Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years (12 page)

A year later, still loaded with tobacco and brandy, he had won the
Mille Miglia, beating a factory-entered Mercedes-Benz 300SL driven
by German professional Karl Kling. Bracco would later attribute his
victory to thinking-as he powered through the rain-swept Futa and
Raticosa passes high in the Apennines-about how the German SS
had massacred Italian partisans in the recent war and how his victory
would help avenge their deaths.

Houle piled in beside Bracco, whose Ferrari had been delayed with
mechanical trouble. The Italian rocketed away from the wrecked
Lincoln. Running 140 mph with his foot flat on the throttle, Bracco
asked Houle to hold the steering wheel while he lit a cigarette.
Vukovich had asked poor Houle to drive on a lark. But Giovanni
Bracco was serious.

The race ended, minus a shaken Houle, a mildly soused Bracco,
and Vukovich, and with a victory for the aforementioned Maglioli.
But like the first four Mexican races, the toll had been high. A local
driver named Hector Palacios lost both legs in a high-speed crash
that killed his navigator, Vincente Solar. Four other drivers, a second co-driver, and two spectators also died. Among them was
English expatriate Elliot Forbes-Robinson, a popular sports car
driver from Los Angeles who was serving as navigator for Jack
McAfee, another top West Coast road racer. They had been competing in a powerful Ferrari entered by multimillionaire playboy
John Edgar, whose team of big Italian machines was dominating
amateur competition in California.

Unable to control the crowds and the ever-increasing speeds, the government cancelled the Carrera PanAmericana de Mexico. Four decades
later it would be revived, in name only, as a rally for vintage cars.

While Vukovich and his Lincoln teammates were escaping various
disasters south of the border, Jim Travers and Frank Coon were back
in Los Angeles plotting a new assault on the Indianapolis 500. Car
owner Howard Keck had decided that the now-aging Fuel-Injection Kurtis-Kraft had to be replaced. This was fine by Travers, who had
secretly called the car the "Toonerville Trolley," referring to what he
believed to be builder Frank Kurtis's archaic fabrication techniques.
There had been bad blood between Kurtis and Travers from the start,
with both claiming to have created the so-called roadster design for
Indy cars. While Travers no doubt had a strong influence on the conceptualization of the car, Kurtis had in fact developed two others
using the general theme prior to building Keck's. Vukovich continued
to call the much-honored race car builder "Cold Roll Kurtis," thanks
to the steering failure that had cost him the 1952 race. He and the
Keck team called the Kurtis operation the "blacksmith shop," which
was unfare, since he employed excellent craftsmen and, say what one
might about his overall designs, the detailing and finish on Kurtis
products was first-rate.

Kurtis countered that the Keck team had insisted on an unproven,
seldom-used Manning steering gear, which was at the root of the
1952 problem. Still, the aged car that had dominated the last three
500s and had revolutionized speedway design remained a bone of
contention between its builder and its crew and driver.

Nevertheless, the Kurtis-Kraft Company on Alger Street in Los
Angeles was booming with orders. Twenty-one of the thirty-three
cars in the 1954 500 had come from his shop, and seven of the top ten
finishers, including Vukovich's winner, were fabricated by this brilliant, self-taught son of a Croatian blacksmith. Clearly, until somebody came along with a better idea, Frank Kurtis's roadster concepts
were the cars to beat at the Indianapolis 500.

Travers was bound to produce that better idea. Backed by Keck,
he sketched out a plan for a fully streamlined car with enclosed
bodywork. Early in 1954, Mercedes-Benz had entered international
Grand Prix racing with revolutionary streamliners that had helped
world champion Juan Manuel Fangio and his young teammate,
Stirling Moss, dominate the season. While Mercedes-Benz would eventually abandon the full-bodied cars because of their extra weight,
their strange aerodynamic behavior (a mystery in those days), and
driver complaints that they could not see the front wheels, the
streamliner idea seized the Indianapolis crowd. Several car builders in
Los Angeles embarked on plans for just such swoopy machines,
including Travers and Coon.

But rather than depend on the time-honored four-cylinder
Meyer-Drake-still known as the Offenhauser or "Offy"-Keck
underwrote Travers's idea for a radical new power plant. It would
require the financial muscle of an oil mogul like Keck to finance such
a project. Leo Goossen, the widely respected designer/draftsman for
Meyer-Drake, was commissioned to lay down engineering drawings
for the radical new engine.

Rather than an in-line four-cylinder like the ultra-rugged "aircompressor" Offy that had been the standard power source at
Indianapolis since the mid-1930s, the Keck team planned on a compact three-liter V-8 to be supercharged by a Rootes-type blower. A
similar supercharged system had been employed successfully by
Wilbur Shaw in his Italian-built Maserati, which had won the 500 in
1939 and 1940.

Sadly, the idea for the engine arose at roughly the same time that
the much-respected Shaw, who was then serving as president of the
Speedway, died in a plane crash, in late October 1954. He was returning home to Indianapolis from a business meeting in Detroit.

Working with expert designer Norman Timbs, Travers created several experimental body shapes and tested them at the CalTech
University wind tunnel to gain maximum efficiency. This was two
decades before anyone thought of using "ground effects," wherein the
airstream would be used like a reverse wing to literally glue a racing
car to the pavement. Timbs and Travers were instead seeking the slipperiest shape possible to permit maximum speed on the straightaways. But Travers added one fillip-a small wing, attached to the tail, that could be used to adjust weight on the suspension as tire wear
and fuel load changed during the race. This may have been the first
wing of any sort-now standard equipment on all race cars-ever
tried. Travers also was the first to attempt so-called weight-jacking, by
adjusting the suspension to equalize poundage on all four wheels. He
and Coon did this with the Fuel-Injection Special by setting agricultural scales under the wheels, then adjusting the torsion bars and
shock absorbers accordingly.

The actual construction of the radical new streamliner was
assigned to master fabricator Quinn Epperly, who, following Travers's
instructions, worked with lighter chrome-molybdenum tubing to
shave 75 pounds from the standard Kurtis-Kraft-style tubular chassis.
Another 35 pounds was carved off the car by using a special aluminum differential-a critical pounds amount considering that the
full-fendered body work would add an extra 150 pounds to the car.

As 1955 arrived, Travers, Goossen, Coon, and Epperly were racing
against time to build both a new car and a new engine from the
ground up. They believed they could finish the chassis and body by
May, but the vastly more complex issue of creating a completely new
engine remained a question.

Meanwhile, the automobile world's attention had turned eastward,
where the Detroit industry was making massive strides in performance. Chrysler had introduced its radical new 300, a lovely two-ton
coupe carrying a 300 horsepower V-8 engine. Two of these brutes
would be turned over to Karl Kiekhaefer, the diminutive, tough-talking
Wisconsin industrialist who was manufacturing his highly successful
Mercury outboard engines. He then hired former bootleggers
"Fonty" Flock and his brother, Tim, to drive his cars in the NASCAR
"Grand National" stock car series, which was exploding in popularity.
His Chrysler 300s went on to dominate big-time stock car racing,
winning twenty-four of thirty-eight Grand Nationals during 1955.
The upstart series was being run by "Big Bill" France, who rose out of his modest Daytona Beach gas station operation in 1947 to become
one of the richest, most powerful men in worldwide sports. France
had been tossed out of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway pits in
1954 by crusty chief steward Harry McQuinn. McQuinn was a
leader in the "Chicago Gang" of ex-drivers, promoters, and track
officials who maintained de facto control of the American
Automobile Association's racing policies. Competition outside the
approval of the AAA was branded as "outlaw." Participation in races
unsanctioned by the AAA meant instant expulsion, as had happened
to the 1948 500 winner, Bill Holland, who had been discovered racing in a Florida stock sprint car race under an assumed name and was
banned for two years. He, like many other professionals, felt forced to
compete in "outlaw" events to make a living, there simply not being
enough AAA-sanctioned events to generate a reasonable income.

McQuinn had tangled with the wrong man in Bill France. Already,
France's Grand National stock car series was running successfully up
and down the East Coast, and major Detroit manufacturers like
Hudson, Oldsmobile, Ford, and Chrysler were heavily involved in
supporting teams like that being operated by Kiekhaefer. A whole
new cast of ex-bootleggers, including the zany but talented Flock
brothers, Curtis Turner, Lee Petty, Junior Johnson, and Herb Thomas,
were exploiting skills honed as haulers of "white lightning" to become
masters at controlling France's hulking "stock car" sedans and convertibles in his woolly, action-packed races.

France had vowed eternal revenge after being ejected from Gasoline
Alley. By the end of the year, he was seeking financing for a giant, 2.5mile high-banked "super speedway" in Daytona Beach that would
ultimately rival Indianapolis as a world-famous motor sports venue.
The foundation for the incredible rise of the NASCAR "Winston Cup"
(now Nextel) was being laid based in part on McQuinn's arrogance.

As the horsepower race gained speed in Detroit, the once-proud
Chevrolet division of General Motors was losing market share to Ford. Chevrolet was looked upon as an old lady's car, thanks to its
tepid, antiquated Blue Flame Six power plant. But in early 1955, an
engineering team headed by bright, aggressive Ed Cole-who would
rise to the leadership of the corporation-designed and built the ultimate, mass-produced V-8 engine and introduced it on a fresh lineup
of Chevy sedans and the Corvette roadster.

The engine, to be known forever as the "small-block Chevy," was
lighter, more efficient, and potentially more powerful than anything
the industry has seen. Employing a lightened push-rod valve-train
and an alloy block, the new 265-cubic-inch "Turbo Fire" 180 hp V-8
version would quickly be embraced by the racing crowd. Within
months, hot-rodders would be developing over 300 hp from the
engine. Still in production to this day, the "small block" has been sold
by the millions and must rank as the most brilliant mass-produced
passenger car engine of all time.

While the liberal press was chastising Eisenhower's secretary of
defense and former GM chairman "Engine Charlie" Wilson for his
crack that "what's good for General Motors is good for the country,
and vice-versa," his beloved corporation was about to rise out of its
lethargy. By the end of the decade, it would control nearly 70 percent
of the domestic car market. This revival could be attributed, at least
in part, to the horsepower found by Cole and his Chevrolet engineering team. In an era when postwar optimism and the resulting
technology boom had led to demands for high performance on the
highways of the nation, the breakout of Chevrolet-and of its equally
dowdy partner, Pontiac, with its "wide track" advertising campaign
and its ultra-fast Bonneville sedans-led the way to a new world of
speed, power-and danger.

In the early months of 1955, Detroit's elite ad agenciesChevrolet's Campbell-Ewald, Pontiac's McManus, John and Adams,
and Chrysler's Young & Rubicam-geared up to force-feed glamour
and performance to the American public, the racing season slowly accelerated to full speed. Bill France's fledgling stock cars were competing on a strange rectangle formed by Florida's Highway AlA,
south of Daytona Beach, connected to a stretch of Atlantic Ocean
beachfront. It would be the scene of major confrontations between
factory-supported teams from Chrysler, Ford, Hudson, Oldsmobile,
and Chevrolet.

Farther to the north, sprint cars, the smaller, more nimble versions
of the AAA championship cars, were beginning to roll. The Offypowered machines served not only as training vehicles for young men
aspiring to Indianapolis, but as income sources for many established
professionals. Eastern Pennsylvania was a hotbed of such competition, and tracks like the half-mile at the Williams Grove Amusement
Park, south of Harrisburg, and Langhorne near the New Jersey border were favored venues.

Unlike the aged horse tracks that generally served as battlegrounds
for the championship cars, both Williams Grove and Langhorne were
built for automobile racing. Langhorne was the older of the two, having been constructed in 1926 on a plot of sloping swampland. In contrast to the conventional rectangular shape of most American
speedways, Langhorne was a perfect one-mile circle. Sixty feet wide,
with a surface of dirt soaked black with used engine oil, drivers either
loved or hated the "Horn." Some praised the fact that one could circulate in constant, 100-mph powerslides. Others cited the dangers of
the downhill section beyond the starting line, called "puke hollow."
There, the swampy moisture wicked up through the dirt, causing
immense ruts to form under spinning wheels. A poor entry into
"puke hollow" could send a race car tumbling high over the wooden
fence and into the copse of trees bordering the track.

Langhorne stood as the ultimate test of bravery-the Eiger face of
motor racing. While some avoided it and others drove it with trepidation, men like Jimmy Bryan and "Iron Mike" Nazaruk embraced its
demand for raw, unbridled cojones.