San Fernando Valley. In early 1955, the Sunland-Tujunga Timing ***ociation was organized. An umbrella organization called the Valley Timing Federation was established to unite all these independent timing ***ociations and the estimated 3,000 hot rodders in San Fernando Valley. They were getting positive press in the newspapers to try to change the public perception of hot rodders as juvenile delinquents.


Bill Quirk, a clean cut fifteen-year-old high school boy, attended North Hollywood High School in the morning and worked part-time in the afternoons for Victress Manufacturing, learning the art of building fibergl*** sports cars. This grainy newspaper photo appeared in Valley Times (9/10/53), showing him smoothing a sports car body with a rasp.


This photo was one of the four taken of Bill Quirk in the Valley Times (8/19/54) feature article about hot rodders in San Fernando Valley. The caption stated that Quirk (in driver’s seat) operated the pressure pump while Bob Powell, also of the Luggers, listened for sound coming through the tube.


Powell began racing a GMC Victress at Pomona in 1953-54. He collected several trophies for cl*** wins. On November 21, 1954, he set a cl*** record in A/SP in his GMC Victress Special with a speed of 101.71 mph. This photo of Powell’s Victress appeared in a 1954 Pebble Beach racing program.


Quirk was described in the Valley Times article as just a normal, well-adjusted, “average Valley boy.” Like other hot rodders, he took his date to Bob’s Big Boy hamburger joint in Burbank in his hot rod roadster.


But Quirk was more than an average high school kid. This enterprising lad began working part-time for Victress sports car manufacturing company before he even had a driver’s license. In this photo that appeared in the Valley Times article, Quirk adjusts the carburetor on a $600 fibergl*** sports car.


In fact, Quirk became so adept at the trade that, after a few years, he was made foreman of the company. With all the enthusiasm of youth, his dedication and hard work were rewarded. This photo shows Doc Boyce-Smith, the owner/president of Victress, and Quirk (right) demonstrating the process of fibergl*** layup at the Victress exhibit at the 1953 Petersen Motorama car show.

Powell also became a part-time employee of Victress when he was 23 years old. Quirk and Powell became production managers at Victress in 1954. Pretty heady accomplishments for a couple of enterprising young men.


Quirk and Powell brought their love of drag racing with them to Victress. This July 1955 issue of Rod & Custom featured a 2-page article about the duo en***led “***embly Line Dragsters.”


Powell (left) and Quirk (right) were still young men, ages twenty-five and seventeen respectively. They convinced Victress that there was a market for an affordable m***-produced, all-purpose fibergl*** dragster body.


Victress was enjoying good success in building m***-produced sports cars, but they gave the boys’ idea some thought. Drag racing was enjoying increasing popularity, especially the dragster cl***. Why not build a lightweight fibergl*** dragster? So, they did. Their universal dragster body would fit nearly any ch***is, house nearly any front-mounted engine, and provide for nearly any wheelbase. The resulting 42-pound dragster body could be bought for $250.


It became the first fibergl*** bodied dragster offered for sale to the public in the world. It boggles the mind that two young men, one a mere teenager, were behind the whole endeavor. But drag racing was, except for a few exceptions, a young man’s sport. But Quirk was barely wet behind the ears, had barely started shaving, so to speak. And Powell was a relatively young man himself.


The Victress company exhibited the fibergl*** dragster at Robert Petersen’s 10-day Motorama national show in October. The boys designed and built the full-size mock-up which was displayed at the show. Although Victress put the car into production, the mock-up was built by the young men on their own time (over 1000 hours mostly spent measuring countless dragsters) and at their own cost.


There was no opening for an engine in the mock-up, but a hatch could easily be cut to fit. The mock-up had a 115-inch wheelbase with frame rails 26 inches apart. The 26-inch frame width was the maximum width, but the wheelbase could be longer or shorter (between 100-118 inches) simply by cutting axle, spring, and radius rod holes where desired.

This color photo shows the principal people involved with the dragster at Victress. From left standing behind the fibergl*** mock-up: John Corwin, Doc Boyce-Smith, Bob Powell, and Bill Quirk (with helmet and red shirt). As of this date, no surviving examples of the Victress dragster have been found.


In the March 1956 issue, Car Craft published a special buyer’s guide to fibergl*** kit sports car bodies.


Car Craft also published a short special feature on the Victress fibergl*** production dragster that had been shown at the company’s exhibit at the ’55 Petersen Motorama. In this CC photo, we can see that the dragster now had everything in place to race. It had an engine, roll bar, slicks, radius rods, tie rod, drag link, and push bar. The fibergl*** dragster body was available for purchase from Victress through 1961.


Before all the hoopla about the fibergl*** dragster even became publicly known, Bob Powell was killed at Willow Springs Raceway on February 12, 1955. He was driving his 500cc Cooper during a practice session when he skidded on a turn, went off course, and overturned three times. He died while being transported to a hospital. This article in the Los Angeles Times (2/13/55) reported the fatal accident. It was a tragic end for the young man.

Bill Quirk and the employees at Victress were all greatly saddened by his death. “I took a ride with Bob, out in front of Victress and it was one of the wildest rides I ever had,” Quirk said. “Bob was a great guy and his funeral was the first one I ever attended. A sad day and great loss.” Robert Alden “Bob” Powell was only 25 years old when he died. The Rod & Custom article that showed him in a photo with Quirk and their dragster hit newsstands a couple of months after he had died.


Bill Quirk worked for Victress until 1961. In that year, Victress was sold to Les and Joan Dawes of La Dawri Coachcraft. This photo taken in 2015, shows Bill Quirk (left) and Merrill Powell (Victress co-owner) in Nevada City, California. Quirk has lived in Nevada City, an historic old mining town on the western slope of the Sierras, for many years. As of this writing (2025), William Henry “Bill” Quirk is still alive.

 

makes me want to go visit him!

 

Joe and Jerry Mahoney built this fibergl***-bodied gas dragster that took cl*** wins at various California drag strips in the latter half of the 1956 season. At first glance, I thought this might be a Victress dragster fibergl*** body. I'm still not entirely sure that it isn't. The Victress dragster bodies were available for purchase at the time this dragster was built. The body shape of the dragster behind the front tire just screams Victress dragster to me.


Photographs of the dragster graced the pages of Drag News three different times. I unfortunately don't have hard copies of the issues, so the photos that I do have all come from the digitized files of Drag News sold by Don Ewald on his We Did It for Love website. The digitized photos are poor at best. The above photo of the Mahoney Brothers dragster appeared in the September 7, 1956 issue. The photo was taken at a 3-day Drag Racers, Inc. race at Lions Drag Strip held on September 1-3. The brothers' dragster was described as "immaculate" in the write-up of the event. The overhead view of the camera offers a look at what the front of the dragster looked like. With this overhead angle, I'm still thinking that the dragster body could be a Victress fibergl*** body.

A week later, the brothers won the A Open Gas cl*** at the 2-day Central California State Championships at Madera on September 8-9. They turned 128.57 mph in the win. On October 21, they set a strip record in the Open Gas cl*** at Cotati with 127.07 mph.


The second photo of the dragster was taken at the Grand National Challenge Drags at Bakersfield held on November 3-4. It appeared in the November 16, 1956, issue of Drag News. They beat the Reinhardt Brothers to win the B/D cl*** with a speed of 132.35 mph. The photo is not helpful in trying to determine if the fibergl*** body was a Victress.


The last photo taken of the dragster appeared in the November 31, 1956, issue of Drag News. The photo was taken at Vacaville on November 25. They set top time with a speed of 131.60 mph. This front-on view of the dragster body shows the nose. Take a close look at the shape of the darkened cavity of the nose.


This is a photo of the Victress dragster that appeared in the March 1956 issue of Car Craft. Look carefully at the nose of the fibergl*** body. Unfortunately there is not a full front-on view of the Victress to make a definitive comparison between the Mahoney dragster and the Victress. What do you think? Did the Mahoney brothers use a Victress fibergl*** body? I'm not sure. For me, the jury is still out. At this point I'm thinking that the brothers might have made their own body. A few other racers in the mid-1950s were making their own fibergl*** dragster bodies. Howard Stamp did.


This story ends badly. On December 16, 1956, Joe Mahoney was killed at a race at Cotati in his fibergl*** bodied dragster. He was only 26 years old.

 

never heard cotati called the 'santa rosa ' strip...

 

The city of Santa Rosa sponsored the drag races on the runway of the Cotati Naval Outer Landing Field. The first race was held on October 7, 1956, conducted by the Redwood Empire Timing ***ociation. That was an organization comprised of 38 area car clubs. As you can see by this drag race newspaper ad, the strip was called Santa Rosa Drag Strip in the beginning. This was for a race on December 2, 1956.


The strip continued to be called Santa Rosa Drag Strip in 1957. This newspaper ad was for a race on January 27, 1957. The drag strip didn't operate for part of 1957 and all of 1958.


The strip reopened for racing in 1959 as Cotati Drag Strip. So, it was called Cotati Drag Strip from 1959 until the strip stopped operating in 1972. The site of the former strip began to be developed into a large mobile home park and then into a large commercial retail development. All traces of the former airfield/drag strip were gone by 1993. You can see the outline of the former airfield/drag strip on an aerial view of the site as it appears today on my Drag Strip List website on the Santa Rosa/Cotati entry on the California page. I have pinpointed the exact location of all the old drag strips in California using old aerial photos and USGS topo maps.

 

Tom Indovina, the Throttle Merchants,
and the Construction of San Fernando Raceway
​

The “truth is in the details” has been my mantra in my 40-plus years working professionally in the history field. In this story, I’m going to start with a small, almost inconsequential, tidbit and proceed to a larger, more important facet of drag racing history.

I found this delightful photo of a bare-bones 1956 club-built dragster in Calisphere, the online source that is a gateway to over 100,000 historical photos preserved in historical archives and museums in California. Calisphere was an important resource for me back when I was in the history business, writing and publishing scholarly articles and giving papers at historical conferences. I’m mining it now to look for photographs that I could use to tell stories about drag racing’s past.

This photo was published in the Valley Times, a North Hollywood newspaper, on August 2, 1956. The young man with the helmet was Tom Indovina, an 18-year-old driver of the Throttle Merchants Olds-engined club dragster. Helping push the dragster was Orlanda Munyon, Miss Panorama City. Herb Lightfoot, president of the Panorama City Kiwanis Club was in the driver’s seat. The photo was staged to publicize the kick-off ceremonies for ticket sales for Drag Strip Day that was to be held at San Fernando Raceway on August 26, 1956. The proceeds of that event were going to go to the Kiwanis Club underprivileged children project.


The Throttle Merchants car club had its organizational roots with a group of about four men in the early 1950s in the Tarzana/Encino area. These were guys like Leon Herman, who raced his roadster at Saugus. The garage at Frank Huszar’s ranch was also a magnet for hot rodders who came there to watch and learn how to build race cars from the “Old Man.” From that circle of guys, the Throttle Merchants car club was born.

I have a lifetime membership in Don Ewald’s fabulous We Did It for Love website. That gives me access to over 19,000 drag racing photos. I found this photo on the WDIFL website. Everyone in the photo were members of the Throttle Merchants. The 1954 photo was contributed by George Bolthoff. “This is a picture of my first dragster,” Bolthoff wrote on the photo’s caption. “The guy standing in the middle is Frank ‘The Old Man’ Huszar of later Race Car Specialties fame. That’s me [George Bolthoff] standing on the right (I don’t remember ever being that young!!). Standing on the left is Fred Chavez and Earl Gerrard is in the driver’s seat. We were all members of the Throttle Merchants, a car club in the San Fernando Valley. I built the car from parts taken from Fred’s junk yard (you thought this was a fuller car?) and Frank supplied the engine. This picture was taken in 1954 at Saugus. Earl is holding the check ($18.75) for winning TE. The car was run only a few times, then returned to the junk yard.”


In November 1954, Earl Gerrard, a member of the Throttle Merchants, was elected president of the Central Valley Timing ***ociation. That was one of the timing ***ociations organized at this time to fulfill a prerequisite by the mayor of Los Angeles to get government support behind the building of a drag strip. Three other local timing ***ociations, in addition to the CVTA, became part of the overarching Valley Timing Federation.


Drag strips don't just magically appear to delight the fancy of hot rodders. It takes money and men to build and run them. The San Fernando Airport Development Company had the land and the money to build the drag strip. This photo was published in the May 27, 1955, issue of the Valley Times. The drag strip benefactors and financiers in the photo are from left: William Hannon, Fritz Burns, and Charles Dunn. These men put up the money, about $70,000, to build the strip. As owners, they would also pay all the operating costs and reap the benefits if it was profitable. Burns, a realtor and developer, was the chief officer and major stockholder of the firm. Hannon was the manager of the Airport Development Company. Dunn, a realtor, was a co-owner of the Airport Development Company. In the photo, they are looking over the plans at the site of the strip. Behind them, the grading had started for the strip.


In 1955, Frank Huszar was the president of the Throttle Merchants. Huszar had been instrumental in the drive to set up the Valley Timing Federation and played an active role in getting a drag strip built in San Fernando. In July, he was chosen to be the manager of the new San Fernando Raceway drag strip. Soft-spoken and widely respected, he was the unanimous choice of the Valley Timing ***ociation’s board of representatives to be the strip’s manager.


This photo appeared in the Van Nuys News a week before the strip was to have a dress rehearsal opening. Frank Huszar (left) led Don Brown (center) and Bob Brenner (right) on a tour of the strip’s grounds to show them its progress. Final grading and paving were still waiting to be done, so Frank Huszar’s ***urance that the strip would be ready for the dress rehearsal was met by doubtful amazement by the two men. Brown was the vice-president and Brenner was the president of the Valley Timing Federation.


The dress rehearsal was held according to plan on August 7, 1955. One week later, the grand opening of the strip was held on August 14. The track had been fenced and they had a paved pit area. They drew 2,000 spectators to the grand opener. In this grainy aerial newspaper photo, I have added identifying place labels. The photo was taken of the strip during an event held in its first month of operation. The photo was published in the North Hollywood Valley Times (8/25/55).


This color photo looks to have been taken in the early years of the strip’s operation, possibly even in its very first year. When the strip first opened, it had 3,200 feet of paved straightway with an additional shutdown area that was graded and oiled. The shutoff area made a gentle turn and ran under a bridge that Foothill Boulevard ran over. You can see that bridge in the distance in the photo. That was a dangerous place for speeding cars as they tried to slow down and a few racers lost their lives at that pinch point. The two race cars seen in the photo are entering the turn at the end of the paved return road that led into the paved pit area, out of the photo to the right. The small grandstand is also out of the photo to the right. The front row of spectator parking allowed people to sit in their cars and watch the races. You can see a few houses in the distance to the west of the strip. Persistent complaints about the noise from the strip caused strip operators to shorten the hours of compe***ion.


Dave Wallace, Jr., the longtime writer with Hot Rod, has been interested in my drag racing history websites. About five years ago, he sent me a bunch of photos that he took of the remnant of what once was San Fernando Raceway. I uploaded them to the Memories (California) page on my Drag Strip List website. He had been doing some research on the drag strip for a story he was writing about the closing of the strip. In his estimation, the closing of the strip had little or nothing to do with the persistent noise complaints. "The sudden closure had nothing to do with noise, rather, builders of nearby I-210 made a deal with owners Fritz Burns and Bill Hannon to dump excavated soil onto the sloping site and level it--instantly doubling the property value."

The above aerial view shows where San Fernando Raceway used to be on today’s landscape. It is one of the old strips whose location I have pinpointed using old aerial photos and USGS topo maps. It is taken from the San Fernando Raceway entry on the California page of my Drag Strip List website. I’m working my way through all the states in pinpointing the location of old strips. As of this date (2025), I’ve completed that research for the old, long-gone drag strips in over half of the states.


I started this story with a photo and story about Tom Indovina, the teenager who brought the Throttle Merchants’ fuel dragster for a publicity shoot to kick off ticket sales for the Kiwanis Club’s charity race to benefit underprivileged children. Amazingly, Indovina took top eliminator at that race held on August 26, 1956. In the top eliminator finals, he was the odds-on underdog against Tom Augar’s big Vincent fuel bike. But halfway down the track, Augar ran out of fuel and Indovina took the win with a speed of 120.32 mph.

This photo appeared in the August 27 issue of the Valley Times. The young lad from Encino accepts the trophy for top eliminator. Bob Aiton (left), district governor of Kiwanis presents the award with help of Orlanda Munyon, Miss Panorama City. Herb Lightfoot (second from left) presents a trophy to Jerry Firestone (wearing dark sport shirt), the winner of Panorama City Kiwanis interclub compe***ion. Miss Munyon is being a good sport about it all. The body-less dragster must not have been very comfortable to sit on.


Tom Indovina continued drag racing and participating in Throttle Merchant activities for at least another year. He had an Olds-engined fuel roadster that he raced at San Fernando. In that car, he got the second fastest time of the meet and won his cl*** with 131.19 mph on February 27, 1957, at San Fernando.

But as Tom grew older, he started thinking about what he wanted to do in life. His father was an attorney and Tom decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. He went to college, then to law school.

While he was still in school, he took up drag boat racing. “I’d been racing drag boats since 1964 and was a member of National Drag Boat ***ociation since ’67,” said Tom. While in the process of finishing law school in 1969, he raced a Sanger-built boat that was powered by a 427-inch Chevy engine. The boat was fittingly named “Barrister” and competed in the 85-90 mph cl***.


After finishing law school and p***ing the California Bar, he joined his father’s law office. He still raced drag boats and, in 1971, the NDBA asked him to act as their legal advisor. “Thereafter I became very involved with the operations of the corporation. I ran for the board of directors and was elected. And when the chairmanship was vacated, I was elected to that.” That was in 1974. He was made chairman of the board of directors of the NDBA. He was 35 years old.

He continued racing drag boats while serving in an administrative role with the NDBA. Only the boats were much faster than his old Sanger. “I started with an 80-mile-per-hour boat. And I’ve driven faster than 180 mph now,” said Tom in 1974. The above photo shows Tom driving Del Masino’s “Playmate” blown gas hydro.


In 1976, he clocked 157.35 mph on February 22 at Turlock in Masino’s “Playmate” drag boat. As late as 1985, he served as legal counsel for NDBA. He died in 2003 at age 65.

 

Dennis Stiles, His Sparkling Roadster,
and the Cops Who Helped Start the Pomona Drag Strip​

I’m still delving into the m***ive collection of great photos in Calisphere for drag racing photos that I can use in stories about early-day drag racers for this thread. I found this photo on Calisphere.

My wife, who is blind, gets a kick out of the fact that the H.A.M.B. website is comprised of “threads.” She can’t read or see these threads (or much of anything) anymore, but she likes me to read the stories (she calls them “sewing threads”) that I have been writing, to her. She ***erts that I could write an interesting story about almost anybody who ever raced a car on a drag strip. Well, I doubt that. But it’s nice to hear that my stories give her pleasure. We’ve been married for 56 years. She used to see well enough that she drove (even raced the family car on a drag strip) and was the track photographer for a couple of years when I was working as tech man at Bonneville Raceway drag strip in Salt Lake City in the 1970s-80s. But sadly, her world is now dark.



This ’70 Buick Skylark was the car that she hot rodded back in the day when she could still see. We were a hot-rodding family. In the garage you can see our tricked-out ’95 Camaro Z28 and under the car cover is our ’67 Malibu that she and I restored together. Parked behind them is the yellow 2002 Corvette Z06 owned by our son, Will. We really needed a four-car garage.


As I have written before, I get easily sidetracked. It doesn’t take much. Old geezers are prone to that.

This is the photo of Dennis Stiles’s roadster that was published in the North Hollywood Valley Times newspaper on September 14, 1954. The caption under the photo was ***led “Engine Sparkles.” In the actual photo that I found in Calisphere, the whole car sparkles. The actual photo is so much better than the photo that I found in the newspaper, even though I did everything I could to enhance it digitally. This is why I’m still combing Calisphere for photos and story ideas. The quality of a photographer’s actual photo is so much better than a newspaper photo, especially a 1950s newspaper photo. There is no comparison.

The photo was taken at Pomona Drag Strip. The Pomona police officer talking with Stiles is Ron Root.


Ron Root was a hot rodder. This photo, published in the September 15, 1954, issue of the Valley Times, shows him at the wheel of his hot rod when he was off duty. Conversing with him are fellow Pomona police officers George Walters and Clark Peters.


The Pomona Police Department gave its full support to the establishment of the Pomona Drag Strip in 1951-52. Chief a**** the supporters was officer Eldo J. “Bud” ****s. The story of ****s and the role he took in helping start the Pomona Drag Strip is beautifully written in an article in Hemmings.com by David Traver Adolphus. Briefly told, ****s was hired by the Pomona Police Department in 1949. Police chief Ralph Parker appointed ****s to find some way to curb the street racing that was causing so many fatalities. In 1951, ****s persuaded the Pomona Choppers car club to listen to his offer. The police department would loan the Choppers money to establish a paved drag strip on the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds parking lot so that they could safely race. It sounded like a great deal. The car club went for it.

****s left the police department in 1954 to work full time for NHRA as their new executive manager. His role with the NHRA was like the work he had done as a police officer—to promote and develop organized drag racing. In this photo, taken December 11, 1954, ****s (far right) is seen handing a pe***ion to some city officials in Los Angeles City Hall. The pe***ion advocated that drag strips be established in Los Angeles. The seated official holding the pe***ion is Councilman Everett Burkhalter. Seated next to him is Sally Smalley, the public relations chairperson of the Co-ordinating Council Federation. Standing from left are City Councilmen Gordon Hahn, Ernest Debs, and Don A. Allen. They were the first ones to sign the pe***ion for ****s.


The Choppers established the Pomona Valley Timing ***ociation, and with help from the Pomona Police Department and the Lions Club, began holding races at that historic venue—Pomona Drag Strip. That is where I saw my first drag race—a wet-behind-the-ears teenager—in 1959.


A thousand hot rodders gathered at a rally in Burbank on October 19, 1954, to voice their support for building a drag strip in San Fernando Valley. One of the highlights of the rally was the appearance of Wally Parks, president of the NHRA. He presented a plaque to Pomona’s police chief, Ralph E. Parker (left) for his “outstanding contribution to the recognition and advancement of organized hot rod activities.” Parker, who spoke at the rally, was instrumental in the establishment of the Pomona Drag Strip. Parker credited Pomona Drag Strip with making streets safer in Pomona Valley. His remarks brought cheers from the hot rodders.

I’m aware that these stories and photos of guys in suits and ties don’t make the most stimulating reading on a website focused on hot rods and drag racing. But the fact is, were it not for the guys in suits and ties who paid out the money and the officials who backed the building of the drag strips, there would be no Pomona Drag Strip. There would be no San Fernando Raceway, Lions Drag Strip, Santa Ana, Fontana, or any other of our storied old drag racing strips. Their part in the history of drag racing doesn’t come with all the pizzazz and glitz that accompanies drag racers and their cars, but they need to be given their due.


Dennis Stiles, the hot rodder whose roadster I showed when I started this story, was born in 1934. He graduated from a high school in Alhambra in 1952. This is his senior high yearbook photo.


Before joining the Army in 1958, he won cl*** trophies with his roadster at Pomona in 1954 and 1955. He ran in the B/R cl*** with his Ford roadster. He set a strip record in the B/R cl*** at Pomona on January 23, 1955, with a speed of 97.40 mph. He was living in Monterrey Park at the time. In the 1970s, he was working for Southern California Edison and living in Santa Barbara. Presently he lives in Tucson, Arizona. I would imagine he would be very surprised to read this story.

 

well,i was just like your bride for a few minutes- i couldn't read it for the tears in my eyes--as always--WONDERFUL stories!!

 

Belmont “Beach Ball” SanChez:
A Guy Who “Lives, Eats, and Sleeps Hot Rods”
—and Had the Loot to Build Them​

In 1953, Belmont Joseph SanChez, Jr., brought a 1931 Austin-Bantam to the Bonneville Salt Flats for Speed Week. It was top-notch in every respect, engineered to run fast and safe. It appeared briefly at the start of a newsreel that was shown in movie theaters across the country. In its brief appearance in the newsreel, young Belmont, only 20 years old, is seen with half a dozen crew members, sporting a Ramar of the Jungle helmet. I have circled him in this still frame from the newsreel but click on the link to view the newsreel clip. It’s short and, possibly, the first image that I found of SanChez’s Bantam salt flats hot rod.


“Ramar of the Jungle” was a TV series that I used to watch circa 1952-54. Ramar was a doctor, working in the jungles of Africa and India. He wore a nifty helmet, which kids like me got so that we could look cool like Ramar. Young kids of all ages are impressionable. For kids in the 1950s, TV shows took us into another world—a world beyond our neighborhoods. I freely admit that I also got a Daniel Boone ****skin fur hat (with a snap-on tail) and Mouseketeer hat (it came with membership in the Mickey Mouse Club).


I see at least three guys in this photo of the Speed Week staging lanes at Bonneville in 1953 who are wearing jungle helmets. They were somewhat practical for shading your head. Young Belmont wore one, as did at least two of his crewmen.


In the many years that I went to Speed Week, I wore a bit more practical headgear to shield my melon and neck from the sun and glare of the salt. I called it the Sheik of Araby look—handkerchief under hat and home-made cardboard inserts on the arms of my dark gl***es (made from Häagen-Dazs ice cream box card stock). How cool is that! But, once again, I’ve veered way off the topic.


In the March 1954 issue of Hot Rod, Belmont’s Bonneville Bantam coupe was featured in an article en***led “Cheesecake Ch***is.” The article, written by Bob Greene, described SanChez (pronounced Sanchey) as “short, round and jovial [who] lives, eats and sleeps hot rods, almost to the point of his undoing.” He could do that because his father was filthy rich.


His father, Belmont Joseph “Monty” SanChez, Sr., became a self-made millionaire by age 21. He owned car dealerships all over the country. He was a multi-millionaire many times over. Young Belmont was sent to private schools in the Hollywood area-- Black-Foxe Military Ins***ute and Harvard Military School.

While he was still in high school, his mother, Helen, divorced his father. She received a handsome settlement and alimony. She was a socialite of the first order, partying to beat the band and getting mentioned with regularity in newspaper society pages.


After high school, young Belmont went to Santa Monica City College. This is his portrait that appeared in the 1953 yearbook.

He started hot rodding and drag racing before he left college. At some point, he picked up the nickname “Beach Ball.” He was one of those people who never missed a meal. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think he probably liked his nickname. Hot rod guys back in the ‘50s were mostly blue-collar guys, working in service stations, car dealerships, speed shops, and in the trades. I’m guessing here, but I would bet that if some rich kid showed up at the dry lakes and drag strips with some fancy car, he wouldn’t be very well accepted. But with a self-deprecating nickname like “Beach Ball,” that might go a long way toward gaining a measure of inclusion in the racing fraternity. One time a Drag News reporter remarked that it was obvious that Beach Ball had some serious coin in building one of his race cars. “Hell,” said Beach Ball, “that isn’t my fault.” He didn’t want to be known as a rich kid. He wanted to be one of the guys. But he used his wealth to build and run a couple of fine race cars.


This photo in the 1953 Hot Rod issue shows how, even though just 20 years old, Beach Ball was beginning to fill out his short frame. It also shows that he was more of an overseer of a car-building project than a hands-on guy. Chuck Calvin is showing him the multiple engine mount feature that he built on the frame. It allowed the car to run any one of four different engines—Chrysler, Ford, Studebaker, or Oldsmobile—without making any modifications in quick-change fashion. So, if Beach Ball wanted to change out a Studebaker motor for a Chrysler, he could do it easily and fast. The center crossmember, a quarter-inch thick aluminum plate, was drilled to take each bell housing of the four different engines. Then, he would fit an adapter ring onto the transmission main drive pilot shaft before bolting the rear of the engine to the plate. Ingenious. Heck, maybe even Beach Ball could do it. Eric Rickman took all the photos for the article.


This photo shows the beautifully crafted framework done by Chuck Calvin. The article sub***le said it was “a shame to put a body” on the car. I’m also guessing that the article ***le, “Cheesecake Ch***is,” was a 1950s way of saying that the frame was ***y. Words like “***y” and “pregnant” were just not used at that time in polite company. Hard to believe, but the 1950s were “Leave It to Beaver” times.


Beach Ball’s partner, Chuck Porter, did the body work on the Cl*** D coupe. They picked up the ’31 Bantam body for $20. Then Porter stretched and chopped it, giving the front of the body a drooped snout look. Construction took eighteen months at an estimated cost of $5500. Big money back then. When Racer Brown drove it on the salt for the first time, they ran a 371-inch Olds motor in it on alcohol. Timm’s Precision Engines of Pasadena built the motor.


The results of Speed Week printed in the November 1953 issue of Hop Up showed that the Bantam came in a weak second to Don Bishop in the D Compe***ion Coupe cl*** with 152 mph. They returned home and started tinkering.


They took it to Santa Ana and Pomona for testing, turning a best of 130 mph in the quarter. This photo shows the car at Pomona when it was Chrysler powered and painted purple and yellow. A similar color scheme appeared on the car when it was exhibited at Robert Peterson’s Motorama at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in October 1953. A photo of the car (minus the racing number) at the Motorama was published in the February 1954 issue of Car Craft (p. 20).


In 1954, J. R. Eyerman, a Life magazine photographer, visited the Bonneville Salt Flats during Speed Week and took dozens of Kodachrome photos of the cars. One of the photos that he took was of this 1953 Studebaker Commander. I have searched high and low to see if Beach Ball took his Bantam to Speed Week in 1954 without success.


I did find this photo of the Bantam on the salt, but it didn’t have any accompanying metadata, like date taken, etc. Was this taken during the 1954 Speed Trials? Or did he possibly take two cars to Speed Week—one to race (the Stude) and the other to show to other racers for possible sale? Notice that there isn’t a spot of salt crust on the Bantam. Did he tow it there to interest racers in buying it? Was he just racing the ’53 Stude, the car that he plucked off his father’s car lot?


I know that by at least September 1955 or before, he had sold the Bantam to Art and Henry Koopman of Whittier. This is a photo of the car when it was owned by the Koopman brothers. They had a short learning curve when they first began racing the car with a Dodge engine in the B fuel compe***ion coupe cl***. But by the end of 1955, they were really humming. They set a new strip cl*** record at Lions on December 11 with a speed of 128.57 mph.

I know that Beach Ball was racing a ’53 Studebaker at drag strips at least as early as mid-April 1955. He set a strip record at Santa Ana on April 17, 1955, with a speed of 86.25 with a Studebaker in the C/S cl*** with an automatic. So many questions, and no definitive answer. Admittedly, I’m doing a lot of supposing and guessing here.

So, was the Studebaker that Eyerman photographed at the Bonneville Speed Trials a Stude entered by Beach Ball? Most people credit SanChez as being the person who influenced Bonneville racers to turn to the Studebaker for a Salt Flats race car. Of course, this didn’t happen for a few years, as SanChez inched his way up closer to 200 mph. But other racers began to take notice as he turned 166 in 1955, then 185 in 1956. Then his Stude turned the racing world on its head in 1958 when it became the first door slammer to top 200 mph. “This is the car that started the Studebaker revolution on the salt,” hot rod historian Dean Lowe wrote. Let’s look at the progression of that car on its way to achieving stock production body automobile history.


This is what the post coupe Stude looked like in 1955. A lot of drag racing history buffs make a big deal about the car sporting the number 400 during its various iterations. Not so. It started out as number 157, with an Ardun-Merc motor, sponsored by Lakewood Muffler. He ran it at Saugus and Russetta Dry Lake prior to taking it to Bonneville. At Saugus, Karl Malwald drove it to snag the Late Fendered Fuel track record on August 20, 1955. Beach Ball partnered with Clark Cagle and Carl LeMmon when he raced at Bonneville. They raced in two cl***es, driver Clark Cagle setting records in B Coupe with 152.935 and C Coupe with 155.458 mph.


There are a couple of things to take note of in this photo. You can’t miss the first, which is the backside of Beach Ball. No doubt, he got his nickname by 1955. The other thing to notice is the duct-taped fender headlight form that he employed to change from a compe***ion cl*** to a stock-body cl***. Pretty crafty.


Hot Rod, March 1956, featured the car in an article en***led “Slippery Stude.” One of the photos in the article showed Carl LeMmon sequestered in the driver’s seat in its far-back location.


Before leaving 1955, there is a post-script that I should mention as it is an important first in drag racing history. On November 13, 1955, San Fernando hosted drag racing’s first live national network TV broadcast. Although the ’53 Stude didn’t appear on the 4-minute-long live NBC broadcast, it was at the track that day. This program should not be confused with the later “Wide World of Sports” TV program. They are two totally different shows. Clark Cagle drove the Stude to a cl*** win in the Fendered Fuel Coupe cl*** with 115.90 mph.


The SanChez-Cagle-LeMmon partnership persisted through 1956-57. In addition to racing the Stude at Bonneville, they ran at Lions, El Mirage, Bakersfield, and Saugus. The only real change was they swapped out the Ardun-Merc in about mid-1956 for a Chrysler Hemi prepared by Cagle. At the Salt Flats speed trials in 1956, Cagle pushed the Stude to a D Fuel Coupe cl*** record of 185.18 mph. The 200-mph door for them was two years away, but they were getting close. The next year at Bonneville, they set a C Fuel Coupe cl*** record with 175.696 and turned 180.45 mph in qualifying in the D Fuel Coupe cl***. Beach Ball would make some changes for 1958 that would make all the difference. In short, he would make some personnel changes, infuse some new blood into his quest to crack the 200 mark. It was just too dang close. He could smell it, and he was itching to open that door.


This is the brain trust that Beach Ball put together to take his ’53 Stude into the record books in 1958 as the first production body door slammer to go over 200 mph. Beach Ball is all smiles on the right. That looks like a paunchy Jim Kamboor in the middle. They were supported and sponsored by Lou Senter’s Ansen Automotive Engineering firm.


This is an interesting photo of the record-breaking car. The rollbar is the same one that the car had in it in 1955. But Beach Ball went crazy with louvers—all over the trunk lid and behind the rear wheels.

Powered by a 448-inch Chrysler Hemi, they put a hefty load of nitro in the tank to qualify first in the D Coupe and Sedan cl*** with mind-blowing 210.40 mph. They not only knocked on the 200 mph door, but they also absolutely busted through it to become the first door slammer over that barrier. They followed that up with two runs on alcohol at 184.474 mph to ****** the cl*** record.


In 1959, Joe Locasto from Garden Grove, joined Kamboor and SanChez as their driver. He wasn’t Beach Ball’s only driver for different cars that he raced in the 1960s, but he was his main go-to driver. In ’59, Locasto drove the Stude to Speed Week cl*** records in B Compe***ion (217 mph) and B Coupe (204 mph). In 1960, when they added a front-mounted blower to the injected Chrysler Hemi, that advanced them one cl***. Locasto blasted by the old A Comp mark of 201 mph by a whopping 19 mph—turning 220 mph.


At some point after 1960, Neils Thompson joined SanChez and Pat Akins in the Slippery Stude car as a part-owner. Thompson built his own Studebaker car to race at Bonneville in 1965. People often mistakenly think that Thompson’s ’65-built Stude, which came up for auction in 2024, was the same car that the trio raced in the early 1960s. They were both yellow and looked similar, but according to land-speed engine builder Les Leggitt, that’s not the case. “Neil built his car in 1965,” Leggitt attested. Leggitt would know because he built an engine for Thompson to run at Bonneville in 1966 and was intimately familiar with the car’s past.


Cigar-smoking Pat Akins had his fingers in a lot of pies. When it ran at Bonneville in 1960, he was partners with Thompson and SanChez in the record-breaking ’53 Studebaker. In early 1960, Akins had bought a blown Chrysler A/FD from Chuck Gireth. This is a photo of that dragster back when Gireth campaigned it. Gireth is in the middle of the photo, wearing a white Isky T-shirt. The photo was taken at Riverside in May 1959.

After Akins bought the fueler, he hired Jack Chrisman to drive and got Howard Cams as a major sponsor. The car really started to turn some heads when it clocked 190.27 mph at Henderson Dragway in Nevada on April 10. This speed got them national record recognition and the number 4 position on the Drag News Mr. Eliminator Record List. In May, the Akins-Chrisman-Howard team began a month-long East Coast tour at Sanford, Maine on May 22. Their next stop was Roanoke, Virginia, where Chrisman set a new national A/FD record of 8.11 at 195.65 mph. On July 17, they lost their number 4 Mr. Eliminator position to Bob Haines in the California Equipment A/FD at Puyallup Raceway. This dropped them down to the number 6 position. Before September, Akins had gotten a new partner—Dave Duffy.


In the short space of seven days, Akins-Duffy built a new blown Chrysler fuel dragster that they debuted at Fontana on October 8, 1960. Lefty Mudersbach was hired to drive it in the beginning. On its second week out, Akins-Duffy snagged top eliminator at Colton. Despite being plagued by a faulty fuel pump drive, Mudersbach drove the dragster to a top fuel eliminator win at Fontana on October 22. Lucky Harris began driving the A/FD in November, taking top fuel eliminator at Pomona on November 13. The dragster also started showing its potential with a speed of 174.91 mph.


But after the Pomona race, Akins and Duffy got a new partner—Belmont “Beach Ball” SanChez. No pun intended, but from this point on, the ball really started rolling. With the infusion of coin from SanChez and sponsorship from Herbert Cams, the car started doing very well right off the bat. Running in B/FD, the Akins-Duffy-SanChez 392-inch ’57 Chrysler turned 175.43 mph with ETs of 8.73 and 8.76, back-to-back, at Henderson Dragway in Nevada, on November 20, 1960. Those times were better than Gary Cagle’s national ET record. Unfortunately, mechanical problems kept them from backing up the record at Pomona the following week. In mid-December, Joe Locasto took over the driving duties from Lucky Harris. In the photo, you can see that the major sponsor of the car was EELCO, a racing parts company. They began sponsoring the fueler in January 1961. This photo was taken at Fontana in 1961.


With Joe Locasto at the wheel, the Akins-Duffy-SanChez-EELCO Shift Fast Special ripped off a mind-blowing number at Kingdon on the 2-day race at Kingdon on March 19-20, 1961. In addition to Akins, Locosto, and SanChez, members of the crew at Kingdon that day included John Jenney and Mike Bartlett. Their 8.90 and 185 numbers were way under Gary Cagle’s national record marks for B/FD.


In about 1963, Akins and SanChez built another dragster powered by a blown Chrysler Hemi. They ran it through at least 1965. This photo shows it in 1965 at Pomona when it was called the Akins-Adair-SanChez AAA Engineering Special. There are a couple things to note. First, the slimmed-down guy on the right is SanChez. He’s no longer the rotund, roly-poly guy that people called “Beach Ball.” He wanted to drive it, but in order to do so, he had to lose some weight. As you can see, he did—and drove it. It was beautiful, painted purple with silver highlights. The guy standing in the middle is Pat Akins.


The second thing to look at is the header configuration. Never before and never after has anyone ever built dragster headers like this. It was a combination of zoomies and tire cleaners. The experiment was short-lived. By the end of 1965, they employed conventional upswept zoomie headers.

I don’t think SanChez raced after 1965, but Pat Akins and Roger Hardcastle built a funny car in 1966. SanChez died in 2004 at age 70.

 

Great history and a trip down memory lane. Thanks for the stories and photos, timeless for all enthusiasts.

 

I just stumbled on a photo of a fibergl*** bodied dragster that was exhibited in the Victress booth at the 1953 Motorama show. The owner of the dragster was Stan Weisbard from Van Nuys.


The photo of the Weisbard dragster was published in an article about Robert Peterson's October 1953 Motorma show in the February 1954 issue of Car Craft.


That 1953 Motorama was held in the Pan Pacific Auditorium, a building that was located in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles just north of the La Brea tar pits park. The distinctive architectural style was called Streamline Moderne. The building was unfortunately destroyed in a fire in 1989.


This is a clearer photo Victress fibergl*** body of the Weisbard dragster.


In 1954, Stan Weisbard exhibited his dragster at a car show held at the National Guard Armory in Exposition Park. A press photographer from the Los Angeles Examiner took this photo at the press day prior to the event's opening. The young ladies adorning the car were a couple of Hollywood B actresses. On the left is Vivian Mason (The Lost Planet) and Ina Anders (48 Hours to Live) is sitting on the front wheel.


The Armory Building in Exposition Park was just a stone's throw from the campus of USC.


The Weisbard dragster graced the cover of the Hot Rod 1957 Annual. Strangely, the car wasn't featured in any of the articles inside the magazine, but there was a descriptive note about the cover. It read: "The exceptionally immaculate modified 'B' Ford Dragster shown on the cover is owned by Stan Weisbard of Van Nuys, California, and was photographed by Bob D'Olivo. Gleaming power plant has Cragar head, two Winfield model S carburetors with George Wight manifold, high dome pop-up pistons and split pipes. Transfer tube cooling system eliminated the use of a radiator. Special fibergl*** body by Victress."

The car ended up in the Harrah Automobile Collection and was sold at an auction of many of their cars in 1984.

 

Owen Bowling: Old School Master Cam Grinder​

Owen Bowling finished building his blown Plymouth A/Open Gas dragster in time to compete at the second NHRA U.S. Nationals being held Kansas City Timing ***ociation Drag Strip in Missouri. He set out with his mother, Orbin Bowling, from San Gabriel, to tow the dragster over 1,600 miles. Owen, age 27, lived with his mother. She was a big help in her son’s racing ventures. It was all big fun. They were hauling the dragster to Missouri on a trailer when a wheel came off the trailer. By the time they got the wheel back on the trailer, they knew they would arrive after the noon deadline to compete in the races. Nonetheless, they continued driving on so they could watch the races and hopefully be permitted to try out the new race car. This photo was published in the Kansas City Star (9/3/56) recounting the story of their bad luck.


Officials let Owen make a few runs in his race car. In some movie footage taken during the race, Owen is seen being pushed through the pit area at the wheel of his yellow dragster. He appears in the film for a couple of seconds, smiling for the camera. We don’t see his mom in the movie, but she is undoubtedly driving the push car. If you click on this link to the movie, Owen appears at the 5:21 mark.


Owen began racing at Pomona—and winning trophies occasionally—in his ’29 Ford roadster. He was joined by other members of his car club, the Road Rebels, at the races. Owen was the club secretary. The engine in Owen’s roadster was a 365-inch ’52 Chrysler sporting four Stromberg 97s. The roll bar was fashioned from 2-inch water pipe. He spent $1,800 and two years of labor in building the roadster. This photo appeared in the Los Angeles Mirror (11/15/55) in an article about the emerging popularity of hot rodding.


Drag News (5/13/55) featured Owen’s roadster in a 2-page feature article. It mentioned that the car had recently turned 111 mph. It turned that at Santa Ana when it ran 111.11 mph on May 1. Just prior to that, it set track records at Pomona on April 10 (106.13 mph) and April 24 (110.00 mph).


After that, Owen made the rounds of So Cal strips like Colton, Santa Ana, Paradise Mesa, and Pomona, setting new strip records three different times. With this kind of success, he thought he might try his luck at the first NHRA U.S. Nationals at Great Bend, Kansas.


Unlike the misfortune that happened to him en route to the ’56 Nationals, he towed his roadster back to Kansas without incident. This photo shows the staging lanes looking down track toward the starting line and end of the track. The timing tower is just to the right of the starting line.


Owen wasn’t the only member of the Road Rebels car club who raced at the ’55 Nationals. He had the company of some other club members at the race.


Owen is kneeling (left) with his back to the camera, working on something on the front end of his car. The sign affixed to the roll bar reads “Go, Man, Go!”


This photo shows some of the winners at the ’56 Nationals. I’m thinking that these men are the ones who set new national records. The papers that they are holding look like certificates that were often awarded to national record holders. If Owen is in this photo, he would have been one of the older men. He was 26 years old. The best photo that I have of Owen is on the 8mm movie taken at the ’56 Nationals. I have looked at that film repeatedly to see if I could use it to make a guess at who Owen might be in this black-and-white photo. My best guess is that he is on the back row, second from the left. But that is just a guess. He set a new national record of 111.11 mph in the A/SR cl***.


The larger number of men in this photo, I believe, are the cl*** and elimination winners. Their trophies are on a table behind them. I have circled the man on the back row, to the right of the trophy queen, who I think may be Owen. Again, this is just a guess. He won the A/SR cl***.

After the Nationals, Owen returned home, filled with confidence and satisfaction. He had raced at a national event and returned home with a cl*** winner trophy and new national record to his credit.

He picked up where he had left off at So Cal strips, winning trophies and setting more strip records. At Colton, he set a new strip record at a 2-day meet on October 15-16 (113.20 mph). He went to the Arizona State Championship at Perryville and set a new national record of 115.26 mph on November 20, 1955.


Owen campaigned his funky-looking blown Plymouth A/Open Gas dragster through the remainder of the 1956 season after his brief outing at the Kansas City Nationals.

The 1956 NHRA rules stated that the Open Gas cl*** must run service station pump gasoline. It was a special cl*** for gas-powered cars that didn’t seem to fit in the other cl***es. The 1950s was a time of a lot of experimentation and some cars didn’t seem to exactly look like they belonged in any certain cl*** or didn’t meet all the requirements for other cl***es. They were just kind of an odd bunch of orphans that needed a home. That’s what the Open Gas cl*** seemed to do, to provide a home for the oddball cars. And Owen’s car had that oddball look. It was a dragster, but with a funky front nose.

San Gabriel Valley Drag Strip (Old San Gabe) opened in 1956. San Gabriel was where Owen lived, so he had a strip in his hometown. After six top eliminator victories in just over two months, Drag News (11/16/56) declared that Owen “reigned over the San Gabriel Top Eliminator races with an iron hand and heavy foot.” He just stormed through the compe***ion, beating such racers as Tony Nancy, Bob Armstrong, and Fred Waterworth.

I didn’t find a shred of evidence that he raced in 1957. That’s not to say that he didn’t, but I just couldn’t find anything about him racing in ’57. The explanation may lie in something that happened in his personal life. He fell in love. The young lady’s name was Mary Otto. Did I say she was young? Owen was 28 years old. Mary was 18. Ten year’s age difference. They got married in 1957. The marriage didn’t last. They got divorced. In 1960, Owen remarried. Matilda’s age was at the other end of the spectrum. She was fourteen years older than Owen. That marriage didn’t last either. Owen was, as they say, unlucky in love.


Owen got back into drag racing in 1958. He built a low budget gas dragster. It was hardly a thing of beauty. Far from it. But it was a goer, so much so, that he towed the ugly duckling A/GD back to Oklahoma City for the NHRA U.S. Nationals. The entry list stated that the Transmission Spe******ts Special, number 272, was powered by a ’51 Chrysler engine. The absence of chrome was a distinguishing feature. Owen didn’t build his dragster for looks. He built it to run. But so did many others. The compe***ion was too stiff for Owen. In this photo, in the staging lane behind Owen is Art Arfons’ Green Monster dragster. Arfons set a new national A/D record with a speed of 156.25 mph. Owen was simply outcl***ed. His days of being a hot dog on the national stage were in the rearview mirror.

But he could still make a dent in local SoCal races. He took gas top eliminator honors at Colton on November 30, 1958, with 11.64 at 133.33 mph. Three weeks later, he took three trophies at San Gabriel Dragway on December 21. He snagged the A/D cl*** win, top eliminator, low ET (10.63) and top time (133.33 mph). But that seems to have been just about his last hurrah. I didn’t find him mentioned in the press anymore.


But he kept his foot in the drag racing business—by starting a business. He called it Owen’s Orbit Cams. He joined a bevy of cam grinders doing business in Southern California. And there were many—Weber, Potvin, Howard, Herbert, Mooneyes, Isky, Engle, Crane, Clay Smith, Crower, and Schneider. Owen was a small bit player in a crowded field.


This is a job tag for a cam that a customer wanted Owen to grind. The customer thought it dated back to about 1965. The tag gives the address for Owen’s Camshaft Service at 10215 South San Pedro Street in Los Angeles.


There is still an automotive repair shop located in that old building at 10215 South San Pedro in South Central Los Angeles. That building is an historic site in hot rod history in Southern California.


Tony Capanna, seen here (wearing red shirt) on the cover of the November 1953 issue of Hot Rod, had his place of business in the building later occupied by Owen Bowling. Capanna co-founded Wilcap Automotive along with Red Wilson in 1947. Wilcap was one of the earliest operating businesses serving hot rodders. They ran their business out of the building at 10215 South Pedro, located midway between Inglewood and South Gate. It was a mecca for drag racers, hot rodders, and speed merchants.


Wilcap manufactured speed equipment parts, like engine-to-transmission adapters, and racing fuels. Capanna, who some called the “Nitro King,” is credited with being a pioneer in the use of nitromethane.


Tony Capanna left the South San Pedro building in 1958 to relocate to Torrance where he built Hot Rod City.

This is second hand, but there was a guy who used to hang out at Owen’s shop. He said, “He told me the building where his shop was, it used to belong to Hilborn. I remember him telling me he was about to pay it off. I remember going to his shop during the LA riots [1965] and he had a shotgun in his window that faced the street upstairs. He never got messed with.”

So, if the Hilborn Injection Engineering Company was in that building, then I can supply the approximate date when Owen moved into the building on South San Pedro. It would have been in late 1963 or early 1964, because Hilborn broke ground for a new factory in La Niguel Industrial Park in October 1963.


Owen used to pay contingency money if a racer using his cams won at Lions. The Herman Brothers-Itow’s Auto blown Olds-engined ’29 roadster, driven by Larry Herman, ran at Lions a lot in the early 1960s. The car, recently found and undergoing restoration, sported a painted Orbit Cams decal.

Stories about Owen and His Cam Grinding Business

That guy who used to hang out in Bowling’s shop and spoke of the shop having been previously owned by Hilborn, recalled Owen with fondness. “I can still see him in his blue coveralls with a Crook brand cigar in his mouth and several in his chest pocket,” he said. “What was really interesting was, you would go in his shop and ask for a cam with a certain ratio and lift, and he would go over to one of 50 shopping carts full of cams, pull one out and put it on his lathe and clean it up. I would put it in, and the car would run like a scalded cat. Damn, I miss those days. Man, I miss him.”

Another guy recalled going to Owen’s shop when he was a teenager to get a cam ground. “The first aftermarket cam I ever installed was an Owens Orbit,” he said. “As I remember, the cam shop on San Pedro Ave. was a corrugated museum to us. Race car body parts on the wall and hanging from the ceiling. We did all our talking with his wife as Owen was grinding cams. He just looked up and smiled at us dumb 16-year-old kids. His wife told us he ground a lot of Isky’s cams when they got behind.”

One of the Panneton brothers, who later raced in North Carolina, was working at Ross Pistons in Los Angeles. A customer came into the shop to get some custom pistons made for his Datsun L16 road race engine in the mid-1990s. My buddy says, ‘You ever hear of Orbit Cams and that old dude Owen?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ The customer said that he ran Orbit cams in his L16 road race engine. He’d run Webb, Engle, or Isky cams in it, but now only ran Orbit cams. This was interesting for Panneton to hear because he had a big race coming up and needed to get his Datsun L16 engine ready by the weekend. But he had lost a follower and killed his best cam. “I was in a big panic,” he said. “My buddy says, ‘Let’s go see Owen at Orbit Cams.’ We go to this grungy ole place with like one light bulb, smells like ****, and I’m thinking, what in the world are we doing here. Well, Owen finds a suitable core and tells me, ‘Get this. I got a real good flathead Ford grind that works like gang busters in them L16s.,’ he says. I’m thinking this old dude is some kind of nut job, but I pay the $35 bucks, go back and get the engine ****oned up, and it sounds pretty dang good. We go to the track and I beat my lap times by a tenth of a second and pick up nearly 2 mph and about 600 rpm at the top and I’m laughing like a crazy man.”

Another guy who had an injected gas FED frequented Owen’s place. “I made many a trip down to see Owen,” he said. “I had to wade through the dog droppings and the smell. Damn, that guy could grind a cam. I think it was $35 and you brought the core to regrind and if you needed, he would reface the lifters, too. Nicest guy. He liked to open at dark and close at dawn.”

Brenn Lane said that Owen used to grind her husband’s cams for all his cars. “I remember going to his shop over on San Pedro Street late at night. He lived over his shop with his mother.”

Bill Gude was mentored by Owen in the cam grinding business. He worked in Owen’s shop for eight years before going out on his own to establish Gude Performance Camshafts. Gude wrote a story en***led “Grinding Cams at Owen’s.” It was all about his years working at Orbit and learning the trade under the tutelage of the master cam grinder. Bill Gude p***ed away in 2020. I’ve reached out to his brother, Jim, hoping that he might have a copy of Bill’s story. I haven’t heard back from him, yet. But if I do, then I’ll certainly p*** that along and enrich the story of Owen Bowling’s life.

Owen Ray Bowling died in 1997 at age 67.

 

Kenny Ellis: Just Beyond the Land of Oz with the Tin Man
​

Drag racing’s first decade was a period of experimentation as racers tried to discover what worked—and what didn’t. On any given Sunday, drag strips played host to zany, home-made jobs (that’s a word that was commonly used to describe these cars).



It wouldn’t take too long before someone would try a three-wheeled dragster (and I use this word loosely). The first in a string of “Green Monsters” built by the Arfons brothers, from Akron, Ohio, was this clumsy-looking tricycle “job” (there’s that word again). That is Art Arfons at the controls of this hodge-podge “affair” (I wanted to use a word other than “job”). The whole concoction just boggles the mind. The air horn is kind of the cherry on top of the milk shake, to lend it that final touch of cl***. As my wife often says, “presentation is everything.” The “go” in this gangly monstrosity was provided by a 230-inch, 95 HP, Olds flathead six. It fed power to a Packard rear end to spin those white-wall tires. And if Art wasn’t going to wear some goggles, the windshield was mandatory (not so much for the speeds attained, but to keep the *****ers out of his eyes). Do I spot some chromed hubcaps? Another nice touch. No money was spared on this beauty. And, not to forget, it was slathered in eye-catching John Deere green tractor paint. Well, enough of this blathering at Art’s expense.


The first three-wheeled dragster that performed well was the tri-wheeler built by Kenny Ellis. It took him a year to build, at a cost of $3,000. He wanted to build something different, something that didn’t look like every other drag car. He certainly achieved it. His car didn’t look like any other car in the pits.

The tri-wheeler’s first outing, debuted at Colton, on November 23, 1958, was very impressive. He clocked 10.09 at 132.15 mph with a blown 324-inch Merc flathead on gas. The engine was built by Bill Payne. He was beaten by Tommy Ivo in the first round of eliminations, but officials noted that the unique dragster “handled amazingly well.” This photo was printed in the November 29, 1958, issue of Drag News. Unfortunately, I haven’t unearthed the original photo.


The above photo was taken by Bud Lang, the Drag News staff photographer, at Colton at the World Championship 3/16th-mile Open drag races held on August 8, 1959. This was a period when drag strips were trying different distances for timing races. Ellis won the B/D cl***. He also got the top gas time with 9.13 at 117.03 mph. Initially he had been plagued by clutch problems, but he got them sorted out after a few months. By at least September 1959, he had decided upon a name for his tri-wheeler dragster. He called it “Trigster.” This photo appeared in the August 15, 1959, issue of Drag News. To some people it looked like a wheelbarrow, which may have been a more apropos name.

A couple of easy-to-spot things are different about the three-wheeler from its 1958 inception. The flathead engine has been replaced by a Chevy motor. There have been three changes to the body: (1) front nose piece, (2) metal plate completely covers the driver’s sides conforming to the roll bar shape, and (3) cowl covers the driver compartment behind the firewall.


The changes were made after Ellis was joined in his dragster venture by a couple of other men. After going it alone for nine months with a Merc flathead, Ellis went to Chevy power, probably courtesy of his new partners—Bob Wigert (left) and Bob Hammond (center). The three men were photographed for a feature article that was printed in the February 13, 1960, issue of Drag News. The partnership began in about August 1959 and lasted through at least the first quarter of the 1960 racing season. In January 1960, they swapped out the S.C.O.T. blower for a GMC blower with six carbs on the 283 Chevy. Running in C/D, their best numbers were 10.09 and 137.40 mph at Colton.

The dragster was so far out in the twilight zone, that Kenny had to coax reluctant strip operators into letting him race on their tracks. “The only trouble with it so far is that some of the strips do not think it is safe,” said Ellis. “Having only one wheel in front is a much safer car than some other with the single wheel. It does not have the tendency to go sideways coming off the line and if it should start to drift on the top end, it is easy to correct.” The car was a bit on the hefty side, weighing 1650 pounds.


I have a sneaking su****ion that Kenny Ellis hooked up with Leon “Bubby” Wilton in the latter half of 1960 to build this new, revised edition of the Trigster. I mean, this dragster didn’t just suddenly appear, a la—****, voilà. Ch***is Research provided the frame to house their blown 292-inch Chevy motor.


The first time that I found the Ellis-Wilton duo picking up a trophy win was at Colton on February 19, 1961. They won the B/D cl*** and took an uncontested victory in top gas eliminator. Their best times were 10.72 and 130.43 mph.


This photo was taken at Riverside, probably on March 26, 1961. Kenny won the C/GD cl*** in a strip record time of 9.73 at 156.00 mph. Bubby Wilton was a wizard with a wrench and Kenny was generally quick off the line. The two were a good pair, sort of a match made in heaven, or at least, somewhere from a distant galaxy—in another dimension of time. Yes, I grew up watching “The Twilight Zone,” but not “Star Trek” or “Star Wars,” or any of those science fiction type of TV shows or movies. I’ve been told that I’m un-American, never to have seen a “Star Wars” movie. So be it.


According to the caption accompanying this photo, the Ellis-Wilton tri-wheeler dragster was probably running at San Gabriel in 1961 in this photo. If so, then this was undoubtedly on December 31. They put an airfoil plate on the front end, an indication that they may have been experiencing a bit of the wigglies or upsies on the top end. That is undoubtedly Bubby Wilton in the white pants/shirt. They had spent most of the season racing at Fontana, where they were almost-weekly regulars.

Fontana and Colton didn’t put up the fuss that other strips did when their three-wheeler came through the gate. In an entertaining (but sometimes inaccurate in the details) YouTube video piece about three-wheeled dragsters en***led “Fast Freaks,” Brian Lohnes recounted the difficulties they faced in trying to be allowed to race at some SoCal strips. “He and Wilton had to talk their way onto every single track they showed up to,” Lohnes said. “Track operators and fellow racers were horrified. The tech inspectors didn’t know what to do. The two guys became experts at pleading their own case to simply get their car on the racetrack.” Kenny always claimed that it handled like a Cadillac.

They had a real good outing at Fontana on May 20 when they turned a top speed of 160.42 mph. They backed it up with 157.34 mph, but a broken rocker arm the following week prevented them from getting the record. Their best outing during the ’61 season at Fontana was on September 16 when they won top gas eliminator honors with 9.73 at 161.64 mph.


They paused from racing right after Fontana’s first anniversary meet on October 21, 1961, to make some cosmetic changes. This photo shows the finished results from their time away from racing. Drag News (1/6/62) reported, “During the past 3 months the car has been turned into a real show piece, all red and chrome.”


From January through April 1962, they raced at San Gabriel, mostly cl***ified as a C/GD. Their best clocking was on April 4, when they got runner-up honors in top eliminator to Lefty Mudersbach. Their time was 9.47 at 157.25 mph. They did go to the March Meet at Bakersfield where they won the B/GD cl*** with 9.74 at 157.10 mph. This photo was taken at the Smoker’s ’62 March Meet.


But the guys wanted to go quicker without swapping out their 292-inch Chevy motor. The best way to do that was to switch from gas to fuel. Running on a small percentage of nitro and alcohol mix, they raced in the B/FD cl***.


They did all their racing at San Gabriel Drag Strip from May through mid-July 1962. Their best clocking during that stretch was 8.81 and 180 mph flat.


The San Gabriel Drag Strip was in Irwindale, operating from 1961-63. The exact location of that drag strip has been lost to time. Its location had been completely obliterated by industrial development. I pinpointed the historic strip's exact location on an aerial view of what the site looks like today (see above). I used an old 1964 aerial photo of the strip to determine exactly where the old strip was. I have been trying to pinpoint the exact locations of all these old drag strips that have been lost to time on my Drag Strip List website. You can view the 1957 aerial photo and my historical research on the San Gabriel Drag Strip on the California page of my Drag Strip List website.

Steve Gibbs was the Drag News reporter for the racing that took place at San Gabriel in 1962. He found it incomprehensible that Ellis and Wilton, after two years of unblemished racing, still weren’t being allowed to race at certain drag strips. “I understand there are still a couple of strips who will not allow the 3-wheeler to run there,” Gibbs wrote in Drag News (5/19/62). “I guess they are just afraid to admit they can make a mistake because, believe me friends, this car goes just as straight and smooth as any of them. True, the car is different, but, like, it’s been two years now with a perfect safety record. So how about letting these guys race on Sunday, too.” Although he doesn’t name the strip or strips that wouldn’t allow them to race on Sunday, I’m almost certain that he is taking a jab at Pomona.

As the summer progressed, Kenny Ellis kept turning faster times. Steve Gibbs was duly impressed. “As far as I know,” wrote Gibbs in a piece in Drag News (7/21/62), “this is the fastest Chevy of its size in the country.”



On August 18, 1962, Fontana booked a match race between the world’s two fastest Chevy powered dragsters. Roger Caster, in the Caster & Clark B/FD and Kenny Ellis were both running very similar times. In their match, Ellis beat a sub-par Caster in two straight runs. Kenny’s best run was 8.93 at 179.64 mph. This netted Ellis the ***le of “World’s Fastest Blown Chevy B/FD.” After putting the whipping on Caster, Ellis beat Jack Williams to win top eliminator honors with a terrific 8.62 clocking. The Ellis-Wilton tri-wheeler fuel dragster was cleaning house. Two weeks later he went home with another top eliminator win at Fontana.


But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. This photo was taken at the 1963 March Meet at Bakersfield. Notice there is a different configuration on the frame where it attaches to the front wheel. All other frame configurations, both before and after this, are a forward directed top piece. Was Ch***is Research experimenting with a different tri-wheeler frame configuration? I don’t know. In this photo, Bubby Wilton (back to camera) and Kenny Ellis (in driver’s suit) are seen talking with Leland “Buzz” Lowe (white pants and dark jacket).

Sometime after Bakersfield, Ellis and Wilton went separate ways. Wilton went off to build a conventional fuel dragster, taking his SBC motor with him. Ellis stayed with the tri-wheeler and built a Chrysler Hemi fuel engine.


Kenny had his tri-wheeler ready with a new 299-inch Chrysler Hemi in time to enter the March Meet at Bakersfield in 1964. In addition to the new motor, Kenny, who was a master metal fabricator, updated the back of the car and installed a three-point roll bar.


Although this photo is obviously at San Fernando, it took him quite a few months to get the car back in the win column. Running as a C/FD, he took a middle eliminator win at Fontana on November 7, 1964. He ran 8.92 at 190.26 mph.


He snagged another middle eliminator victory at Fontana two weeks later with 8.56 at 189.86 mph.


In early 1965, he overhauled the front end of his ch***is to include a torsion bar suspension. He also mounted an Enderle bug catcher on the blower. He won another $50 for taking middle eliminator at Fontana on February 21, 1965. He ran 8.72 at 180.00 mph. Drag News (2/27/65) reported that “the car still goes straight.” That kind of comment followed the tri-wheeler throughout its history. Because the car was so unique, there was always a question about its handling at high speeds.

Kenny picked up a partner sometime before the 1965 March Meet at Bakersfield. The Hunt-Ellis tri-wheeler qualified number 60 with an 8.06 in a 64-car field. They didn’t make it out of the first round, shutting off at mid-track.

Although the tri-wheeler had a few shining moments, it never really did well enough to stick with it. So, Kenny put a conventional two-wheel front end on the dragster and sold it.


Before we proceed with Kenny’s next ventures, I want to go back to his beginning in drag racing. He didn’t just start out with the tri-wheeler. There were a couple of cars before it. He started out with a ’33 Ford B/G 5-window coupe powered by a Merc flathead in 1953. He lived in Montebello at the time and raced it at Pomona. He did very well, racking up nine cl*** wins that year and setting a new strip record on February 8. His best time during the ’53 season was 99.72 mph. He raced the coupe infrequently in 1954 and ’55 but began racing again on a weekly basis in 1956. By at least early June 1956, he had acquired a new partner (Maiben) in the enterprise.


By mid-summer 1956, Kenny left the gas ranks to run this five-window coupe in the A/A cl***. In 1956, he had several different partners. At one time in late 1956, the altered had a mouthful of owners: Waterworth-Ellis-Maiben-Hoyt A/A. It was powered by a S.C.O.T. blown 324-inch Merc flathead. This photo was published in the December 28, 1957, issue of Drag News, illustrating the report of its record-setting speed of 120.65 mph at Colton. Its best time during that two-year stretch was 11.67, turned at San Gabriel Valley a month earlier. During those two years of racing this altered coupe, Kenny copped almost twenty trophies for cl*** wins. Their biggest compe***ion was Bader and Ferriera’s blown Cad-engined Crosley A/A. Kenny ran this altered through at least the first half of the 1958 season, after which he turned his attention to building his tri-wheeler.

In the back of my mind, I think I’ve seen a photo (not a grainy scan) of this altered. I just know I’ve seen a photo of an altered with an image of a bird (or chicken) on the front of the radiator. If I run across it, I’ll post it.


Kenny’s day-time job was as a fireman. But for several years after selling the three-wheeler, he was a dragster driver-for-hire. But his skill in fashioning beautiful dragster bodies out of metal was undeniable. For example, he crafted this beautiful body for Chuck Tanko’s “National Speed Products Research” rear-engine dragster. It debuted in 1971 about the same time that Garlits first ran his rear-engine fuel dragster after getting back into drag racing following his horrible accident in his FED at Lions. Tanko got Kenny to drive the dragster, but its looks outweighed its performance.


From 1968-71, Kenny campaigned this twin Chevy-engined gas dragster called “Double Trouble.” It was the last car that he built for himself to drive. His shining moment in this car came at the 1971 NHRA World Finals at Ontario. He won Top Gas Eliminator when Jim Bucher’s twin-Chevy dragster red-lighted. He pocketed $6875 for the win. But when the tech officials looked over the car after the race with a fine-tooth comb, they found that he had too many cubic inches for what the rule book stipulated. His shining moment was dulled. Bucher was declared the winner and Kenny had to forfeit his winnings.


After his disappointing result in Top Gas at the World Finals, Kenny converted his twin-engine dragster to fuel. He plugged away through the 1972 season, competing in AA/FD racing. But by this time, the rear-engine cars were dominating Top Fuel. He held on to the bitter end in ’72, but he didn’t stand a chance. The front-motored twin was not compe***ive. It was his last hurrah. He parked the fueler at the end of the season.


Admittedly, I have precious few photos that show Kenny’s face—in fact, just two (and one is a nice portrait taken later in life). So, this final racing photo will serve as representative of the meager bunch of face shots in this story. Here Kenny suits up in the staging lanes at Lions in 1972. His face is covered. Once again, the Tin Man hides from our view as he gets set for another—probably—futile quest to race his behemoth twin Chevy fueler against a lighter rear engine top fueler. One of his partners, Joe Oliphant, walks toward the camera.


Kenny died in 2009 at age 76. This portrait was taken of him later in life when he lived in New Mexico.

As far as I know, Leon “Bubby” Wilton is still alive, age 92, living in La Verne, California.

 

Three Mid-1950s Quirky Crosley Altereds from San Diego County​

Don Garlits is credited with revolutionizing top fuel dragsters when he won the Winternationals and Bakersfield in 1971 with a rear-engine dragster. After that, everyone wanted to run with an engine behind the driver. From that point on, the front engine dragster went the way of the dinosaurs. It just made a lot of sense from a safety and weight-distribution standpoint. But Garlits was hardly the first to run with an engine behind the driver.

To illustrate the many drag race cars that ran rear engines prior to Garlits’ trend-setting switch from front to rear engines, I created a website to showcase a sample of the many race cars who ran with an engine behind the driver before 1971.



Featuring over 125 pre-1971 rear-engine race cars, the website is called “Early Rear-Engine Dragsters.” I used newspaper reports and information on the Internet to do the research.


During my research, I stumbled on an offbeat-looking rear-engine Crosley altered called the “Coupe De Ville.” I found this photo in the February 12, 1955, issue of the San Bernardino County Sun. The photo identified the starter, Ron Burdette, but not the car or its driver.


A short while later I found a color photo of the car, but I still didn’t know who the driver was.


When I chanced upon this photo in the Madera Tribune (10/9/54), I learned the iden***y of the driver. He was Bill Willett, a member of the San Diego Road Ramblers car club.


With that information, I added it to the 1950s page of my “Early Rear-Engine Dragsters” website.

In casting about for another drag racer to write a story about for this thread, I thought Willett might make a good selection. The last story that I wrote, about Kenny Ellis, took several weeks to research and write. I was looking for somebody with an interesting car and, hopefully, short driving career that wouldn’t take me a lot of time to research and write. So, I picked Bill Willett.

The phrase “to never know the end from the beginning,” is certainly true in historical research. You never know what you are going to find that might change the whole trajectory of your writing. This is what happened with my little quick and easy writing project on Bill Willett and his quirky Crosley altered. It morphed into something larger than a one-person and one-car story. As the appalling “as seen on TV” ads frequently say, this story will be about not one, not two—but three cars. They are all Crosley altereds and all three racers were members of drag racing car clubs in San Diego County in the 1950s. So, there went my desire to just put together a quick little story. Right out the window. But the discovery of these three cars is captivating and their stories need telling.

I’m not bemoaning the situation. I like to write about stories that go in unexpected directions, that have twists and turns. It’s interesting to make discoveries and put the pieces of puzzles together that add depth to the early history of drag racing. I suspect that it also probably makes more interesting reading than a straightforward tale.


All three Crosley altereds raced at Paradise Mesa Drag Strip. At that time, it was the closest drag strip to where the drivers of these racers lived. Paradise Mesa was the first drag strip in the San Diego area. Operating from 1951-59, Paradise Mesa was an old airfield used in World War II for landing practice. This is a rare color photo of a racing event at Paradise Mesa. You can see the Bean Bandits yellow dragster and Ike Iacono’s fuel GMC-powered ’34 coupe in the background (orange).


There is not a single remnant of asphalt left of the old strip. It has been completely obliterated by residential development. In my quest to identify the location of all the old drag strips, I used old aerial photos and USGS topo maps to pinpoint where those old strips were on today’s landscapes. This aerial view is taken from the Paradise Mesa history entry on the California page of my Drag Strip List website. You can read the brief historical overview of Paradise Mesa that I wrote on that page. I have written histories for over 1,450 U.S. and Canadian drag strips. It is the largest comprehensive encyclopedic history of drag strips ever compiled. I wanted to fill a void in undertaking this m***ive project and I still add to it with more detailed facts and reader contributions.


In what may be one of the very earliest extant movies of drag strip racing, there is a Crosley altered being push-started at Paradise Mesa by at least eight guys. The Crosley altered appears in the video for twelve seconds, beginning at the 4:13 minute mark. The name on the Crosley’s hood and rear panel is “Howard Cam Special.” I don’t know whose Crosley this is, but the 6-minute video is well worth watching. It will give you a flavor of the racing at Paradise Mesa when it first opened—and enable you to view what may be the very earliest movie taken of an organized drag race.

I can date this video (even though the ***le and metadata are mislabeled) because the Bean Bandits’ first twin-engine dragster is in the footage. That dragster ran in 1951. What about my ***ertion that this is the very earliest movie taken at a drag strip? There is another very old movie of drag racing at Santa Ana on my website, but I believe it dates to 1953. NHRA also produced a video series called “NHRA’s Greatest Moments.” Their first video in that series is en***led “1951, When It All Began.” Most of the images on that video are photos, not movies. There is one very brief movie clip showing the backs of a couple of guys watching races at Pomona, however, Pomona didn’t open until 1952. I’m really going out on a limb to ***ert the importance of this Paradise Mesa film in drag racing history as being the earliest movie. If anyone knows otherwise, it would be interesting to learn about it.


The three Crosley drivers that I will profile were all members of car clubs in the San Diego Timing ***ociation. Two of the Crosley drivers were members of the Carlsbad Oilers car club. This great photo, probably taken at Paradise Mesa, shows the club dragster of the Oilers. The driver of this dragster was Jim Nelson, who later partnered with Dode Martin to build Dragmaster ch***is at their speed shop in Carlsbad. My great aunt lived in Carlsbad, and I used to go over to their shop in the early 1960s to oogle what was going on and drool.

Don’t you just love the guys standing in the foreground? I tried to model that rebel look when I was a young lad who didn’t know squat. Jeans rolled up just an inch, folded only twice. The guy on the left’s cuffs are rolled too high for the pachuco look. We just called ourselves chukes, but we were just harmless little punks. I rolled up my shirt sleeves just like the guy in the short sleeve shirt. Just two rolls, just enough to show that we had little-boy biceps. But they have the right look with the thumbs in the front pockets and slouched shoulders. I used butch wax on my hair, but only for about a week because it was so greasy. I had a great black leather jacket that my grandmother gave me for Christmas. But when I bought a scantily clad Lady Luck decal and put it on the back of the jacket, my mother confi****ed the jacket and gave it to the Goodwill. I thought that Lady Luck decal really set off the jacket nicely, but my mother thought otherwise.


Getting back to Bill Willett, the caption on this photo, taken at Paradise Mesa, dates it to 1957. “Howard Cam” is painted on the side. It is entirely possible that this could be an updated version of the Crosley seen in the 1951 YouTube video. The caption gives the ownership of the car as Vinas-Leggot-Willett. So, Willett picked up a few partners. Vinas is probably George Vinas, a member of the San Diego Prowlers car club in 1954. Leggot could be the short guy in Willett’s pit crew at the Madera race back in 1954. The caption on that Madera Tribune photo identified him as Bob Leggett. It could also be Red Leggott who was the president of the San Diego Timing ***ociation in 1953. Willett also started running the Crosley on fuel and competed in the compe***ion coupe cl***.


This Drag News (9/7/57) photo accompanied an article reporting a 3-day race at Colton in celebration of that drag strip’s 3rd anniversary. Willett won the A Fuel Compe***ion Coupe cl*** with a speed of 112.95 mph. The speed of 122.95 mph listed in the photo caption is in error.

As to Willett himself, he was from Chula Vista. He raced at the Bonneville Speed Trials in 1952, finishing third in the B Fendered Coupe cl***. Fred Davies, also from Chula Vista, was his partner. Their hot rod was powered by a Nash engine, hitting a top speed of 107.78 mph. Other than that, I can’t shed much more light on Willett or his quirky Crosley altered, other than he ran 112 mph during time trials at the California State Drag Championships at Madera on October 9, 1954. He also trophied in the D/G cl*** twice at Paradise Mesa in 1954, with a best time of 83.43 mph on June 27. But that would have been in a different race car than the Crosley altered.


This last photo will resolve a long-standing mystery. There are a couple of threads on the H.A.M.B. devoted to this photo of a Crosley racing at Riverside. Heretofore, no one has yet been able to identify the “Black Widow” Crosley. They’ve seen the small lettering under the name on the back of the car that states “Road Ramblers, San Diego.” If you look closely just above the roofline of the car, smack-dab in the center, you will see the vent that Willett has on the front of the roof of his car—and just peaking above that is the rounded shape of the top of Willett’s helmet. Mystery solved. This is Bill Willett’s Crosley altered.


And to wrap up the story of Willett with one final image, this is the San Diego Road Ramblers car plaque. The Road Ramblers were the sister club to the Carlsbad Oilers in the early days. They held their end-of-year banquets in conjunction with the Oilers. The Road Ramblers started up before the War and the Oilers were formed in 1947.

Whereas I don’t know much about Willett, I know quite a bit about the other two Crosley altereds’ owners/drivers. In fact, both of those Crosleys participated in the U.S. Nationals and set national records.


This ’46 Crosley altered was co-owned by Jim “Sonny” Sims, Danny McClure, and Jack Randall—all members of the Carlsbad Oilers car club. No one could ever call this Crosley altered either threatening or menacing. She is just cute, but in a homely kind of way. This photo was taken at an SCTA event at Colton in 1955. All three of the boys had been officers of the Oilers in 1952: Randall (president), Sims (vice-president), and McClure (secretary). McClure was still in high school in ’52. Sims had only graduated from high school in 1950. Hey, these guys were just young kids, but having the time of their lives.


The Sims-McClure-Randall Crosley was essentially a club car of the Oilers. It started out with a 296-inch Mercury flathead engine, debuting in late 1954. At Paradise Mesa on May 29, 1955, it set a strip record in A/A at Paradise Mesa with a 103.44 mph clocking. This photo accompanied the article reporting that record-setting run in Drag News (6/9/55).


Jim Sims (right) and Dan McClure (left) dropped a ’50 Olds engine in the Crosley and towed it to run at the first NHRA Nationals at Great Bend in 1955. The photo caption didn’t identify them, but I used their high school yearbook pictures to take a stab at identifying them. I’m not confident that I’ve got them correctly identified as they are older in this photo, but it was my best guess. They won the A/A cl*** and set a new national record with 115.97 mph. In the program, Sims was listed as the driver.


This is a frame from a brief appearance of the Crosley in a movie taken of the 1955 US Nationals. It is in a YouTube video en***led “Vintage Drag Racing, First Ever NHRA National Event in 1955.” The Crosley appears for four seconds beginning at the 9:06 mark.

They enjoyed such a good measure of success at the first Nationals, that they returned to the second U.S. Nationals when it was held in Kansas City in 1956. They scored a another cl*** win, this time in B/A, and once again set a new national record with a speed of 114.79 mph. Jack Randall drove the altered.

James Sydney “Sonny” Sims died in 2013 at age 80. He operated Sonny’s Automotive in Carlsbad for thirty years, selling the business and retiring in 1995. Daniel Calmont McClure died in 2004 at age 69. Jack Clayton Randall died in 2006 at age 76.


In June 1955, George Carter and Jerry Shafer bought a long-established Chevy dealership in Encinitas. They named it Carter-Shafer Chevrolet. It was located at 740 Highway 101. They recognized that sponsorship of race cars might be beneficial to business. They sponsored the third Crosley altered in this story.


The Carlsbad Oilers car club fielded this other ’47 Crosley altered in mid-summer 1956. It was powered by a ’56 265-inch Corvette engine. This grainy Drag News (10/19/56) photo showed the Crosley when it raced at Colton on October 14, 1956. It turned 12.92 at 114.79 mph.


This last Crosley altered was driven by either Jim Nelson or Jack Randall. In this photo, Jim Nelson is the guy in the middle. They are all wearing their Oilers car club jackets. Snazzy. The year is 1948. They are oogling the Weiand track roadster. Half a dozen years later, Nelson would team up with Dode Martin to build Dragmaster ch***is in their Carlsbad shop.


But at this time, Nelson was just cutting his teeth in the speed business. This is a 1949 Oilers membership card signed by Nelson. He was the president of the Oilers that year.


In this photo, a young Nelson, with a nifty flattop haircut, is jotting down some notes, standing beside the Oilers club dragster. He was in demand as a driver for several car owners. He was good.


This newspaper photo was published in the Encinitas Coast Dispatch (8/30/56). Jack Randall (left) and **** Baschetti (right) are preparing to tow the car to Kansas City for the 1956 U.S. Nationals.


This is a clip from a movie taken at the ’56 U.S. Nationals, which can be viewed on a YouTube video. The video is en***led “1956 NHRA National Championship Drags Kansas City.” The Crosley makes two appearances in the video. The first, starting at the 5:00 minute mark, shows it making a single run from the starting line. That lasts for seven seconds. The second appearance, starting at the 8:03 minute mark, shows the car in the pits and lasts four seconds.

They did not win their cl***, but did set a new B/A cl*** record with a speed of 114.79 mph. Their best time in 1956 was at Holtville, California, on September 30 where they ran 123.83 mph. Four weeks later at the Central Coast Championships at Santa Maria, Jim Nelson turned 13.30 at 111.80 mph.

The last race of this Crosley altered where it took a trophy win was on March 10, 1957, at Paradise Mesa. With Jim Nelson driving, the Carter-Shafer Crosley won the B/Open Gas cl*** with a new track record of 122.69. Nelson also copped top eliminator honors.

And there you have it—three Crosley altereds, all racing out of the same timing ***ociation, in the same time period. In my estimation, it is quite an interesting convergence of zany-looking race cars.

 

Another home run!

I especially like the early Sandy Eggo profiles.

 

Don Menard: Paradise Mesa Track Manager​

Don Menard, an aircraft engineer from Chula Vista, California, built this ’34 Ford coupe with the help of his son, seen here ****oning down the hood. The photo was taken at the Arizona State Championships held at Perryville on November 19-20, 1955. Although the coupe was built to run at S.C.T.A. meets on the dry lakes and at Bonneville, Menard also ran it at Paradise Drag Strip. The coupe ran out of Jim Culbert’s shop. Note the straight Culbert front axle.


Menard got the top speed of the meet at Paradise Mesa on November 21, 1954, with a speed of 117.95 mph.


J. R. Eyerman, a Life magazine photographer, spent time on the salt during Speed Week in 1954. This is one of the Kodachrome photos taken by Eyerman. The Shadoff Special, seen at far right in distance, got the fastest speed of the meet at 252.80 mph. Menard towed his coupe to run at the event.


The September 1954 issue of Hot Rod contained a 2-page article en***led “Bombs Over Bonneville.” It featured half a dozen race cars that ran at Speed Week in 1954.


Menard, sitting in the driver’s seat of his coupe, was one of the cars featured in the Hot Rod article. The caption under the photo read: “Ex-motorcycle racer Don Menard is hot to trot in his ’34 Ford coupe. ’48 Merc mill . . . . Don says his special Iskenderian cam has some pretty wild bumps. Edelbrock equipment is featured.”


Menard, seen in this 1958 newspaper photo, was the track manager at Paradise Mesa Drag Strip for a couple of years.


A racing accident at Paradise Mesa on June 10, 1956, was widely reported in California newspapers. Several people were injured when a car driven by Allan Richards went out of control and struck Red Henslee’s car in the pit area. Henslee had just set a new strip record of 147.54 mph and people had flocked to his car to take a close look at it. Menard, who was the track manager at the time, said that an investigation revealed that better safeguards needed to be made to protect the spectators. “We are going to make an appeal to the public to help us build better facilities,” Menard said, “that is, a fence between the track and the pit to prevent other such accidents.” Both cars were demolished in the crash.


Menard signed his WWII draft registration card in 1942. He later enlisted in the army and served in the South Pacific as a paratrooper sergeant.

At this date (2025), Donald Alfred Menard, is still living, age 101, in Lakeway, Texas.

 

**** Guyette: The Music Man of Encino and His Medley of Clowns
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The general approach taken by most owners/drivers of dragsters is to begin racing in the slower car cl***es. They start racing in stock, roadsters, or g***ers, but then they get that itch to go faster.


Don Garlits first started racing at Zephyrhills with a ’40 Ford convertible.


A ’36 Ford Phaeton was one of the first cars that Chris Karamesines started racing at the drags.

It is the rare bird who begins racing a dragster right out of the chute. But that’s what **** Guyette did. His first race car was a dragster—and it was a beauty. And, to make it even more of an outside-of-the-box story, he was 37 years old. In the drag racing world, that made him an old man.


Guyette, who lived in Encino, California, had been in the music business for years. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was ***ociated with Nelson Riddle (seen in this photo). Riddle was a music arranger for such artists as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin. Guyette was a music copyist for Riddle. That meant that he would take Riddle’s compositions and create individual sheet music for each musician, musical instrument, or singer. It was a job that required meticulous attention to detail.

I don’t know exactly what drew Guyette to build or drive a dragster. Apparently, his job could be stressful. He told one reporter that racing helped him to release the mental and physical tension of his day job. “I just put my foot in it and it all comes out,” he said. He joined the Throttle Merchants car club.


Guyette turned to Kent Fuller to build him a dragster ch***is and front wire wheels. It is one of the first dragsters that Fuller built. Mike Scott did the body work. Guyette called it “The Isky Clown.” It was a catchy name and recognizable to all drag racing fans as indicative of sponsorship by Ed Iskenderian. The cam, pushrods, lifters and rockers were all Isky. The engine was a 334-inch ’50 Olds motor with a front-mounted GMC 6:71 blower. In this photo, Guyette stands to the right of his wife, Mary Lou. On the far right, next to Guyette, is Chuck Ross. On the far left is Cary Bracken. I haven’t identified the tall man to the right of Bracken.


The dragster was built with the intention of racing it at the dry lakes and the drags. It made its drag strip debut at San Fernando on March 8, 1959. It did well, getting runner-up honors in top eliminator and the meet’s low ET (10.23) and top time (137.19 mph). In this photo, it is difficult to identify the people as their faces are backlit by the sun. That may be Guyette (second from left). That might be Don Scoville (fourth from left in dark shirt and white pants). From Sherman Oaks, he was the chief engine tuner for Guyette.


It was immediately successful, racking up fifteen trophies in five weeks at San Fernando, running in the A/D cl***. In this photo, Guyette (on the left) stands with a couple of men from the Kiwanis Club (the two on far right) to help publicize an upcoming race on May 10, 1959. I don’t know who the man standing next to Guyette is. Could it be his co-owner, Tom Fry? I don’t know. At that May 10 race, Guyette was beaten in the first round of top eliminator by Tommy Ivo.


Through the spring and summer, the “Isky Clown’s” best times were 9.77 and 148.02 mph. Guyette was knocking on the door of 150 mph but just couldn’t seem to get there. He decided to switch out the Olds for a Chrysler motor. They experimented with the blown Chrysler in just the month of October 1959, but with little success. Tom Fry, co-owner of the “Clown” with Guyette, even tried his hand at driving, but it was evident to all that they needed to return to Oldsmobile for power. They installed a 312-inch Olds engine back in the dragster, dropping them into the B/D cl***.


One time at San Fernando (11/1/59), they were beset by trouble all day. They realized they couldn’t be compe***ive in B/D, so they decided to run in A/D, as there were no other cars in that cl***. They set a “new record” for the slowest-ever winning time for A/D with 83.17 mph.


The next week at San Fernando, they got all the bugs sorted out. Drag News (11/14/59) reported that they “pushed the ‘Isky Clown’ to a new 1320 Standard record in B/GD, turning 142.40 mph in 10.53 seconds to smash the old mark of 141.16 which belonged to Jack Phillips of Little Rock, Arkansas.” Although Drag News reported it as a new 1320 record in that article, for one reason or another, it never actually was listed as an official 1320 record. Drag News never offered an explanation about that.


That was the shining moment for the “Isky Clown.”


“Buy low, sell high” is the adage applied to stock trading. It is also applicable to selling racing automobiles. When Guyette set a “new record,” he deemed that as the best time to offer his dragster for sale. It was a high point for his dragster and, thus, might be the best time to attract potential buyers. Strike while the iron is hot. This “for sale” ad appeared in the November 21, 1959, issue of Drag News. He may have had some offers (or not), but he didn’t sell the dragster.

Although he didn’t make a sale on the dragster, later he gave the dragster away in a give-away contest. I haven’t been able to find that notice that I once saw in either Drag News or Drag Sport Illustrated for this profile story, but if I stumble across it, I shall upload it.


The week after his “record-setting” time, they towed the car to San Luis Obispo, where Guyette set a new strip record of 150.00 mph on November 15, 1959. He finally got to 150, but the car broke an axle after that run and was out of commission. In this San Luis Obispo Tribune (11/24/59) photo, engine tuner Don Scoville is seen at the rear of the car.


Guyette exhibited the “Isky Clown” at the 1960 International Motor Sports Show 9-day show in Los Angeles. Other cars in exhibit at that show included Ed Roth’s “Outlaw,” Dean Moon’s “Moonbeam” Devin-bodied sports car, and L****n & ***mins 206 mph Bonneville Salt Flats roadster.


I found only one reference to him racing in 1960. He took a trophy for a win in the B/D cl*** and top eliminator honors at San Fernando on February 7 with a 10.65, 140.62 mph clocking. This photo is interesting for who Guyette is racing. That’s Ivo’s single Buick-engine dragster in the other lane, but it’s not Ivo driving. Kent Fuller is the driver. That’s the only time that Fuller ever made a p*** in a race car.


It was probably in about 1960 that Guyette turned his attention to building and driving a lakester on the dry lakes and at Bonneville. It was ready to run by at least 1961 at Bonneville. This is a single frame from a YouTube video en***led “[Mobil Bonneville].” His appearance in the video begins at the 0:25 minute mark and lasts for 11 seconds. It shows him getting a push start and starting his run down the course. It was powered by a 283-inch blown Chevy.


Sixty-five years ago, I bought an issue of Hot Rod for the first time. Inside the August 1960 issue is a 2-page feature article about the “Isky Clown.” Having this old Hot Rod magazine factored highly in my decision to write this profile story about **** Guyette.


There is no rhyme or reason about who I choose to write about. I do have a list of people that I might write about some day, but often, I just stumble upon somebody or some car that strikes my fancy. I do some preliminary research to see if there are enough photos and do***entation to make it feasible. If there are, then I’m off and running.


Another factor that caused me to pursue a story on Guyette is that I saw the “Isky Clown” in 1960 at the Los Angeles County Fair. The fair held a car show for the first time in the covered pavilions west of the horse racetrack. I have held onto this souvenir program all these years. I don’t recall ever seeing the “Clown” run at a drag race, principally because I never did see a race at San Fernando, the track where it mostly raced.


This is the page from that program that shows a photo of the “Isky Clown.” There were some other cars in the show including the gorgeous “Ala Kart,” Sam Parriott’s Cad-Curtis, “Tweety Pie,” Ken Lindley’s A/GD, and a bunch of George Barris cars.



Guyette brought his “Music Man” lakester to San Fernando to run for the first time at a drag strip on November 12, 1961. Unfortunately, mechanical problems prevented him from making a run. This photo appeared in Drag News (11/12/61).


Guyette exhibited his “Music Man” lakester at Mickey Thompson’s 2nd annual Auto and Boat Speed Show. It opened on December 7, 1961, for 4-day run. Some of the other cars on exhibit included MT’s “Challenger I,” “Ernie’s Camera” dragster, Tommy Ivo’s 4-engine dragster, the “Mooneyes” dragster, and the Dragmaster “Two Thing.” Guyette had turned 184 mph in his lakester at the Salt Flats a few months before.


It was reported that Guyette would bring his lakester to the Santa Barbara road races in May 1962 to make exhibition runs in a quest to better his 184-mph speed that he had run at Bonneville in September 1961. If he ran, I wasn’t able to find a report of it.


Guyette exhibited his dual engine dragster, “Laff Clown,” for its first public appearance at Mickey Thompson’s 4th annual Auto-Boat and Speed Show at the Shrine Exposition Hall in Los Angeles. It was a 5-day extravaganza that opened on December 5, 1963. Guyette also exhibited his “Music Man” lakester at the car show. Newspaper reports stated that his lakester was the “world’s fastest Chevrolet, 240.48 mph streamliner.” There were five Salt Flats cars in the show that were in the 200-mile-an-hour-club. Other cars on display included Ika Iacono’s GMC-engined dragster and Tommy Ivo’s four-engine dragster.


The “Laff Clown” twin-engine dragster was built by Roy Steen and Jeep Hampshire in Jeep’s mother’s garage, in 1960 or 1961. The two campaigned the car with a single blown 392-inch engine for about one-and-a-half years. They then sold the car to **** Guyette, who had the car set up with twin small-block Chevy motors.


Twin engine dragsters had seen their hay-day by the time Guyette debuted his dragster. He must have thought he could make it compe***ive and usher in a new resurgence of dual-engine dragsters. It didn’t happen. The “Laff Clown” rarely did well. This photo appeared in the July 4, 1964, issue of Drag News in the report of the June 27 race at Lions.


Interestingly, in that same issue of Drag News, I found a picture of me. I was a spectator at the race at Fontana on June 27. During a lull in the eliminations, they announced that they would have a quarter-mile foot race with a $25 prize to the winner. I was fresh off my high school track season and still in good shape. The quarter mile was my event. I thought I could clean house. Most of the compe***ors were fat old guys serving as pit crews for the dragsters. It was a bunch of clowns. But there happened to be another track guy there. He had more oomph at the end and went home with the prize money. I went off into the weeds and dry-heaved. Bad memory. This is a very poor digitized image of that photo in Drag News. I’m pretty sure that’s me in the middle. I remember that the winner was the jack rabbit to my left.


The “Music Man” Cl*** A Lakester, with its blown 327-inch Chevy on fuel, ran at Bonneville in 1964. Guyette turned 210.03 mph, which was good for fourth in his cl*** for the week.


Guyette did better at the S.C.T.A. meets at El Mirage. This photo was taken at the dry lakes meet at El Mirage on September 13, 1964. The photo of Guyette’s “Chevrolet Research Special” lakester appeared in Drag Sport Illustrated (9/19/64). The caption stated “both car and driver were running ‘Hot.’ This was the pit crew.”


Riverside Raceway held monthly S.C.T.A. half-mile drag race meets in 1964 and 1965. At almost every one of these meets, Guyette took top speed and low ET honors. This photo was taken at the meet held on November 29, 1964. Guyette ran 18.90 at 168.53 mph, good for second fastest. In this Drag Sport Illustrated (12/5/64) photo, Guyette (center, wearing jacket) watches Mike Fair doing the tuning. Fair worked for Joe Hunt.


This is another photo taken at an S.C.T.A. half-mile drag race held on January 10, 1965, at Riverside that was published in Drag Sport Illustrated (1/18/65). Guyette got the meet’s top speed with 189.32 mph and a time of 15.99 in the “Music Man” lakester. He was testing Indy 500 Firestone tires. For several months, he hoped to top 200 mph, but always came up short. In this photo, Guyette is in the middle, wearing dark gl***es.

The music man from Encino, Richard Frank Guyette died in 1966. He was only 44 years old.