2015 West Coast Crosley Club Meet - Part 1

I'm still recovering from the festivities at the West Coast Crosley Club's 30th Anniversary shindig this past weekend in the Gold Country: three days of Crosley shenanigans, 70+ Crosley fans, 23 Crosleys (or variants) and 160 miles in the driver's seat of a 26.5 horsepower mighty mite really takes it out of you.

Is this Chuck Koehler's Fibersport?

I was poking around on Cliff Reuter's Etceterini site the other day, doing some research on Giaur cars for an upcoming issue of the Tin Block Times (the Crosley club newsletter I edit).  The site is a never-ending source of wonders - no matter how many times I visit, it seems like there is always another surprise awaiting...

Power To the People!

Back in the good old days, many sports car folks had the idea of sticking a bigger motor in a Crosley Hot Shot to get a little more oomph out of Powell Crosley's racing roller skate.

Chuck Klein's Hot Rod Almquist Crosley

Ed Almquist has a long and storied history as a Hot Rod speed equipment pioneer, and the story of his foray into fiberglass sports car bodies has recently been explored in some depth.  Though the story of the Almquist company is becoming better known, the stories of the dreamers and schemers who built themselves an Almquist have gone largely untold.

Chopped Fibersport Crosley HMod on Ebay

This Crosley-powered Fibersport has seen better days, but it still wears the Fibersport 'factory' baby blue livery and the seller claims that the motor ran well when he started it a year ago.

1954 Pebble Beach Race Footage - in COLOR!

Oh what a tease!  The Old Motor blog posted a link to five minutes of beautiful color film of the 1954 Pebble Beach race - probably the best racing footage I've ever seen from that era.  You may remember that I wrote a little bit about the this race when I discovered that Crosley/Hmod racing legend Harry Eyerly can be seen in The Fast and the Furious, a Hollywood movie filmed in part at the race.  And Eyerly's 'Porsche Duster' wasn't the only Crosley-powered car on hand: two Crosley/Siatas and several Crosley specials were also entered.  I believe that one of those specials, #122, driven by Doc Young, was powered by a twin cam Crosley engine that Young had built in his home workshop!  I had high hopes of spotting multiple Crosleys, but alas, I didn't spot a single bit of Cincinnati iron in this footage, although there are a couple of unidentifiable small cars that possibly might have had Lloyd Taylor's baby under the bonnet.  Good stuff none the less.

Little Red Car: Gene Voigt's Crosley Special

Ohio's Gene Voigt was like many aspiring sports car owners of the 1950s: he didn't have a lot of money, he didn't have a lot of racing experience, but he had a dream and determination.

A Crosley-Based Mystery Special from the HAMB - H-Mod???

HAMB user 'Mr Forty' just posted some pics of a handbuilt all-steel race body a friend of his had acquired a few years ago. It came with some Ford V860 heads and matching tranny, but no other running gear - or even any wheels! The measurements match up with Crosley components, and, as John McKnight quickly noted, the steering wheel is definitely Crosley. Hard to say from the pics, but the two largest holes in the dash look like they'd match Crosley gauges too.

The body came with a story (ah, don't they always?) Here's what the owner was told when he bought it:

"Sometime in the late 60's a long haul trucker was in Midwest when he spotted this body in a warehouse. The guy storing it wanted it out of the warehouse, the owner had not been paying storage on it for some time. He said it was a prototype sports car that Ford commissioned but all that was left was the body and a few other items. The trucker made a deal and brought the car back to California where it was stored for almost 40 years before my friend acquired it."

Uh huh. Well, If you count Edsel's personal 1934 Speedster Custom, Ford did make one car that kinda-sorta-but-not-really looked like this, but no one, including the current owner, believes this is a Ford prototype.

But, what is it? The steel bodywork is all leaded (no bondo) and from the description MrForty posted, it sounds like the frame could be Crosley too. Some HAMBers came to the same conclusion I did: it was probably conceived as a Crosley special and then had a V860 stuffed in when the builder realized exactly how heavy all that steel was.

Don't know if we'll ever solve the mystery, but if any group of folks can it will be the HAMB.  One way or the other it's a neat piece of work and MrForty is hoping his pal will build the car based on specials of the period. I'll keep you posted.

Ebay Watch: Hmod, a Hydroplane and a '48 Sedan Body

Thought I'd share some interesting and odd stuff I came across on Ebay while the auctions are still going...

First up is a neat unfinished Hmod in Vancouver, Washington that showed up on Bring a Trailer a few months back.  Fiberglass appears unfinished and that frame looks heavy, but this could be a ton of fun for someone. Comes with multiple engines and what looks like a spare steel crank.  Ends in a day with a $5500 buy-it-now and no bids yet.

In contrast, there is plenty of action in the bidding for this totally boss vintage hydroplane located in Ohio.  If you've read 'Inboard Racing: A Wild Ride' you know exactly how cool these Crosley-powered boats can be.. and this one looks really neat.  Everything looks original (ok, except the Pepsi bottle) - and pretty decent.  Note that the builder used a Crosley 4-in-1 gauge in the dash.  Two days left and it's at $1525 with 9 bids.

I'm actually stunned by the condition of the floorpans under this 1948 Crosley sedan body for sale in Oklahoma.  By all rights this should be a Flintstones special, but somehow this car escaped the fate of most rainy state cars- especially those missing a bunch of windows.  Ad suggests that it'd be a good candidate for 'Gasser-Bonneville-Salt Flats' - and a body this bare would fit the bill for a hot rodder.  It's probably too much to hope that this lil guy gets restored, but at least it'll be saved from the crusher - $152.50 with 3 days left to go.

Harry Eyerly: Movie Star

One other thing I did while Liv was out of town: watched a car flick that's been on my 'to see' list for a long time: the original 1955 Fast and the Furious.  Liv is a movie nut, and she'll watch almost anything, but I couldn't ask her to sit through a movie this bad.  If it weren't for the racing scenes (OK, and Dorothy Malone) I probably couldn't have made it through.

Screenwriter Roger Corman lifted the basics of the plot from Hitchcock's 1942 classic, Saboteur: innocent man (John Ireland), accused of murder, escapes and kidnaps a young woman and steals her car.  As they travel together she begins to believe his story.  In this version, the car is a race-ready Jaguar XK120, and the goal is to drive the Jag in a road race that enters Mexico, and then just keep going south.

Whatever.  The plot is pretty thin and the only thing holding the flick together are the scenes with race cars.  I held out for an hour, almost, but not quite falling asleep, when WHAM - I was wide awake!   When  our hero pulls his Jag into the starting lineup, what should be directly behind him, but Harry Eyerly's legendary #54 Crosley special, the Porsche Duster, with  - I'm fairly certain - Harry Eyerly at the wheel!  After the Jag is out of the way, Harry idles up to his space in line and then rolls offscreen.  It's brief (15 seconds, maybe) but it was awesome to see Eyerly's car totally in context.

I hoped that the car would show up again in the racing footage that followed, but it only flashed by once as the cars took off.  I can't be 100% sure it was Eyerly driving, but it sure looks like his helmet, and, why would they have someone else drive it? 

I watched the movie on Netflix instant play, but it's also on HULU and even on You Tube, although the picture quality is lower on You Tube.  If you don't want to sit through the whole thing, Eyerly comes in at almost exactly the one hour mark; in my book, he's the star of this flick.

Enrico Nardi, A Fast Life

I've been drooling over this book (via the internet) pretty much since the day it was published - at $80 plus shipping that's all I could afford to do.  It came out just as I was editing a Tin Block Times article about the Crosley-powered Nardis, so I was already getting a little bit obsessed with them. I figured I'd find a used copy or a sale, but after two years of looking, nada.  So, tonight I finally bit the bullet and ordered a copy after I had the grim realization that once it goes out of print it'll cost me three times as much.

Two hundred pages and over 300 photos means I'm pretty sure I'll be getting my money's worth, and the few reviews I've seen have been raves.  Speaking of, has anybody else noticed this new video 'book review' trend?  it's odd, and the 'reviewer' for the Nardi book seems way more cranky than he should be - he probably got his for FREE!

The Bogus Lotus

Just a quickie post on a fascinating car I've been watching on ebay all week- the Bogus Lotus!

This was initially listed as a Miller Special, but from the mumblings from the west coast Hmod community, and my own eyes, I'm gonna guess that Don Miller didn't build this baby.

 For one thing, Hmod guru Joe Puckett didn't cite the car as a Miller when he included it in his Big Men Little Cars book, which the seller helpfully photographed.   That's not definitive - Puckett made some goofs in the book -  but I think Puckett and pals would have known if this car had Miller lineage.

 But really, who cares? It's pretty amazing, whoever built it, and the restoration is stunning.  I'm curious why they chose to paint the tops of the fenders gold, but that's a small detail.  Really the car is very tastefully done, and the copious amounts of detail shots the seller added late truly show off the finish and the little things, like the sealed bottom and the hundreds of holes drilled for lightness. 

The car is currently at just over $13,000 with two and a half days to go.  Reserve is already met, so this one's gonna end up in somebody's stocking this year!

Hmod Reunion October 2 at Infineon Raceway

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.

2010 West Coast Crosley Club Meet

 

The 2010 West Coast Crosley Club Meet has come and gone.  The meet was last weekend (September 11-12) in Buellton, just north of Santa Barbara.  We had about a dozen cars show up this year.  That's a bit low for turnout, but the members more than made up for it with quality- the Crosleys on hand included some of the nicest cars in the country. 

Heading that list was the latest issue from club treasurer Ronnie Bauman's garage: an immaculate 1947 coupe.  Bauman has taken the Crosley resto-biz up at least a couple notches with a series of incredible builds. He always starts with solid cars (cars that most would consider 'finished'!) and then makes everything better than new.  He'll spend more on paint and body than most people would have into the entire restoration, and the engines are always fully dressed with period speed equipment.   

 

The end results are stunning.  He's decided that this one had to go up for sale - this is the kind of car I could see going for ridiculous $ at Barrett Jackson.

 

Another car that was new to the meet was Charles Latty's two-tone CC.  Latty lives in tiny Pacific Grove, California- also home to founding club member Mike Bainter.. meaning that Pacific Grove probably has more Crosleys per capita than any city in the state! 

 

Not new to the meet, but still a fresh sight, Fred and Robin Dunner finished a beautiful resto of the Hot Shot they picked up at last year's meet.  The car was nice, if a little tired, when they bought it- now it looks brand new.  The long straight sides on the roadsters can be very wavy... but not on this one.  They kept the clean, custom filled-seam look that the car has had for most of its life.

I contributed another rarely-seen, if not so minty, car to the gathering.  I ended up buying a 'parts' Super Sport at the Sacramento meet a few years ago when Ed Scanlan made me an offer I couldn't refuse.  I already had a '51 SS in boxes and I thought that having one to reference wouldn't be a bad idea since it'd been nearly a decade since I took the other one apart.  truth is that I haven't done anything but move this thing around since I bought it, so I knew it needed to go.  I also realized that I had spares of a lot of the parts that were missing when I bought it, so I added an engine, transmission, radiator, etc to make it an almost complete car.  Apparently I priced it just right because it sold before I even got it off the trailer!

There were plenty of other great cars- Mike and Nancy Bainter brought their 4000 original mile '51 coupe - it looks, runs and drives pretty much like new!  I remember when this car went up for sale about 6 years ago - I thought momentarily about buying it, but immediately realized that it had to go to someone with a better garage than me.  Mike keeps this baby in a fully-climate controlled environment! 

Mike and Robin Stoner brought their funkana-dominating Farm O Road, but had some low-power issues this time out.  The collected Crosley brain trust tinkered with the timing, but no immediate solution appeared.  Even engine guru Lee Osborn (in the passenger seat) was at a loss.  Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like the F-o-R smoked even more than usual, so it may be time for new motor. I asked Mike about it and he doesn't remember where he got the motor that's been in it all these years- just that he dropped it in, fired it up, and off they went!

The West Coast Club has an active racing contingent, including Osborn.  As usual, he brought his 1955 Shannon Special, the same car with which he's been eating Porsches and, lately, even a Jaguar C Type!  I've been trying to catch one of Lee's races for 5 years and I've still never seen him on the track!  I've already got my calendar checked for the Hmod reunion race on October 2, so i'll finally get to see this car in action!

Kip Fjeld and Don Baldocchi will also be running at the Hmod reunion, Kip with the Miller special pictured here, Don with the '53 Nardi he's been tearing up tracks with for a couple of decades.  Kip inherited this car from Hmod great Joe Puckett who got Kip into racing when he was still a teenager!  Kip also scored the buy of the day, picking up an NOS steel stroker crank for probably less than a standard steel crank would go for!
 I didn't get any good pics of the swap meet area- but there was more stuff for sale this year than at any meet I've been to.  You can see incoming club pres Rick Alexander picking up some Crosley magazines from retiring president David Brodsky.  David also sold off a big batch of hop up stuff including the Braje pan, cam cover and exhaust manifold you can see on the table.  Rick brought a Uhaul trailer full of stuff including an intact tin block motor assembly along with a mountain of other stuff.  I picked up an extra speedo, some magazines and a neat license place topper from a Minnesota Crosley dealership!

And beyond the actual swap meet vendors, we had several folks show up with motors! Don Rausch showed up with a truckbed full of V Drive and generator motors (pictured above with Ronnie Bauman), and a young microcar collector from LA yanked ANOTHER V Drive motor out of his trunk a few minutes later!  I'd never seen a V drive motor until Saturday and suddenly I'm looking at three of them!

Longtime club member Gary Loomer brought a matched Crofton and Cushman. he's trying to break up the set- the Datsun-powered Crofton is currently for sale.  if you think a Datsun powered Crofton is unusual, that's nothing... Gary used to have the world's only racing Skorpion!

When the time came for the Funkana, Pat Askren let me be the co pilot in his very-correct CC sedan.  We were fighting a wounded clutch but still managed to take second place!

over half the cars at the meet ran in the Funkana, and the post-competition photo underscores what a nice batch of cars were there.  

Since the meet is so close to Santa Barbara, my sister and her family drove the 45 minutes up for a visit.  I don't get to visit them all that often, so it was a real treat!  best of all was the chance to meet my new grand nephew Cash!  Here he is risking tetanus in my Super Sport.

After the meet I loaded the SS back up (the new owner wanted to pick it up from my house later) and I got a good round of heckling over my trailer.  Yes, its a tiny, rickety POS, but I still managed to haul Frank Bell's wagon all over creation on it last year, and the SS parts car was very secure this year.  Hey, what do you want from a $50 trailer?  
They're just jealous. 
It just so happens that the light is about perfect when we get together for the club Banquet.  I'm usually the last one seated because I'm out shooting pics of all the cars at 'magic hour.'  Above is the 4000 mile coupe.

This is Ardell Johnson's incredible CD wagon.  That interior is original from the factory.. he just touched up the seats with vinyl paint about 20 years ago.  We had a great conversation at dinner about legendary Crosley racer Harry Eyerly who was from Ardell's home town, Salem, Oregon.

 
Here's longtime club member Gary Cochrane's sweet convert.  That custom wood job has been on the car since at least 1956!Just as I was finishing up my shots I noticed other people taking pictures too... and then I realized that one of them had hopped into David Brosky's 'vert to pose for her boyfriend!  This really underscores how differently people perceive Crosleys... can you imagine a stranger hopping into any other restored vintage car and not thinking they were going to get a punch in the snoot?!

The banquet was fun as always, even though we ended on a bit of melancholy note... David Brodsky founded the West Coast club over 25 years ago, and has been elected and reelected President ever since.  He announced that he wanted to step down a couple of years ago and he made it official on Saturday.  He and his wife Aileen have done an amazing job of keeping the club going - and fun - for more than a quarter of a century.  I'm sure Rick Alexander and Ronnie Bauman will do a great job, but it will be strange to think of David not being at the head of the table.  The Crosley Club is one of the only organizations I've ever belonged to, and is by far the one I'm most attached to. Much of that is thanks to David and Aileen, and I can't thank them enough for everything.

At dinner Shirley Bell reminded me that she had brought some of her late husband Frank's Crosley t shirts for me- we're about the same size and she thought I might like them.  That was really sweet, and I'm honored to fly the flag - I honestly can't remember seeing Frank wearing a t shirt that didn't have a Crosley logo on it!  After the dinner I had a beer with Rick Alexander and former TBT designer Mike Blackburn who offered me the spare bed in his hotel room.  I had spent Friday night cuddling with the Crosley motor in the back of the pickup, so a bed and a shower sounded pretty darn good.  And the next day he absolutely refused to let me chip in for the room.

As always: Crosley people; they're the best.