Jewell Park, the site for this year's meet, is a one-block green space just off the main drag in Pacific Grove. It has a small activities building in one corner and a bandstand on another - the rest is grass, with big trees on the edges of the park. Club pres. Rick Alexander had worked with the local Chamber of Commerce to get permission for the show and I knew the cars would look great on the grass - like a mini Concours. I rolled up a little before 8AM and waited for everyone to arrive - This will go down as the first time in history that I was the first one there!
The new issue of the TBT went out last week. As always, contributors sent in some stellar stuff - Chuck Latty wrote the cover story about growing up with a Crosley sedan in the family and Marty Stein provided another detailed history of an etceterini- this time it was his 1952 Siata. Part II will run next issue. We also had a report on the Wauseon National Meet, reviews of Crosley-related books and classifieds.
I always enjoy a trip to the vintage races, but this weekend I had a mission: after 6 years of seeing Lee Osborn's Crosley Special being loaded and unloaded off the trailer at the West Coast Crosley Meet, I was finally going to see it on the track. Osborn's car, the 1955 Shannon Special has developed quite a reputation- it just may be the fastest Crosley powered object currently on the planet. Lee himself has picked up a rep too- his aggressive driving combined with incredible engineering skills has meant that he's usually dicing with cars with twice or three times the engine displacement - Osborn's special has probably dusted more Porsches than any Crosley since Harry Eyerly was driving.
I'd been following the preparations for this 'Hmod Reunion' on the Hmod bulletin board I read- with the limited number of Hmods still participating in vintage racing it's hard to get more than a few out at any given event. Their months of planning resulted in close to 10 Hmods on this entry list, so I knew I couldn't miss it. My pal Alex and I drove down to Infineon Raceway (which I still think of as Sears Point) on Saturday morning. We got there just in time to catch the practice run for the group most of the Hmods were in. Some of the cars were initially set in different groups, but after the practice the organizers got everybody put together in the same race, set for 4 o'clock.
After the practice we walked back to the pits. I was happy to find several Hmods I'd never seen before.
The Bunce Buck is a toothy Crosley based Hmod built by two guys, one named Bunce, the other named Ed Buck. From talking to the current owner, Henry Morrison, it sounds like there were several of these built- this one is from 1959 and he's not sure if it ever had a race history.
At some point the Crosley that lived under the hood hump was tossed in favor of a rear Renault motor that, coincidentally, is identical (right down to the upgrade cam cover) to the Renault motor that was retrofitted to my Hmod. The car is probably the most authentic of any Hmod I've seen, featuring a scratched plexiglass windscreen and a '10 footer' paint job. I like it.
Pitted next to the Bunce Buck was a sleek fiberglass Hmod that was the solo project of Ed Buck - known as Ed's Hulk. This thing is beautiful, so i'm guessing the name may have originated because of the beefiness of construction- the ladder frame has large tubing and there are several gussets made of 1/4 inch steel plate! The restoration was very well done and the motor was built by Barry Seel, the best-known of the East Coast Crosley engine builders.
Another car I was looking forward to seeing was this 1956 BMW Avia. The car appeared briefly on Ebay and caused quite a stir on Bring a Trailer and some of the other carnut sites. This hand formed aluminum bodied racer was built in Czechoslovakia by a company best known for airplane manufacturing and saw quite a bit of action in the fifties. The new owners were racing it for the first time since its restoration- the BMW motorcycle engine seemed to run well but they were chasing a few electrical gremlins.
Every part of the car was a thing of beauty, and I could see why the owners were willing to part with their Shirdlu racer (currently for sale) to get this car. They were stoked, and were super-nice to boot.
Two nice Panhard specials were also running in Hmod class. I've seen these guys run before- great cars. #114 is a particularly well-proportioned Hmod- there isn't that sense of the driver being too big for the car that plagues many designs.
Pitted with 114 was the Aardvark, a 1952 Panhard Special that is lighter and faster than almost any other special of the period- and you can tell... it's usually out in front of the pack even though it's one of the oldest Hmods still running.
Kip Fjeld was there with his 1956 Miller Special. Originally built with a Triumph motorcycle engine, Miller installed a Crosley after three or four races and never looked back. Kip has had this car a long time and campaigns it frequently.
Also on hand were Don Baldocchi and his incredible Nardi. Don is the preeminent Crosley engine builder on the West Coast and his own car is evidence of his skill- he's always near the front and he never DNFs.
We chatted a bit with Lee as he checked the oil on the special. Like nearly everything else on the car, the oil pan is a custom-built piece. The car sits so low, Lee couldn't go with the Braje pan nearly every other racer uses, so he had to fabricate one out of a military sump. Though the car is Crosley powered, there is little on the car that is stock Crosley.
There was plenty of other stuff to look at- the event was an annual charity benefit so there is always a good draw.
I believe that the San Francisco Sports Car Club might have been one of the sponsoring clubs- I saw a lot of their stickers.
One of the stranger cars I saw all day was this 1967 (i think) Marcos. I'd only recently heard of these cars and thought they looked pretty funky. Turns out that they are one of those cars that looks better in person than in pictures. Saab Sonnets and MGBGTs are the same way. Funky in pictures but really neat in person.
And this is the story of the track- scrambling to get something fixed before the next heat. There were a lot of really nice cars on jackstands.
Not the Crosley-powered version, but amazing none the less. These Siatas were called 'Baby Ferraris' and it's not hard to see why.
As it got close to the racetime for the group the Hmods were in we climbed the hill to my favorite vantage point..I think it's just called 'Turn 1.' You get a great view of two twists in the track and there's usually plenty of action. We watched a couple of other races up there and there was some excitement, especially for the driver a black Porsche:
Finally the Hmods took their places on the tarmac along with about 20 other cars- all of which sported substantially larger displacements. Unsurprisingly, Osborn was the first Hmod up the hill, running about 8th out of the whole race group.
The rest of the Hmods diced a bit behind Lee. Here's Don in the Nardi (101) followed up by the '54 Panhard (114):
The track is long, and you lose sight of the cars for long periods... at some point I realized that we hadn't seen Lee Osborn in a while. Just then we saw the corner worker pull a yellow flag- car off the track! The race was almost over at that point- we watched the cars parade around the track and then hustled to the pits. When we got there all the other Hmods were pitted- but no Shannon Special.
Don filled us in: Lee had lost a wheel and spun off the track! We stood around and waited, not looking forward to seeing the wreckage, and hoping that Lee wasn't injured. I couldn't believe it when the tow truck pulled the Shannon Special in, minus the left rear wheel but looking none the worse for wear! Not even a scratch in the paint! Lee had broken an axle in the middle of turn 11, just as he was passing an Alfa Romeo Zagato. He spun 360 degrees and went into the dirt, but missed both the Alfa and the wall.
You would never want to hit another car, but The Zagato was a particularly rare bird. Luckily the driver was very skilled and avoided Lee's car. Lee went over and apologized and thanked the driver for not plowing into him. He was pretty shaken up.
Although I'd have rather seen a race with less excitement I was still glad to have finally seen Lee run the car, and I was stoked that, all in all, he got away lucky. It was amazing to see the car outperform the much bigger iron, but as Lee pointed out, it's at the absolute edge of performance now, so there's just no margin for error. He's not sure when he'll be able to run again since the axles were custom made- the last set took a year to get. We stuck around long enough to help Lee get the three wheeler on his trailer and then headed back to Sacramento, visions of sportscars in both of our heads.
As soon as I got home from inspecting the Cupertino Hmod, I posted the pictures I'd taken and the details I'd observed to the Hmod bulletin board where I'd found out about the car. I was promptly contacted by a vintage racer named Mike in Arizona who was also interested in the car. He had a long racing history, and knew a lot more about homebuilts than I did - he'd restored many cars and had even made copies of James Broadwell's Jabro blueprints for other enthusiasts who were trying to build or restore Jabros without the original plans. He had already contacted the car's owner and made an offer.
I was pretty bummed. Now that I'd seen the car firsthand I really wanted it. A Crosley-powered fiberglass sports car was at the top of my list when I first started looking for a Crosley back in 1997. It had been articles about Crosley racing 'specials' in old car magazines that gotten me thinking about Crosleys in the first place. There had been plenty of manufacturers who made fiberglass sports car bodies for the Crosley, so I figured that they had to be out there somewhere. Devin, Almquist, Skorpion, Fibersport, Jabro and probably a half dozen other companies offered bolt-on bodies in varying degrees of style. The first Crosley meet I went to featured two beautifully finished Jabros, so there was proof that they couldn't be that hard to find. I was pretty sad when I tried to sit in one of the Jabros and couldn't get my 6'2" frame behind the wheel!While I wanted a sports car, I wasn't looking for a race car. I enjoy watching the races, but I can't imagine rebuilding an engine after one season of racing, or spending the $ it takes to run a car that you only drive a few times a year. Or dealing with the internecine organization rules and fugly safety modifications required to run on the track these days. I wanted a sports car that looked straight out of 1950-something that I could drive anywhere - the type of car that an amateur might have competed with in the fifties - a sports car that was driven to the track, raced, then driven to work the next week. I also figured that today's road speeds are about as punishing as most tracks were in the mid-fifties! The conundrum I faced was finding a car that wasn't already set up for racing, and one that didn't have any significant history so that I didn't have to worry about modifications for contemporary street use. After 10 years of looking, here was that car. I called Mrs Lowy and made an offer. Mine was about 50% over what Mike had offered, but she wanted to see if he was willing to go any higher. She asked me to call Mike and Carl Kapp (who was helping her sell the car), figure out who wanted to pay what, and to call her back and let her know who was buying it and for how much! I made the calls and Mike was really nice about it. He said that it was clear that I really wanted the car, and, A) I'd already been to look at it, and B) he didn't want to pay more AND pay for gas to/from Arizona to come get it. I called Mrs Lowy to let her know that I had the high offer and that I could pay and pick it up whenever she was ready. It was the strangest way I've ever bought a car.
A week later I borrowed a trailer and the indefatigable Dave Smith and headed out to Cupertino. Mrs Lowy had been looking for any history about the car, but had found nothing. She remembered seeing an old double exposure picture of the car that made the body appear transparent so you could see the running gear through the body, but she couldn't find it. Carl Kapp had mentioned the same photo.
Aside from the car and body, there was also the packed floor-to-ceiling garage which held many of the parts. When we started going through the garage looking for everything, Mrs Lowy's mood would go back and forth. I think she was relieved to get the car out of her driveway, but at the same time was losing another part of her late husband. It felt really awkward, and I imagined Liv in the same situation. Since we really didn't know exactly what went with the car she told us to take anything that seemed like it fit. Dave was convinced that she saw this as a chance to get somebody to clean out her garage! We found a ton of stuff. There was the Dauphine engine, gauges and mystery transmission I'd seen last time, plus lights (still taped from the last race), parts for the quick change, a couple of extra wheels/tires, the missing driveshaft (which turned out to be less than two feet long which is why I couldn't find it last time), several carburetors, the original fiberglass gas tank, racing mirrors, several aviation-style racing seat belts, a rolling metal cabinet filled with spares to be taken to the track, one NOS Lucas fog light, still in the box, extra parts for the Dauphine engine and assorted belts, bolts, bulbs, etc... The major things we didn't find were the seats and windshield. But the most exciting thing we found was a moldy briefcase. There wasn't much in there - the receipt for the quickchange, Lowy's racing license, a few notations on the cost of rebuilding the Dauphine engine and some notes on a 1966 race at Lyndale Farms, Wisconsin, along with the club program.
The program listed one of the entrants as Leo Lowy. He was driving the Robacek I.
Dale Tholen was one of the crop of specials builders that did Crosley proud back in the fifties and early sixties. His first build (currently owned by Bonneville racer Gerald Davenport, I think) was not only a terror on the tracks of 1955, it was one of the best looking homebuilts of all time- good enough to show up on the cover of Road & Track!
As great as the first car was, Tholen soon began thinking of improvements, and had another car built and on the track by the early sixties. That car was the ThunderMug, another good-looking hmod special, currently offered up for sale here. Once again Tholen created an elegant design, although the ThunderMug appears to be much more of a stripped racing thoroughbred than the comfortable boulevard racer the first car was. Tholen's 24 pound fiberglass body appears to owe a nod to contemporary Jabro designs, especially in the rear.
This time out Tholen foreswore the Crosley motor in favor of a handbuilt engine assembly largely based on parts from 3 Maico single cylinder motors. I'm assuming that engine was problematical since the car eventually received a Crosley powerplant, although the original engine is included in the sale.
If the custom powerplant perhaps underperformed on the track, it was responsible for the car's singular name- the engine's unique gurgling sound supposedly mimicked the sound of a flushing 'thundermug' (old-timey nickname for a toilet)!
Dick Duncan is heading up a group of Crosley racing enthusiasts who are looking to have a run of high strength crankcase-to-block bolts specially made for use in high HP Crosley engines. A group of Hmod racers had a set of these run five or so years ago, but they have been unobtainable for some time. They're not cheap, but would be well worth the price if you're planning on turning 7500+ RPMs, like the Liebherr Bonneville Special above (Thanks to John McKnight for the photo!)
If you are interested in a set, the details (from Dick) are as follows:
1) They will make any quantity we want, price depends on the quantity.
2) The last order placed was in 2004 for 300 bolts, (30 sets @10 / engine), the price was $17 / bolt.
3) The best estimate of current price is approximately $20 / bolt or $200 / set at the above quantity.
4) The question is, how much individual interest is there in purchasing these sets. It appears that there are none from the two previous orders available for sale.
5) To firm the quoted price, we need an indication of who is interested in obtaining one or more sets. This needs to be a serious commitment so if you are interested at a price of up to say $250 / set let me know. As before, Don is not making any profit on this and sales tax will not be involved if we have them shipped outside CA.
6) If you want to be involved in the proposed order, please contact me, Dick Duncan, by Email or phone and give me your name, number of sets you want (at up to $250 / set) and your phone number and Email address no later than Monday, June 22.
7) We will use that list and count to get the firm quotation on price and delivery. Each person on the list will be advised of the quoted price and, assuming it is $250 or less per set, be asked to submit his firm order and a 50% non refundable down payment. If we have anyone who decides they do not want to take delivery of their order, the excess product will be put onEbay with a reserve price of 50% of the actual price. For the record, neither Don nor I are interested in paying for or stocking excess inventory or making money on this transaction. I am trying to fill my own and others needs and Don is being helpful as always.
I hope this is not too complicated or confusing, it seems to me to be a reasonable way to work through the situation and solve a problem. Look forward to hearing from interested parties. Thanks for your patience and thanks to Don for his willingness to help out. I have it on good authority that there is no truth to the rumor that he is pulling the Panhard mill to install a hot Crosley. Please feel free to share this information with anyone who might have an interest, obviously, the larger the order the lower the price.
When I first saw photos tagged with the line ‘Help identify this Mystery HMod,’ on the Hmod yahoo group, I immediately thought: Crosley Special. Even though the car was reputed to have last been run with a Renault engine, the scale and style of it screamed Crosley. That’s one thing about dealing with cars that are only 4 feet wide— there aren’t many other cars that match their specs.
The car looked pretty rough. The fiberglass body had surprisingly little damage for a race car, but a mammoth okie hoodscoop had ruined the hood and an odd setback in the dash around the steering looked like an ill advised later modification. Many parts, including the engine and transmission, appeared to be missing. Prominent ‘DSR’ decals (D Sports Racing, the late sixties successor to the then defunct H Modified Class) indicated that the car was being set up for the track at some point after the mid sixties.
Despite the flaws, I was fascinated. Especially intriguing was the frame: a handbuilt tube ladder assembly that would have been woefully out of date by 1960 or so, indicating an early to mid-fifties build, matching the D-Type jag style body. Another point of interest was the rear end—a Halibrand-like quick change mated to what appeared to be a Crosley rear axle. And it was hard to tell from the pics, but the axles appeared to connect to tiny finned aluminum brake drums.
An old racer named Carl Kapp had posted the car on the site to help the widow of a friend find a buyer for her late husband’s derelict race car. It had been sitting, partially disassembled, since at least 1973, and hadn’t been driven since sometime in the sixties. Kapp’s friend, a Chicago racing enthusiast named Leo Lowy, had owned the car since at least the mid sixties when Kapp met him. It wasn’t running even back then. Lowy and Kapp both ended up in California a decade later, Lowy with the car in tow. He died in 2002 and his widow told Kapp that the car had never been out of storage since they’d moved to Cupertino in 1973.
I called Lowy’s widow and made arrangements to see the car. David Brodsky, president of the West Coast Crosley Club and and onetime owner of several Hmods, agreed to meet us since he lived close to the car. I know quite a bit about stock Crosleys, but my knowledge of sportscars, especially homebuilts is pretty spotty, so I was really glad to have his expertise.
The car was pretty much as indicated in Ms. Lowy’s photos. I took measurements at the wheels, and the car turned out to have the same wheelbase/track as a Crosley Hotshot, supporting the idea that the car had Crosley origins. The front axle was late Crosley as was the steering, and the rear axle appeared to be from a Crosley roadster. Some parts- the wheels, belly pan and plumbing, actually looked better than they had in the pictures.
I asked about the many missing parts, and was told that some might be in the garage. Since it was filled floor to ceiling with storage boxes, car parts and home remodeling projects, I could barely get in the door. With my flashlight I could make out some car stuff on and under a workbench. As I squeezed in as far as I could, I spotted what i assumed was the Renault engine on the back floor and what appeared to be a way-too-big transmission under the bench. Moving what I could get to on the workbench, I found a tub containing a wiring harness-- topped with a gauge cluster. Two still-taped-for-racing foglights rested nearby. I started to get really excited, realizing that most of the missing parts were probably buried somewhere. The thing that really concerned me was the driveshaft- there didn't appear to be any spot in the garage long enough to accommodate one-- and this would have had to have been specially designed for the car.
It was getting dark and Ms. Lowy was ready for us to go. I asked her if she had decided on a price, and she said that she was going to consult with Carl Kapp once people had made offers. I told her that I’d talk to him about the parts I’d seen and send him the photos so that he could use them to figure out a fair price—and that I’d like to buy the car if I could afford it.
As we walked down the driveway I asked David Brodsky what he thought.
“Whole lotta work- that’s a big project.”
Fair enough. He's restored everything from Crosleys to Allards, so he oughtta know. I asked what he thought it might be worth.
“Well… honestly?... I wouldn’t take it if you gave it me.”
Another site I check almost every day is Bring a Trailer. The host profiles interesting cars that he has found available for sale, with a heavy focus on vintage sports cars.
This morning, what should show up on BaT but a vintage Crosley HMod project for sale! The Unicorn is a 1952 Crosley special, originally built in SF. I've seen CL postings for this car and tried to contact the owner, but never got a call back. Probably for the best since I have enough projects (as you may have noticed!)
I'm very jealous that whoever buys this car will have access to all of these gorgeous vintage photos of the car in its heyday... I have almost no provenance for any car that I own. Of course the first thing I noticed in the photo above (Laguna Seca, 1957) was that the Unicorn is lined up right in front of the Eyerly Special mentioned in the post below. As cool as the Unicorn is, I'll still bet Eyerly lapped him.
I read an online bulletin board about vintage H Modified racecars pretty much every day. 'H Modified' was the racing class designation (500 - 750 cc) that most Crosley-powered sports cars fell into back in the fifties, when racing a Crosley was something much more common than one might suspect. The Crosley Hotshot and Super Sports models were aimed at the emerging US sports car market, and, despite flaws, did pretty well when first introduced. A bone stock Crosley Hotshot won the very first internationally sanctioned US sports car race-- the 1950 Sebring Race-- and set in motion the dreams of thousands of American sports car fans who suddenly found a true sports car that was within reach of their finances.
That moment when a stock Crosley Hotshot was actually competitive on the track lasted all of about ten minutes. Before long, racers were dumping that heavy steel body in favor of a handmade fiberglass or aluminum one, adding extra carburetors and bigger wheels, and doing everything allowed in the SCCA rulebooks, and then some. By the mid fifties, homebuilt Crosley 'specials' dominated the H Mod class, wiping up the track with the smallbore Euro machines that they were competing against. The mid fifties was the heyday of the Crosley homebuilt, with geniuses like Harry Eyerly racking up win after win, often against cars with twice the engine displacement! Eyerly didn't earn the nickname the Porsche Duster for nothing!
Successful backyard specials (of all kinds, not just Crosleys) were very common in Class H racing all the way up into the early sixties when racing became much more professionalized. By that time high end small displacement racers like the Osca were making even the best homebuilts obsolete, and many one-time trophy-winning cars were stuck in barns, backyards, garages or junkyards because their value as competition cars was nil.
The H Mod bulletin board I frequent is populated by people who never lost their love for those tiny underhorsed racers of yore. Some posters were active racers back in the fifties, and are eager to share their knowledge and their memories. A larger group of posters restore old sportscars and race vintage H Modified cars in historic auto racing events. I pretty much listen and stay out of the way. The knowledge that floats by in any given week is astonishing-- absolutely valueless to 99.99% of even the auto-enthusiast world, but absolutely essential to people who are trying to learn as much as possible about these tiny bolides.
As I was lurking last March, a very interesting post showed up with the header, 'Can anyone identify this car?' A guy was trying to help the widow of an old friend sell a vintage Renault racecar project that had been lingering since at least 1973. There was a link to a few tantalizing photos and a line that the car had originally been built with a Crosley sheet metal engine....
I spend somewhere near 40% of my waking hours obsessing over old cars. Usually, this obsessing revolves around an improbable American micro car from the midcentury period-- the Crosley. My fascination began with a quest to strip down my life by driving the world's simplest car.
Turns out that nothing is as simple as it seems.
An old racer named Carl Kapp had posted the car on the site to help the widow of a friend find a buyer for her late husband’s derelict race car. It had been sitting, partially disassembled, since at least 1973, and hadn’t been driven since sometime in the sixties. Kapp’s friend, a Chicago racing enthusiast named Leo Lowy, had owned the car since at least the mid sixties when Kapp met him. It wasn’t running even back then. Lowy and Kapp both ended up in California a decade later, Lowy with the car in tow. He died in 2002 and his widow told Kapp that the car had never been out of storage since they’d moved to Cupertino in 1973.
