Early Era Indy 500 Cars

By Jake Grubb

Shocking the eyes and ears of thrilled Indianapolis 500 spectators, the explosive roar of the supercharged Novi engines pushing their cars to full power on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s brick surface was an experience unmatched, both before and since. And even though they never won an Indy 500, the Novis’ innovative technologies revolutionized race engine design.

Ironically, the extraordinary Novi engine that powers the rare 1935 Miller-Ford Indianapolis car on these pages did not exist when the car was originally designed by Harry Miller and Preston Tucker for Henry Ford in late 1934. Initially conceived and built under the auspices of automotive genius Harry Miller, this car was one of a stable of ten identical racecars built by Miller and automotive entrepreneur Preston Tucker for Henry Ford, specifically to compete as a Ford entry in the 1935 Indianapolis 500. It was initially powered by Ford’s new flathead V8 engine, which was purposed for use as an Indy showcase, demonstrating the prowess of Ford’s new high-performance motorcars to an expectant public.

But it didn’t work out that way. Although all ten cars were completed for the 1935 Indy 500, they weren’t fully race ready due to insufficient preparation time. Only four of the highly-promoted Miller-Ford racecars were able to qualify for the ‘35 Indy 500 and Henry Ford was furious with the results. All of the cars were vexed with steering boxes mounted too close to the exhaust manifold, which produced heat that caused the steering gears to seize.

Enraged, Henry Ford Locked these extraordinary racecars away in storage. Perhaps with further development and testing, the Miller-Ford Indy Cars would have enjoyed more victorious careers.

In the meantime, by the close of the 1930s, several of the Miller-Fords had migrated to the garages of racing privateers, including Lew Welch, who acquired the Miller Ford Indy Car shown on these pages. Welch replaced the V8 Ford engine with a 270 cubic inch Offenhauser engine, enabling the car to quality and race in the 1938 and 1939 Indy 500, with 6th place and 4th place finishes, respectively!

Like Henry Ford, however, Lew Welch wanted to win the Indianapolis 500 outright, thus he embarked upon a search for a more powerful engine solution. Welch teamed up with race engine expert “Bud” Winfield, who conceived a new and innovative engine for the aging ’35 Miller racecar design. Welch and Winfield then brought on Fred Offenhauser and Leo Goosen, the two men responsible for the already renowned Offenhauser race engine. The magical chemistry of this talented team, led forward by the engine building artistry of Leo Goosen produced an invention like no other; a double overhead cam, supercharged race engine producing over 450 horsepower, yet reasonably compact and lightweight, that would ultimately prove dependable while powering the Miller racecars to new horizons and stunningly high speeds.

Originally named the “Winfield” engine (later changed to “NOVI” because manufacture was in Novi, Michigan), the engine was fitted into the aging 1935 Miller Ford racecar and entered into the 1941 Indianapolis 500. Sponsored by one Robert Bowes, owner of the “Seal Fast” company, the car’s driver was veteran Ralph Hepburn, who quickly found that the Novi engine’s massive power made the car a nearly untamable beast. The V8 caused the tires to spin, burn and smoke if too much power was applied. Part of the problem was that the engine was heavier than the one it replaced, thus upsetting the balance of the front wheel drive Miller Ford chassis. This made the car impossible to drive to full capacity and it negatively affected its handling ability. To help solve the problem, a wooden block was placed on the firewall to limit the travel of the throttle.

Newly branded as the Bowes Seal Fast Special, driver Ralph Hepburn not only qualified the car for the 1941 Indy 500, but ran a safe and conservative race to a 4th place finish. The whole Novi package became legendary, with a notorious reputation for being perilously powerful. And sadly, drivers Ralph Hepburn (in 1948) and Chet Miller (in 1953) both died in practice piloting these legendary racecars. The Bowes Seal Fast Miller-Ford Novi is living history of extraordinary yet dangerous Indy Car innovation.

The fascinating lineage of the Don Lee Special is a true-life story that blends the austere world of 1940s circle track racing with the splendor of the Hollywood Golden years. Replete with the likes of motion picture icons Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck, the Don Lee Special itself becomes a movie star on the Big Screen alongside Gable, Stanwyck and a who’s-who of other colorful actors who spin the tale of a bare-knuckle arrogant race driver who meets his match in a truth-telling female newspaper reporter. Clark Gable, the male movie star of the age and classic beauty Barbara Stanwyck effervesce with the Don Lee Special racecar to create a highly compelling on-screen alchemy, capped with authentic film footage of racing at the Indianapolis 500 with Gable’s character Mike Brannan driving [stunt double, of course].

Importantly, the Don Lee Special was much more than a “movie car;” it was the real deal. A then-state-of-the-art 1948 Kurtis-Kraft KK2000, it was painted for the 1950 movie to look like the Wolfe Special as a resemblance to the car that was used the in the film’s real-life racing sequences. (The actual Wolfe Special, coincidentally, was the car that driver Rex Mays was tragically killed in). The purpose of the movie-version Don Lee Special paint job was to enable MGM cameramen to match “To Please a Lady” movie footage of the Don Lee car to authentic racing footage of the Wolfe Special from the 1948 Indy 500.

Serendipitously, racecar builder Frank Kurtis had begun his career as an apprentice at Don Lee’s Coach and Body Works enterprise, which explains a close professional linkage that existed between the two men. Therefore in later years son Tommy Lee’s Don Lee Special, built by Frank Kurtis, spared no costs in its creation. The Kurtis Kraft 2000 chassis was fitted with a 270 cubic-inch 4-cylinder D.O.H.C. Offenhauser engine.

Top speed was clocked at 130 MPH. Driven by Mack Hellings, it finished 5th in the Indianapolis 500 of 1948 (127.968 mph qualifying speed) and 8th in the Indy 500 of 1949 (123.280 mph qualifying speed). The car continued to be raced until 1959, including at California’s renowned Ascot Park. In one of its last events at Ascot, with Jim Hurtibise driving, “Herk” and the Don Lee Special won the heat race, the Semi-Main, the Trophy Dash and the Main Event; a Clean Sweep and also the fastest time!

From 1955 to 1963, the name “A.J. Watson” signified a mastery of Indy Car design and development that set a new bar for the finest and fastest Indy Cars of the “roadster” era. The superior performance of Watson front-engine oval track racecars superseded the previous late-1940s-to-early-1950s dominance of Kurtis-Kraft roadsters, and remained supreme until the full impact of European-style rear-engine cars took effect in the 1963-65 time period. Watson’s storied achievements were most visible at the legendary Indianapolis 500, where his cars won six times, loaded the grid and finished up front in countless instances.

One A.J. Watson Indy Roadster, the 1958 McNamara Chiropractic Special, changed the course of Indianapolis racing history, even though prevented from completing the first lap of its inaugural Indy 500.

After joining forces with ambitious race team owner John Zink in early 1955, Watson and Zink won the 1955 Indy 500 and also the USAC Indy Car Championship that same year. After winning Indy again in 1956 with a new A.J. Watson car, the Zink team was also successful the following year but missed a win in ’57. Determined to win the Indianapolis 500 again for 1958, John Zink had Watson design and build two top-flight cars for two of the best drivers in the game, Ed Elysian and Jimmy Reece.

Simultaneously, A.J. Watson struck a special arrangement with John Zink to build his own Indy Car with his own resources, on his own private time. As history records it, Zink was okay with this scenario as long as it didn’t interrupt the race preparation schedule and winning objectives of the John Zink Indy Car team objectives.

In late April 1958, after the build of A.J.’s new independent Indy roadster was completed, the car was transported to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on the off-chance that it might find a buyer for the 1958 Indy 500. Sure enough, A.J. found an interested party in one Lee Elkins, shortly before the beginning of qualifying for the 1958 Indy 500 in mid-May. Elkins, owner of the McNamara Freight Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, purchased the new Watson Indy car with no engine. But after quickly acquiring a competitive Offenhauser power-plant and adding the special skills of his McNamara crew chief Floyd Trevis, the new Watson roadster was rapidly assembled and race prepped. It was then handed over to veteran driver Dick Rathmann, who shocked competitors by qualifying the car on the pole at 145.974 mph for the 1958 Indianapolis 500!

According to mechanic Bob DeBishop who witnessed subsequent events, Rathmann’s qualifying success with the new McNamara car was met with goading and needling from Zink’s fastest driver, Ed Elisian. Owing to Elisian’s taunts, practice sessions preceding 1958 Indy qualifying reportedly became duels between Elisian and Rathmann, with Elisian setting fastest single-lap time but Rathmann producing the best 4-lap time, capturing the pole position.

John Zink was angered because for A.J. Watson’s independent project car to qualify on the Indy 500 pole was an embarrassment to Zink and his team, who had intended to dominate. Worse, Ed Elisian continued to needle driver Dick Rathmann all the way to race day, insisting that he would lead the first lap.

The start of the 1958 Indy 500 saw Rathmann in the McNamara lead into Turn 1 and through Turn 2, but with the field charging down the long backstretch Elisian pulled alongside Rathmann on the inside and gained a slight lead. Determined to be top-dog on the first lap, Elisian overpowered into Turn 3, losing control and spinning into Rathmann which slammed the McNamara into the wall and knocked out both front-running Zink team cars. This tragically triggered a 16-car chain reaction of collisions behind Elisian, causing Jerry Unser to go over the wall, several smash-ups and driver Pat O’Connor’s car to rollover and explode into flames, killing him instantly.

Miraculously, all fifteen other drivers survived, some with injuries, including Rathmann, but the McNamara car was virtually torn in half. Its illustrious Indy pole-setting accomplishment was forever star-crossed by a reckless act on the first lap of the 1958 Indianapolis 500. The pile-up ruined the chances of John Zink’s 2nd and 3rd place qualifying cars (Ed Elisian and Jimmy Reece), both top-flight drivers in state-of-the-art Watson roadsters.

Blaming the mishap on the competitiveness of A.J. Watson’s part-time Indy Car project [the McNamara] Zink was enraged and severed his relationship with Watson. Soon after, A.J. Watson teamed-up with veteran Bob Wilke who formed Leader Card Racers in early 1959. Ironically, the Watson-Wilke relationship produced a 1959 Indy 500 win, three more Indianapolis victories, a USAC Indy Car Championship and countless racing successes over the next ten years. Looking back, it was the A.J. Watson McNamara Chiropractic Special that inadvertently forged what became the juggernaut of Watson/Wilkie and thus launched the dominance of A.J. Watson Indy roadsters for the next half-decade.

Epilogue

Incredibly, the multi-car first lap accident at Indy ‘58 was only the beginning for the McNamara Special. The car was revived for the 1959 Indy 500, carrying driver Dick Rathmann to 4th in qualifying, but a pit fire during the race dropped the car to 20th in that year’s final results. For 1960, new owner Jim Robbins entered the car as the #97, painted in silver livery. Driver Rathmann achieved a 4th-place qualifying position again for the 1960 Indy 500, only to drop out of the race with a brake line failure. In 1961 came a 6th-place qualifying spot and 13th-place finishing position, once again with driver Dick Rathmann. Robbins campaigned the car one more time in 1962, this time as #91 with maroon and white-trim livery. Veteran driver Jim Hurtubise qualified the car 29th and finished a highly respectable 13th in the Indy 500 at a time when newer rear-engine cars were becoming dominant. 

In ’62 Jim Robbins sold the #91 to Jack Conley, a super-modified and USAC Champ Car driver, who converted the car into a Modified class racecar. In this configuration the car was soldiered on for nearly ten more years, until it was retired in 1971.

In 1981, Jack Layton from Torch Lakes and Howell, Michigan, purchased this venerable racecar and restored it to its original 1958 silver livery. Later, in 1990 Jack repainted the car to the specification of its 1959 Indy 500 color scheme, the maroon and gold McNamara Chiropractic livery. In the 1992-1993 period Layton sold the car to Lowell Blossom of Charlevoix, Michigan.

In January 2005, Tom Malloy purchased the Watson McNamara Special, chassis #4 roadster from Lowell Blossom and undertook its complete restoration, retaining its 1959 Indy 500 colors of maroon and gold, as the #73 McNamara Chiropractic Special.