Is it time to dig up the Little Digger?

Over the course of three years, 1957-1959, the Little Digger was unbeaten in the HM class on the West Coast. Built by Chalmers Hall of Phoenix, Arizona, the little Crosley-powered Special took first-in-class honors in 10 of its 12 races (failing to finish in the other two events).

Hall told Sportscar Graphic that his intent in building the car was simply “to beat all the other Class H Specials.” His winning record earned Hall and the Little Digger the SCCA 1958 Pacific Coast Championship in Class H modified. In addition to Hall, driving responsibilities were shared by Bill Beck, Boyd Hough, Bob Baker, and Don Scott.

But after the 1959 season, the car disappeared from the record books. What happened to, and where the Little Digger is today, is a mystery.

The HM frontrunner was built from a combination of custom and off-the-shelf components, its ladder-type chassis constructed from 1-¼-inch 4130 chrome-moly tubing with seven main cross members. Both front and rear suspensions used semi-elliptic springs with Columbus shocks. The rear end was from a Crosley Hotshot, with a torque tube and a 5.17:1 final drive ratio. The racer had disc brakes all around, with 12-inch wheels in the front and 13-inch wheels in the rear.

Power came from a modified Aerojet-Crosley with a “special one-of-a-kind Clay Smith camshaft,” steel crank, lightweight tappets and modified ports, with a Braje valve cover. It had a 39DC03 side-draft dual-throat Weber carburetor, an intake manifold custom made from tapered tubes, Scintilla Vertex mag, an exhaust patterned after the one on Ken Miles’ “Flying Shingle,” and it delivered 55 bhp at 8500 rpm.

Transmission was a modified MG TC unit with a Morris pressure plate.

The body was a handmade aluminum shell, formed using a minimal amount of surface changes and a very small frontal section in order to improve aerodynamics. Weighing a mere 760 pounds (wet), the Little Digger’s weight was evenly distributed, with 48% front and 52% rear with driver. Wheelbase 84-inches, overall length 121-inches, width 50-inches, track 44-inches, and height 33-inches. Speed at the quarter mile was clocked at 84.6 mph, and top speed was 114 mph.

Racing Sports Cars has as its last listing a November 1959 outing in El Paso, with Don Scott driving. Hall and Scott went on to design and build the Hall-Scott Special – a small, low-slung racer with a rear-mounted 635cc Lloyd engine and Del Orto carburetion. Asked about the car, Hall said, “All I can say about the thing at this time is that it will either be the fastest H modified around, or else it will be a beautifully-built, complete flop.”

Although Joe Puckett includes the Hall-Scott Special in his list of “Miscellaneous H Mod Specials of the USA,” no additional information can be found on the car.

A 1960 Sportscar Specials Trend Book suggested, “The Digger will probably be campaigned by Norman Scott, while Chal Hall unloads his new charger.”

So, with Hall’s interests shifting to his new project, the Little Digger was passed on to Norman Scott – but no record exists on Racing Sports Cars of Norman Scott piloting the Little Digger. Instead, it appears that he continued to campaign his Porsche 550 RS through 1960.

What may have happened was listed in the description of a Giaur sold by Fantasy Junction in 2009. The description states:

Hall took possession of BT-030 in Los Angeles and drove with the trailered Giaur to Mexico where he competed in a road race. This race would prove fateful as Hall subsequently ended up blowing the Giannini engine, throwing a rod after only a short period of time in the race (owner interview with Hall, 2002). Hall discarded the engine and transplanted the specially built 750cc Aerojet engine (a highly modified DOHC Crosley 4 cylinder engine) that had formerly been in the HM class winner, Little Digger…

Hall competed in a series of races throughout the west coast including the Tucson-Pacific with #13 and is featured with a 2nd place on pg. 35 of the December 1959 SCCA issue racing against Little Digger. Hall owned the Giaur until the early 1960’s when he sold it to Walter Walton of Pleasanton, Calif. Walton sold the car to Raffi Minasian in 1973. In 2009 it was sold to a collector in Greece.

The H-Modified Racing Club welcomes any information – stories, photos, or recollections – about the Little Digger. And if you know where it is today…we’d love to know that as well! 

HMOD Races at Thompson

Thompson is really the cradle of HMOD racing on the east coast. (Entry lists as early as April 1953 list HM entries -- including Hank Rudkin, Candy Poole, John Ingleheart, and Bob Deshon.)

The 2022 Thompson Vintage Motorsport Festival is going to feature a return of several of these diminutive racers. Registration hasn't started, but three cars have already committed to attending the races. The ex-Candy Poole PBX, winner of the first SCCA H-Modified National Championship in 1954 will be on the track, as will an early Jabro Crosley Mk I, and a one-off Crosley-powered HM special. (And there's plenty of room for more.)

Check back for registration information. It should be posted on MotorSportReg in January. See you there.

The Unicorn Must Be Out There Somewhere

The "Unicorn," a Crosley-powered HMOD that was built in 1952 sold on Bring-a-Trailer back in 2008. From the description it was an interesting car -- with a history of running in the inaugural races at Laguna Seca and at Pebble Beach. 

In 2008 it was described as a basket case. It would be interesting to know where it is today. It's been described on several sites:

Crosleykook Blogspot

Vintage Race Car

Sports Racer Net

Stefan Vapaa Takes Home the Puckett Cup

 After a brief (eight year) hiatus, the Puckett Cup was awarded in 2021. 

A standing-room-only audience (yes...a couple of people were standing) watched as Stefan Vapaa took the honors and went home with the cup. The decision to award the cup to Stefan was unanimous. He clearly satisfied all the qualities that make for a Puckett Cup recipient; "on-track performance, presentation, and attitude/interest in H-Mod racing."

The Puckett Cup was awarded at the prestigious Mossbacks Bar & Grill in Put-in-Bay, Ohio on a damp evening prior to the running of the Put-in-Bay Sports Car Races. (The races were originally scheduled for September 22-23, 2021 -- but were pushed back to the 23rd and 24th because of the rain.)

Four HMODs were registered for the races at Put-in-Bay, but Kurt Marquardt was unable to compete when his Saab-powered Jabro MkIII suffered a rear-end lockup during tours of the original road course. While Stefan's Saab-powered Quantum Two seemed a shoe-in to take away HMOD honors, an electrical gremlin took his car out of the running -- allowing the two remaining entries (both Crosley-powered) to take the first (Kevin Clemens' Jabro MkI) and second (Richard Campbell's Voigt Special) positions.

Stefan Vapaa (Quantum Two)

Kevin Clemens (Jabro MkI)

Richard Campbell (Voigt Crosley HM Special)

Kurt Marquardt (Jabro MkIII)

(Photos by Bill Stoler)

A Pair of Crosley-Powered HMODs at Put-in-Bay

 Despite the rain (lots and lots of rain), the 2021 Put-in-Bay Road Race Reunion was a big success. The events, from the car show and tour of the original road course on Tuesday, to the races on Thursday and Friday, were well attended. And the organizers did a great job of setting things up -- then changing them on the fly when the weather was less than cooperative.

Five HMODs attended the events -- four to race, and a fifth to show. 

More descriptions and photos will be in later posts -- but the video above shows a couple of the Crosley-powered HMODs on the airport course on Thursday. The first car is a Jabro MkI, and the second is the Voigt/Crosley Special.

Voigt Crosley LRC Returns to Ohio

 

Four small-bore racers are expected to be stand-outs at this year’s Put-in-Bay Sports Car Races. They are H-Modifieds, meeting the SCCA specifications for this class (500-750cc engines, two seats, room for a spare wheel, and a door). H-Mods were a popular racing class in the 50s and 60s, often drawing 12-15 cars to events. (Put-in-Bay hosted an all-HMOD race in 1956, and in later years the event typically drew 8-12 HMODs.) Many of the entries, like the car pictured above, were designed and built by individual enthusiasts who saw the H-Mod class as their way into racing.
 
The Voigt Crosley LRC was built in the late 50s/early 60s by Eugene Voigt of Defiance Ohio. While its design incorporates many of the elements of the Jabros described in earlier postings, it is a true "one-off" race car. The car's engine, drivetrain, and suspension are all Crosley – but the frame is built-up tubing, and the body is a combination of fiberglass and aluminum. Gene spent a couple of years working on the car – with a break when he briefly moved from Ohio to Florida, then back again. It's unclear whether the car was ever raced, but the photo below (taken by Rick Yocum) shows Jim Ehlinger piloting the car in a gymkhana (we call them autocrosses now) in the mid 60s. It was probably an event sponsored by the Fort Defiance Sports Car Club. 

The car was sold in the early 1970s and dropped out of sight. Somewhere along the way it was acquired by Ray Heppenstall, an accomplished race car driver and designer. It changed hands a few more times, until it was restored for vintage racing and made its track debut in 2012. The Voigt Crosley LRC has since raced at Lime Rock Park, the Hershey Hillclimb, and Thompson Speedway. Put-in-Bay will be the car's first opportunity to race in its home state of Ohio...a long time since Gene Voigt first sat in the car in his backyard in Defiance.

Oh...as for the LRC. That stands for "Little Red Car."

Quantum Two: The Second Battle of Lake Erie

Some cars have to be seen, and others lead to auditory sensory overload. For those of you who speak “Boston,” this two-stroke, Saab-powered, H-Mod is wicked loud! And it’s wicked fast!

 
Over 150 cars are expected at this year's Put-in-Bay Sports Car Races. Everything from Jaguars to a Berkeley. To make your life simpler, we'll be sharing information on some cars that you won't want to miss. Why are they not to be missed you ask...? Because they are some of the smallest among the small-bore racers. The HMODs.

Not surprisingly, there was a Quantum One before the Quantum Two. Both (and the three cars that followed the Quantum Two) were designed by Walter Kern, an engineer who trained as a nuclear physicist at MIT. Kern took high science into the design of his race cars – working in his spare time with Al Conrod of Itek Corporation and Jack Soumala of the MIT Instruments Lab on an IBM computer to design a chassis with neutral steering. Designed as a pure racer, the Quantum Two wears only the most basic aluminum bodywork, and is powered by a water-cooled, three-cylinder Saab two-stroke engine. (Yes…that’s what you hear.) The Saab components came from Bob Wehman (who was General Manager of Service and Spare Parts for Saab Motors, Inc.) and Ralph Millet who was President of Saab Motors. Russell Blank of Eugene Engineering Corp. built the chassis. The suspension was believed to be a standard Saab setup.