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

Will there ever be another class of race cars that takes on with wild groth. After WW2 midgets went wild. A guy could get a Kurtis midget with engine for $5 to $6 thousand dollars. He could take off across the country and race at every track he could till he reached the east coast and sell it for what he paid for it. In New York and New Jersey area you could race 8 times a week if you wanted to. One track ran a race in afternoon and then the same day at another track at night. Midgets went wild thru 1950 then Jalopy stock cars became very popular. You could spend about $500 on a ford coupe, tear the interior out and go racing. Tracks were thick that ran jalopy cars. They had 100 lap races down south with over 100 cars on track in the race. I think Langhorn had a 100 mile race with 106 cars. If you showed up you raced with no limit on number of cars in the race. The last is the IMCA type of modifieds. There are thousands of these now. The IMCA type of modifieds was a dream of Keith Knaack. His idea was a class of cars that looked racy, and that the owners would go to junk yards to get parts like in the good old days. You could go racing with only $2000 in the car. I think like every thing else costs got out of hand and now guys are spending $20,000 on motors. Will there ever be another race car that takes the nation like a storm????

The REAL Midget boom was in the 30s. Everybody built their own car and there were umpteen engine variations.

Then the Kurtis Kraft Midget obsoleted everything else, and then the Offy engine did the same. Suddenly everybody was running a Kurtis and an Offy and the races turned into parades.

Hence the rise of the Jalopies.