Front row qualifiers for the 1964 Indy 500 were Britain’s Jimmy Clark (in a Lotus) on the pole, American Bobby Marshman (middle)
and American Roger Ward in the Watson Kaiser Aluminum Special.
1964 Watson Rear-Engine Ford Four-cam Leader Card Racers Kaiser Aluminum Special
By 1963, A.J. Watson was itchy. Generally re-garded as the most experienced, most successful designer/builder of Indianapolis-type racecars in the USA, Watson had reluctantly concluded that the reign of his renowned front-engine roadster racecars was in its final chapter. Among his many outstanding accomplishments, Watson’s cars had won five Indianapolis 500s!
The early 1960s presented definitive clarity that rear-engine-configured cars could achieve superior cornering speeds over front-engine cars, yet with less power and far less weight. USA veteran builders of front-engine racecars saw this first-hand. A.J. Watson was watching these developments like a hawk taking aim at a stampede of rabbits. He was studying, and he would act.
In early 1963 Watson went to his drawing board and set out to make a new breed of masterpiece – a rear-engine Indy car that would have a larger displacement, yet slim-line motor to challenge its British counterparts, creating a racecar with superior handling and spectacular power. This promised to be a potent combination.
Overhead view of the Watson Kaiser Aluminum Special shows its new and powerful “slimline” Ford V8 engine,
which produced nearly 100 more horsepower than its best competitors.
With the 1964 Indianapolis 500 shaping up to be the defining duel between traditional roadster-style front-engine cars and the dawning era of rear-engine cars, thirteen A.J. Watson-designed cars were to qualify for the event. Of those, eleven were roadsters. Two were Watson rear-engine Indy prototypes. One of those two was the “Leader Card Racers Kaiser Aluminum Special” on these pages. It was powered by an innovative Ford double-overhead-cam V8 engine. (The sister car to the Kaiser Aluminum Special was powered by a traditional Offenhauser engine, so that on-track performance could be compared).
At the Indianapolis 500 for 1964, for the first time in history the front row grid of qualifiers for an Indy 500 was made-up exclusively of rear-engine cars. Scotland’s Jimmy Clark qualified on the pole in a Lotus 34 (158.828 mph); Bobby Marshman qualified 2nd, also in a Lotus (157.867 mph); and Rodger Ward qualified 3rd in the A.J. Watson Leader Card Kaiser Ford (156.406 mph). The race of a new Indy 500 era was on.
After the green flag on race day, nothing went as expected. Although pole-sitter Jim Clark led for fourteen early laps, a Dunlop tire failure violently destroyed his Lotus’ suspension, but he averted contact with the wall. Bobby Marshman in the second Lotus then took over 1st and stretched his lead to a prodigious 90-seconds, but ultimately his “low” driving line through Turn 1 caused the bottom of the car to contact pavement, ending up in a broken gearbox and oil plug. Follow-up leader Parnelli Jones’ retirement (due to an oil fire) left the race to a charging A.J. Foyt and a chasing Rodger Ward in the rear-engine Watson-Ford to challenge for the ’64 Indy 500 win.
The actual Rodger Ward-driven A.J. Watson Leader Card Racers Kaiser Aluminum Ford V8 Special on these pages was restored by Ron Ward and A.J. Watson himself, to its 1964 Indy livery, with documentations notarized by Rodger Ward. On August 15th 1998, the car became a part of the Malloy Foundation, Inc. private collection.
In 2014, the year of A.J. Watson’s passing, Malloy Foundation chief fabricator Marc Hart and team completed an exacting restoration of the car to its 1964 Indy 500 racing specification. This work was based on extensive historical research, aided by detailed photographs of the Watson Kaiser Aluminum Special that were taken just one week before its 1964 Indy 500 debut. The authentic photos were kindly made available by the Indianapolis Museum, from their archives.
33-car starting field for the ‘64 Indy 500 at the call of Tony Hulman: “gentleman, start your engines.”
Although Ward was turning the fastest lap times, as the race wore on A.J. Foyt’s front-engine Roadster necessitated only two more pit stops for fuel, against Ward’s need for four stops. Why? Veteran 3-time Indy winner Ward, who calculated that his Ford engine would run cooler on alcohol, had converted his engine to run Alcohol (vs gasoline) the night before the 500. Reason: 1) He had apprehensions (as did other drivers) about the danger of gasoline operation in a rear-engine car; 2) Ford’s new V8 4-cam race engines had failures in pre-race testing with gasoline, but ran dependably on alcohol, and with 3-mph faster lap speeds. But a casualty of Wards’ late-night pre-race switch from gasoline to alcohol was Ward’s failure to re-position a fuel metering valve that determined rich vs lean mixture, which led to radically increased fuel use during the 500-mile race, forcing more pit stops than his competitors. Ward would later reflect; “the car was good enough to win but the fault was mine. I set-up the jetting too rich, which caused additional fuel stops.”
Ultimately, only two rear-engine cars finished the ’64 Indy 500, belying their ultimate dominance, as later illustrated by Jim Clark’s runaway win just one year later in the 1965 Indy 500. But the 1964 race was one of tradition, with A.J. Foyt winning his 3rd Indianapolis 500 in a front-engine Sheraton-Thompson A.J. Watson-built roadster.
Rear-engine cars vs classic front-engine Indy Roadsters.
The actual Rodger Ward-driven A.J. Watson Leader Card Racers Kaiser Aluminum Ford V8 Special on these pages was restored by Ron Ward and A.J. Watson himself, to its 1964 Indy livery, with documentations notarized by Rodger Ward. On August 15th 1998, the car became a part of the Malloy Foundation, Inc. private collection.
In 2014, the year of A.J. Watson’s passing, Malloy Foundation chief fabricator Marc Hart and team completed an exacting restoration of the car to its 1964 Indy 500 racing specification. This work was based on extensive historical research, aided by detailed photographs of the Watson Kaiser Aluminum Special that were taken just one week before its 1964 Indy 500 debut. The authentic photos were kindly made available by the Indianapolis Museum, from their archives.
