Riders on the Storm

 Apologies to "The Doors" for appropriating their song title for the headline of this post -- but it seemed an appropriate description of what it felt like to run in the first session of the 2023 VSCCA Fall Finale. The first group was released at 9am, into what seemed like a torrential downpour. By 11am the track was closed, and we ceased activities until the next morning.

(Realizing that the song, "Riders on the Storm" was loosely based on the activities of a serial killer from the 50s, maybe it would have been better to use "Love Reign O'er Me" by the Who, or "Who'll Stop the Rain" by Creedence.)

At any rate, it only rained lightly on Saturday morning. And the rain stopped by noon. Despite the storms, the Voigt Crosley HM Special got on track for five race sessions over the weekend, including representing the Rest of the World against the Commonwealth in the Litchfield Cup. (I dragged down the team's lap average, but we still pulled out a victory.)

Looking forward to next season.

MARTIN TANNER REPORT

(From an undated issue of the H-Modified Racing Club Newsletter)

 

(Image from the front cover of a 1990 issue of the
H MOD Over the Hill Gang Newsletter)

The following is the report read by Martin Tanner at the annual H Modified Banquet, at the Oakland County Sportsman’s Clubhouse on July 30:

In case any of you Formula Vee fellows think you have it easy because you are not allowed to modify your machines, or in case any of you H Modified chaps think it is fun to tinker with a homemade car, I will read this paper which I plan to present next week to the International Society of Automotive Engineers.

When you first design and build a complete car, you have occasional malfunctions, but as you encounter each one, you can draw a moral from your experience.

I will explain a few of the malfunctions I encountered with the first cars I built and also explain the morals I gained from them.

When I completed my first car, I entered a race at Harewood in Canada. Another chap and I jumped into the car, together with a toothbrush and a tin box of tools and took off. No tow car.

At midnight somewhere this side of St. Thomas, the engine made a noise like a string of firecrackers, and then quit running altogether. We pushed it into town and took off the camshaft cover and found that the top of one of the Italian cam followers had been bashed in by the camshaft. We found an old man out in the country – by one o’clock in the morning – who sawed off a piece of a steamboat propeller shaft and made it into a cam follower. He finished it at four o’clock that morning. We got up at 6:30 and drove to the race.

Now, the moral to that story is: Italian cam followers are not as good as Italian spaghetti.

At the race course the next day, two friends arrived. One of them re-set the timing and installed new spark plugs. The other checked the wheel bearings, adjusted the steering tie rods and the brakes. My other friend changed the carburetor jets to give a slightly better mixture. So I started out in the race very well…until the beginning of the second lap. Then I ran out of gas.

The moral to that story is: Always have someone on your crew who doesn’t know anything about automobiles, such as your wife. She’ll probably remember to put in gasoline.

The next race, a month later, we drove as far as London, Ontario, when the engine sounded as if someone was pounding on it with a sledge happer. We towed the car to Jarvis, propped it up, took off the oil pan and found that the number four connecting rod bearing was chewed up. Surprisingly enough, nobody in Jarvis had a new Fiat rod bearing ten thousandth over. So that was the end of that expedition.

We discovered later that the connecting rod itself had been out of alignment when I installed it.

The moral is: If something doesn’t fit in the first place, it probably won’t fit better, later.

The next race was three weeks later. I got there, and the car ran very nicely. For about 3 ½ laps. The noise, this time, was as if a man were chopping up a tin can with a hatchet.

When we got home we found that the trouble was in the oil sump baffle. This oil sump was aluminum casting and the baffle was a sheet of formed aluminum and, according to the manufacturer, was meant to be fastened to the casting with metal screws. What happened was that those screws became unscrewed. The baffle shook loose and the crankshaft had wrapped it all up like a hair ribbon in an egg beater.

The moral to that story is: Metal screws won’t hold in a casting even if the manufacturer thinks they will.

The next lesson I learned was right here near my home in Saginaw – going to Flint and back. A chap went along with me in my Healey and I had driven the little car to Flint and we were on the way back within a few miles of Saginaw – when the whole car shuddered and skidded to a stop. My friend towed me home and I found that night what happened. The tower shaft which drives the camshaft had seized in its bronze bearing. The camshaft stopped revolving but the pistons didn’t. The pistons whacked at the valves and they in turn knocked the camshaft out of its bearings by the roots. Ten teeth had ripped off the tower gear and 13 teeth were gone from the cam gear. That chap came over the next night and I told him what had happened and he said, “Oh, thank goodness that was all. I was afraid it might have been something serious!”

The moral is: Don’t let anything trivial happen to your engine.

In the next race, I can’t remember where, I was sailing around fine. In the 4th lap the engine almost screamed – I was revving up to 9,000 in the 4th gear. Then some chap in a dog of a car passed me on the straight-a-way. I looked at the trees and they weren’t going fast at all. So I looked at the floor and it was covered with a little pile of black stuff that looked like peat moss; it means your clutch lining has disintegrated and your engine is no longer connected to the rear wheels.

The moral is: If you beef up your engine, be sure to let your clutch know about it.

(There’s a gap here, with the explanation that the remainder of the “report” will be spread across the next two issues. Well…I can’t find part two…so I’m picking up with part three from an issue that has “March 1967” handwritten on the cover.)

MARTIN TANNER REPORT

PART 3

In the next race on the third lap, I managed to get out in front. Then on the Straight-away Ollie Schmidt passed me. As we arrived at the next corner and he properly braked down, I dove right in, slid around, and got up beside him planning to out accelerate him coming out of the turn. I shifted down to second gear, and pushed hard on the accelerator and the motor revved up to 9,000 and, just as I planned, I shot out ahead of him. But then there was a noise in my engine. It sounded like a waiter in a hotel dining room with a large tray of dishes and glasses and going through the wrong door. The autopsy showed that the connecting rod had come apart, chopped a hole in the side of the engine, smashed the crankcase, busted the oil sump and twisted itself up like a pretzel.

The moral is: There is a limit to which any engine can be revved but you don’t know ahead of time what that limit is.

I rebuilt the engine and as an added refinement I fixed the intake manifolds so they would be cooler. I wrapped them with 15 layers of asbestos like a mummy, to be sure to keep the heat out. Down at Akron I was rushing around in 3rd place when the engine coughed two times and quit. I had done such a good job of insulation that all the heat was effectively retained in the aluminum manifold. It melted apart and fell into the belly pan.

The moral to that story is: If something is insulated to keep the heat out – it will probably also keep the heat in.

Once I was driving from the boat dock to the Elkhart. Something clattered and the car wouldn’t go. I found that a mechanic I had helping me had installed the propeller shaft but he hadn’t put a lock washer under the retaining nut. So of course, it had unscrewed itself and the shaft fell off.

The moral to that is: Never trust somebody else. Do it yourself.

HMODs at the 2023 Lime Rock Historic Festival

It looks like there will be a place for Hmods at this year's Historic Festival. The cars won't have their own run group, but it's likely they will be gridded with the Prewar group. It should be a good year for Hmods.

 

PUT AN H-MOD ON YOUR WALL

 

It's time that the H-Modified Racing Club started offering some "H-Mod Swag." A little "merch" that you can hang on the wall. (OK...that's enough slang terms for one posting. What we have here are some event posters.)

Thompson 2022
The first poster is from the 2022 Thompson Vintage Motorsport Festival. A great event at one of the earliest purpose-built road courses on the East Coast. The H-Mod turnout was a little light, but the poster is very cool. The poster is 11x17, printed in color on heavy stock. Get one while they last. Pictured is the "Ferret HM Special."

Thompson 2022

Mt. Equinox 2022
Mt. Equinox is the longest continuously-run, paved automotive hill climb in the United States. (At least, that's what they tell me.) This 11x17 poster (color, printed on heavy stock) promotes the 2022 event, which is expected to include three H-Mods - including the PBX Special, holder of the HM record for the event. Pictured is a Siata Spyder that competed in an earlier running of the event.

Mt. Equinox 2022

So...what are we talking about here...?

$15 - One poster, including postage (in the US)
$20 - Two posters, including postage (in the US)

Contact me and we'll set up the details (PayPal or Venmo).

Class H in the Early Days of the S.C.C.A. (As remembered by Sandy MacArthur.)

 

Sandy MacArthur -- with his iconic white helmet, green silk plume, and the names of his races printed around the crown. (Photo from Jim Jenné.)

From the H MOD Over the Hill Gang Newsletter, Volume 1, Number 3 [1990]

Back in the late 40’s and early 50’s, most young men wanted to join the S.C.C.A. and race automobiles. Compared to circle track racing, the appeal of road racing was new and extremely exciting. Most of us bought MGs, which could be had for about $1800, and a helmet for $20, and we were in business. As there were no “production” or “modified” classes, etc., we were grouped only by our displacement so that we all were placed in what would be labeled “modified.”

A little research showed that there was an F.I.A. class for cars 750cc and under Class “H.” The first person I recall exploring this was a New England genius named Candy Poole, who built (or at least entered and drove) a Crosley powered machine called the “PBX,” which was much smaller and lighter than cars most people had ever seen. It opened a lot of eyes at Watkins Glen and other eastern races, and it ran for years and nearly always won.

Candy Poole's Crosley-powered PBX

This got a few of us thinking about the power-to-weight ratio rather than the ultimate horsepower. Specials began to appear which would frequently beat the MGs with only 750ccs. Although eventually about a dozen engines were used, the Crosley was the most popular since you could buy a used, rusted car which would have an overhead cam, over square, five main bearings on both crank and cam, aluminum case, “fixed head,” lightweight 12 inch wheels, and disc brakes on all four, all for about $100. (Few people today realize that all this was standard and mass produced even over forty years ago.) There was soon a booming after-market in manifolds, cams, ignition systems, oil coolers, etc. (Crosley themselves got into the act with a sort of Jeep looking car called the Hotshot and Super Sports which had slightly higher compression, but it was too heavy, had poorly ratioed gear box, and was not really competitive with the specials.)

Another factor that encouraged the special builders was a new product to appear at the time – Fiberglas. No longer did you have to be – or hire – an expert metal beater. All you needed was a nodding acquaintance with an acetylene torch, a little imagination, and an empty garage stall. Road & Track magazine, under John Bond, was always giving us articles on roll centers, under steer and such, and we all thought we were experts.

The Class “H” specifications were practically wide open: displacement limited to 750cc, and to make it a sports car it had to seat two people (try that in a modern Sports 2000!), have head and tail lights, a starter, spare tire, at least one door, a handbrake, reverse gear, and for some larger races it had to swallow an F.I.A. suitcase (about the size of an overnight bag.) This left plenty of room for imagination!

I had sold my MG, so I set about building an “H” car with the help of ex-Californian John Wood. My goals were simple: it should cost no more than a used MG, and it should beat them!

I used a chrome-moly 2 ½” tube ladder frame, Planer suspension in front, using lightened Studebaker parts, an MG T.C. gear box, Henry “J” rear axle, cycle fenders, and 12” mag wheels from Midgets ($10 a piece drilled to my bolt pattern from Pop Dreyer in Indianapolis, where I was then living). Joe Silnes, race car builder also from Indianapolis, made me a simple aluminum body all held on with “Dzus” fasteners so that the car could be stripped down to the chassis in five minutes. The engine received the state of the art treatment: Navy steel crank, balancing, Braje intake manifold, two SU carbs, oil cooler, Mallory ignition, chromemoly straps under the main bearing caps, large oil sump, slightly stiffer valve springs, and different cams starting with Iskenderian, then Harman, and Collins, and ending with Weber. The engine started with 27.5 horsepower and gradually crept up to 55.

Crosley-powered Sparrow (Sandy MacArthur's first H car. Photo published in May/June 1991 issue of Vintage Motorsport. From Sandy MacArthur Collection.)

From all this I put together a car which I named the Sparrow because of its modest ambitions (people associated the name with “English sparrow” some thought it was a foreign car). It was a little overweight (as was I) and really too long, but it did what it was designed to do. Problem was, beating MGs was no longer enough. The Italians had sent over a crop of cars that not only did that but beat my Sparrow just as easily. We were now faced with such 750s as the Nardi (BMW engine), the Siata, Bandini (Crosley), and the Giaur, all of which were made of Topolini Fiat parts and heavily breathed on with lots of garlic so that they went like bombs. The OSCA, from those old pros the Maserati brothers, was yet to come.

I believe Paul Gongelman was high point man in the S.C.C.A. in 1953 racing a light Nardi with a BMW Flat twin giving big bags of torque. Bruce Townsend had built a very pretty little red Crosley special looking for all the world like a shrunken “D” Jaguar – except the latter would not appear for a couple of years. Bruce won Class “H” at Road America for four years running, being clocked at 110 m.p.h.

Bruce Townsend's TXP (Taking first-in-class at the 1957 SCCA Nationals -- against stiff competition, including Martin Tanner, Ollie Schmidt, John Mays, and Sandy MacArthur. Photo from Bo Danenberger.)

A man named Chuck Hassen opened up a lot of eyes nationally at one of the early longer races in Florida by actually beating a lot of Jaguars and such in a Crosley Bandini which looked as sweet as it was quick. A good friend of mine, Jim Riley, bought it and we ran as a team with our colors bright green with white wheels and numbers. This color was supposed to be a jinx at Indianapolis, so it was rarely used and made identification of our team easier for our pits.

When Jim quit racing I bought the Bandini, as it was a lot faster than the Sparrow, which I then swapped for a three wheeled Morgan.

MacArthur's Crosley-powered Bandini in 1954. Photo from etceterini.com.

I ran the Bandini for years and loved it. Another good friend of mine, Craven Smith, was an excellent Crosley tuner, and we did better than our share of gathering trophies. In 1955 I got an entry for the 12 hour race at Sebring in Florida.

About this time Roy Kramer, editor of “Piston Patter” – the Chicago region S.C.C.A. magazine – threw a little quiz question in one issue: “What American made, mass produced, 4 cylinder, water cooled engine would fit right into Class “H” and put out over 40 dependable horsepower, yet can be carried around on one arm? (or words to that effect).  After several days of intense head scratching, I came to the conclusion that it could only be a Mercury Outboard. By this time the Crosleys were getting a bit long in the tooth; nothing remains static forever in racing. The OSCA, which eventually killed the era when just anyone could build a low cost winner, had appeared but was priced about $7500.00 (a good bit higher than the cost of a new Cadillac and only about $2500.00 less than a Ferrari) so they did not crowd all the specials off the track at once.

Inspired by the quiz question, I had a very nice visit with Carl Keikhaefer of the Mercury Company, and he agreed to install an outboard engine in my car for Sebring – for free yet – plus he offered to have his team of professional race car mechanics rebuild the car completely, and then lent full factory support for the race. I ended up with a car which was not only the first, I believe, to use a Mercury engine but also turned out to have the smallest displacement (621cc) ever entered in Sebring before or since. I selected Paul Gougleman, whom I had known since school, to co-drive with me. It was a real thrill to be competing in the same race with Fangio, Moss, Taruffi, Dreyfus and a dozen or so other drivers whose names were household words to sports car fans. I believe we were leading the race on Index of Performance when about halfway through our greatly over stressed Fiat “Topolino” gear box gave out.

An amusing side light of the race happened when Paul was out on the 5 mile track: the carb needed an adjustment so he stopped, flipped off the hood, fixed it, and tore on. However, he did not fix the hood quite right, and while getting up to speed it flew off. He stopped again and put in on right, but not before a 300SL ran over it. When he returned to the pit with this big Englebert tire track running right over the front of the car, we all nearly fainted!

I raced the Bandini another year with good results, but it was getting fatigue cracks in the fatigue cracks. Paul had a Giaur with a 70 h.p. Moretti twin cam for sale so cheap I couldn’t refuse. It always set fastest lap time the first lap but was boiling at the end of the lap. All the “experts” could not fix it, but I felt they must be overlooking some simple things – and they were. We solved the problem and won more than a few trophies that summer.

Sandy MacArthur racing his Moretti-powered Giaur. Photo from Speed Age. (Note: Subsequent owners of the car have identified it as as a Gilco 750 Berlinetta, with a body by Auto-Moto. When it was originally imported by Tony Popeo, it was described as a Giaur, and was powered by a Lancia engine.) This car still exists, and is being sold through Rapley Classic Cars.

While doing very well in a six-hour Road America Fall Race with Bruce Townsend as co-driver, we ruined a main bearing and a connecting rod. I HAD to race two weeks later in St. Louis since the Class H Car Club (a forerunner to the “H Mod Club”) had arranged so we could have our own race. We had always raced with the Porsches, and while we could beat some of them we could never beat all of them, so we could never get 1^st over all, to carry the checkered flag, to appear in the magazines, etc. So here was the race we had all been waiting to run in, and here I was with a main bearing and connecting rod all shot.

However, when I had sold the Bandini, I had kept the Mercury engine, never being sure if Mr. Keikhaefer would want it back someday. For about ten nights after work, I labored mightily to stuff it into the Giaur; I had to make an adapter plate for the Fiat 1100 tranny and clutch, redesign various controls and radiator plumbing, but we made it to the race. To my surprise, we turned faster laps than the Moretti had done on the same course that spring. I took it down to Nassau for their first race, and got a second.

Keikhaefer had now put a slightly better Mercury engine into the Stanguellini car which Briggs Cunningham had imported to win its class at Watkins Glen, which it of course did with ease. With the Mercury engine, it set some international records at Daytona Beach. About this time Herm Behm, a friend of Keikhaefer, had become the Stanguellini importer, and had a factory entry for the 1957 Sebring to drive with Carl Haas. By this time the race was so important that only factory entries were accepted. Due to poor health, Herm found he could not drive, and invited me to take his place. Carl and I won our class which was quite a thrill that every driver does not get to enjoy. After Herm died, I bought his car with the Mercury engine from his widow, and continued to race it with success. (One year I drove in 10 major races at a total cost of $811.00 including tires, entries, parts, hotels, etc. Since I probably was the tightest Scot in racing, this was most likely a record, but it does go to show one reason why Class H was so popular.)

Reggiano-bodied 750cc twin cam Stanguellini, running at Sebring in 1957. (Photo from Stanguellini website.)

The Mercury company told me about a man in Quincy, Illinois who made exhaust megaphones for their outboard that were the ONLY modifications that they approved of. The pipes had to end 42 inches from the engine ports, yet the S.C.C.A. demanded that the exhaust exit behind the driver. I made a large tank (my “expansion chamber”) of paper then stainless with a 4” aluminum pipe to in front of the right rear fender. The tank I crammed into the rear of the right front fender. Maximum revs went from 5500 rpm to 7200 with no loss of torque. It made a new car out of the Stanguellini. At Milwaukee I caught and passed Ollie Schmidt in his 750 OSCA. A lot of oil and soot had condensed in the chamber; and when we were really going it caught fire. I simply could not quit while leading the OSCA, so I concentrated on ignoring the side of the car, which was fortunately away from the officials. I escaped a black flag to win, and the fire burned itself out with only a lot of blistered fender paint. (More on Stanguellini's sports race cars, and MacArthur's involvement with them is covered in a Veloce Today article by Jim Jenné.)

By this time I had become the Stanguellini importer, and was very busy with Formula Juniors, “demonstrating,” racing, and selling cars and parts. However, I wrote to Vitorio Stanguellini in 1958 and told him that if he would enter a sports car at Sebring, I would sell it for him. I let the word out that I had a good entry, and was looking for a co-driver. All he had to do was meet my specs and buy the car for cost (which was not an unknown practice at the time). I sold the car to a good driver, Bob Roloson, and we went down in ’59 to find our competition was two factory made OSCAs and two factory made French D.B.s.

In the race we were ahead and faster than one D.B., passed one OSCA and were steadily gaining on the other. I felt sure that we would end up 2^nd in class, but a light rain came like you only see in the tropics and Bob lost it at speed and hit a bridge support, pretty much destroying the car. Seemingly impossible, he was unhurt.

Scaglietti-bodied Stanguellini (MacArthur/Roloson) that ran in the 1959 Sebring race. (Photo from Jim Jenné.)

That pretty much ended my career in Class H. I drove in a few more races but was too involved in Juniors. And shortly thereafter, everything changed. Racing became more professional, costs soared, “H” class became DSM, and speed greatly increased. The days of the nationwide group of Clever Builders of Super Light Giant Killers was over. But the people who contributed the most to the class and who all made their own cars became and remain Legends.

Candy Poole, the father of the class and one of the very best, John Mays, “the Wizard” who, to my knowledge, was never beaten if he finished, and Martin Tanner, who built six cars with aluminum tube frames which are all still in existence, and who made Saabs look and sound like Offenhausers.

(Editor’s Note [Joe Puckett]: In the interest of H-Mod history, I would suggest the great Harry Eyerly, Don Miller and Red Le Grand be added. Harry because he too never lost! Don Miller and Red Le Grand because they produced many contending cars between them [over 50 in number] and quite a few of these were champions!)

More photos and information about Sandy MacArthur's racing exploits -- along with letters from Sandy that cover this story in greater detail -- can be found on the Etceterini website.

From Croslahti to Goldbug: Evolution of an HM Race Car

 The internet is a ruthless “time-sucker.” If you’re like me, a simple search can easily lead to an evening-long dive into various rabbit-holes. And it’s not unusual to end the session realizing that I never found what I started out looking for.

Which leads me to today’s post. I set out to find more information on the first H-Mods to race at Thompson. (Thompson is the venue for the upcoming 2022 Thompson Vintage Motorsport Festival — June 23-25, 2022, and this year’s Puckett Cup will likely be awarded there.) The first H-Mod sized car to race at Thompson was Abbot Lahti’s Croslahti. The last posting (February 4, 2022) described Abbot and his car: 

In April 1951, Abbot Lahti of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire built a sports/race car called the Croslahti out of a 1947 Crosley sedan with a modified Crosley engine. He started with a COBRA engine, but wisely switched to a CIBA engine for his Croslahti B. Its claim to fame was an unofficial under-30 second run of the half-mile at Thompson -- besting runs made by "Cad-Allards and many other sports jobs with many times the displacement." (Sports Cars In Competition, 1952)

This information was expanded on in the book, “Vintage American Road Racing Cars,” (Pace and Brinker). The Croslahti was built without a body, along the lines of many of the successful Shelsley Walsh hillclimb specials. And the book goes on to state that Abbot sold the car to Jim Hoe, who then sold it to Hank Rudkin. Rudkin modified the car, putting a fiberglass body on it, and installing a supercharger.

It doesn’t appear that Hoe ever raced the car. Based on the Racing Sports Cars site, Hoe was a Duesenberg racer. No mention of a race in a Crosley.

Rudkin, on the other hand, was a small-bore guy. He raced a Crosley Special at Giants’ Dispair in July 1952 — and the car was described as having open bodywork. (Sounds like the Croslahti.) Then he raced in the novice race at Thompson in August — still with open bodywork. In September he ran at Watkins Glen — with a Crosley Special. The entry list describes the car as being in Class 7, while Racing Sports Cars lists it as a "G". (The G classification would be consistent with a Supercharged Crosley.) A photograph in the December 1952 issue of "Auto Speed and Sport," shows Rudkin in his Crosley Special at Watkins Glen, and the car appears several times in an amateur film of the race. From the color film, it appears that Rudkin dropped a gold-colored body on the Croslahti and ran it at the Glen as #49. Racing Sports Cars lists Rudkin as having one more outing with the Crosley that year, at Thompson in October. In 1953 he moved on and started to campaign a Bandini in HM.

The car reappears in 1954, now in the hands of David Findlay. Findlay raced a Crosley in 1954 and 1955. It was usually described as the Goldbug, although Sports Illustrated referred to it as the Golden Bathtub when Findlay crashed it at Thompson in 1954 and managed to get a two-page article in the November 8, 1954 issue. (Looks like Hank Rudkin's Goldbug, so it may have started its life as the Croslahti.) While it wouldn’t be surprising for a rollover to mark the end of an H-Modified race car, Findlay went on to race the car one last time, at the Beverly SCCA Nationals on July 4, 1955. And that is the last documented appearance of the Goldbug.

So...it looks like Abbot Lahti's Croslahti may have ended up as the "underpinnings" of David Findlay's Goldbug — after trading hands from Lahti, to Hoe, to Rudkin, then to Findlay. 

Any clue where the car went after 1955?

Thompson Speedway: Is the Old Gray Mare the “mother” of small-bore racing in the East?

Many of the first "official" post-war SCCA events were held at Thompson Speedway. As early as July 1945 SCCA members came together at Thompson with cars as varied as a Type 51 Grand Prix Bugatti, a Mercer Raceabout Series 4, a Hudson Complex, and a Bugatti T57 Atalante coupe. The field was rounded out with some unlikely race cars, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom 1 Ascot Phaeton, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, an Austin Seven, and a Cord sedan. Not surprisingly, George Weaver's Type 51 Bugatti was the fastest car at the meet.

George Weaver's 1931 Type 51 Bugatti at Thompson, 1949

(Photo from Sandy Leith)

Three more SCCA events took place at Thompson in 1947 and 1948 -- with an odd collection of race cars and sports cars, competing in timed events, match races, and pursuit races. The entries skewed toward large-bore, prewar cars, coupled with a growing number of MG TCs.

In October 1948, George Weaver dusted off a prewar ARCA race car that he purchased in 1947 from its original driver/mechanic, Lemuel Ladd. (Weaver had assisted Ladd in the car's construction in 1935.) Originally known as the Reuter Special -- then the Ladd Special -- the car came to be known as the "Old Gray Mare" under Weaver's ownership. Despite its inauspicious beginnings in the mid-1930s as an American car built from junkyard parts, the OGM proved unbeatable in the SCCA's Thompson events. The OGM finished first in pretty much every 1/2 or 1/4 mile sprint race held at Thompson in 1948 and 1949.

Old Gray Mare at Thompson, 1948
From left: Hal Stetson, unidentified onlooker with a hat and cigar,
John Lothrop, Bill Leith, Betty Bradford

(Photo from Sandy Leith)

The SCCA guys were no dummies, and they quickly realized that there needed to be some competition to keep entries and interest alive -- so in June 1949 they returned to the prewar ARCA practice of running separate classes for cars with different displacement, to make sure the Old Gray Mare didn't win everything. (For perspective, the Old Gray Mare won races with George Weaver driving, with Hal Stetson at the wheel, with Bill Leith driving, with Joseph Bradford in the driver's seat -- and even taking the first "ladies' race" with Betty Bradford at the wheel.)

So...the new class was for cars under 1500cc, creating a place for all those MGs. The MGs ruled the smaller classes to the end of the 40s, but it wasn't long before even smaller cars came out to play. In April 1951, Abbot Lahti of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire built a sports/race car called the Croslahti out of a 1947 Crosley sedan with a modified Crosley engine. He started with a COBRA engine, but wisely switched to a CIBA engine for his Croslahti B. Its claim to fame was an unofficial under-30 second run of the half-mile at Thompson -- besting runs made by "Cad-Allards and many other sports jobs with many times the displacement." (Sports Cars In Competition, 1952)

Abbot Lahti in his "Croslahti B Special." 

(Sports Cars In Competition)

In July 1951 Hal Stetson, one of the many drivers of the Old Gray Mare, brought his Crosley Special to Thompson, winning the 1/4 mile and race in Class 7. By April of 1952 there were five Crosley-powered entries in Class 7 (three specials, and two production cars). Later that year the Crosleys (along with Siata 300BC 750 Spyders) were running in Class 8.

Hal Stetson in his Crosley, the "PBS Special."
(Photo taken at Mt. Equinox)

In 1953 the SCCA recognized the HM class, and the flood gates opened. Crosley specials, Bandinis, Giaurs, Siatas, and the occasional Nardi all started running in HM.

Who do we have to blame for all the resulting H-Modified madness (leading up to DS/R)?

...the Old Gray Mare.