Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Grant King, Beck, Beck cars always looked so cool, perfect sprint car. Don Edmunds. Frank Kurtis.

Yes, Granvel "Hank" Henry. Age 42 at Ascot April 13, 1968

OK I read your post wrong. I thought you meant Don Edmunds dies at Ascot.

Grant King... the first plastic model kits of sprint cars available were Grant King cars. 'Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing model airplane glue.

Sorry for the confusion of Edmunds and Henry. I should have been more specific.  I have a Grant King sprint model kit, new in the box unassembled. It's a two in one......can either build the sprint car or the wedge type super modified. I could never make up my mind which way to build so it went unassembled.

Stacked rack cars are built in a jig just like any other frame. Some guys that did not like them sold them off. Some cut the tubes out and went to a conventional set up. They had a time when a lot of top teams tryed them , again, if the track came to your setup you could see the speed difference. I don't think your ever going to see much variation in the design of a sprint car chassis anymore  because of shock technology. 

My Innovator picks:

Chassis

Floyd Trevis

Steve Staap

Don Edmunds

Grant King

Gary Stanton

LaVerne and Carroll Nance

Tommy Sanders

Engines:

Earl Gaerte

Ron Shaver

John Singer

Charlie Fisher

Rick Long

An impressive list for sure and certainly no argument BUT not all innovators/contributors fell within these fields. How about the efforts of Ralph Capitani, John Sawyer and Jack Miller for example each played an important role in the growth as a promoter, writer and announcer.

J&J auto racing has been going since early 70's

and before that jack worked at auto speed supply

then became H&E Engineering then J&J

Good point! Add of course to that list Earl Baltes, Ted Johnson and Lanny Edwards and dozens more. Individuals such as those came from all over the country.

One of the greatest promotors. Don Martin, the guy helped so many racers. I don't know how old he was when lernerville opened but the guy was in the running and won promotor of the year. You will never see another guy like him. He understood, treat the racer right and they will come and so would the crowds. He made improvements every year, the grandstands grew, the track grew. He made sure every person or driver that came in the gate was treated fairly. 

The names of Rick Ferkel and Ken Jenkins should be on the list also.

Ferkel was doing light weight long before Karl did and may have been Karl's inspiration.

Jenkins had a hand in the design of most of the major brands of manufactured cars for years.

How about the old IMCA sprint car organization? The IMCA officials and drivers that hit the Fair circuit were our only access to sprint cars here in the Midwest before the transition of the local modified guys to sprint cars. In fact, some of the IMCA guys would rig a portion of an old '30's coupe or sedan to their sprint cars and run against the modifieds at some Fairs. And yes the local home built modifieds could more than keep up with the sprint cars! IMCA drivers like Jerry Richert, Sr and the brothers "Itch" and "Scratch" Daniels just to name a few..........Who among us recognizes the name Woody Brinkman?

I think you are missing at least one big name...Bill Smith was possibly one of the most influential people in racing and his companies continue to this day to help the sport.

Just my .02.

hookit

Just remember...any night you don't have to "hookit" 
has been a Good Night!

Frank Kurtis built very very few sprint cars.  He built midgets,Indy cars, quarter  midgets and a few sports cars.  I do not know if he also built some go karts, seems like I remember he did.

tThe yellow jackets/sport coats with white flat caps. They knew how to hold an event. Tremendous announcing. 
If those guys ran a spring car organization today sprint car racing with be 4 or 5 times more popular.

The Hector Honre Black #2 was a stalwart IMCA car. Bobby Grim, Pete Folse, Jim Moughan..

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Open Wheel magazine was quite a contributer before social media came around. Sure there were some weekly racing papers but Open Wheel provided many pictures and stories that the papers didn't include. Sprints, Indy cars, midgets, modifieds, and super mods. If it was open wheel it was there.

 My first issue was from July of 85 and I subscribed to that magazine until its ending. I still have all of those issues and fortunately have been finding some of the earlier issues that I have been missing from my collection. I guess I'm getting old but those old issues sure seem like better reading than the magazines of today. IMO the cars were better looking and the articles were more interesting. I still subscribe to SC&M but its just a shell of what Open Wheel used to be.

I am very fortunate to live close to the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing where they have many used issues of Open Wheel Magazine for sale for a dollar an issue, just tons of them there, along with many other older racing publications such as speedway programs and books.

Maybe its shameful promotion but I do love that museum and I wish everyone could enjoy it as much as I do. Check the EMMR facebook page for upcoming events.

beezr, i took the corvette club i was president of out to the EMMR on a road trip stop, we had a small group of i think 9 cars, 18 people, they all enjoyed the time spent there. Lynn Paxton was there and spent time with the group. He had one of the original Boop's Alum. special cars there, with a injected big block in it, and was showing many how to get in and what it felt like to be behind the wheel. The group enjoyed the time spent there, any fan of racing should stop there, great place.

Karl.