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?