Mid-South ride, eat, and meet

Just did a little research on the car. Built '57 called a '58. One of 3 built. Devin body. Chevy V8 with Rochcester fuel injection. It won a lot of races against factory supported race teams. Cool vintage race car.

If you like this, due a web search on Echidna and some nice articles will come on the car, and some history on 50's American road racing. Another good search is Devin car bodies. Cool stuff. I believe the Devin fiberglass body was a copy of a Italian design. It just has that Latin curvy look.

The body was copied off am Ermini. Yep, not to well known. If your into or interested in early American road racing a good book is 'American Road Race Specials 1934-70'. by Allen Girdler Glory Days of Homebuilt Racers ISBN 0-87938-409-3 It's a great read on American road racing. Soft back book, lots of pics, black and white, and info. perfect for your library.

Jim Bartlett/Devin SS



Jim also raced a Devin SS. Same body as a Echidna, but different. Confusing ain't it. It also ran a 327 small block Chevy with Rochester fuel injection; nice vintage race car. Excellent way to go road racing in the 50's and early 60's. And a nice way to go vintage road racing today. All you need is about $200,000 for the car and all that other junk you have to have to support it. Probably a million+. Truck,tailer, garage, support team. Vintage racing is a expensive.

American road racers in the 50's and early 60's used all variations of engines to race against the greats from Europe. Chrysler hemi's, All the GM OHV variations, Ford variation had OHV engines, but most wern't that good till the early 60's. The small block Chevy of 1955 was the standard; small light and cheap. Chevy was the last American car company to design their first OHV V8. That's the way it was and I'm a Ford guy.

We raced in a lot on Sportscar Vintage Racing Association (SVRA) and their are several others that support vintage car racing. If your close to a track, Road America, Road Atlanta, Mid-Ohio, Watkins Glen, and many others go over and watch. They race a lot of different styles of roadrace cars all in the same day. You should find some cars you like to watch. Most of the pits are open and the racers are usually very friendly and like it when spectators take an interest in their cars. Their is usuallya featured marque of car at each race and a general car show for all cars. You should see a lot of interesting and historical cars. I loved it.

American Road Race Specials


Picture of a Chapparal at top. I think Elvis drove one in Viva Las Vegas. Max Balchowsky, I believe set up the race scenes for the movie. The bottom pic is Ol' Yaller II. The 2nd race car he built. Driven here by Dan Gurney.

Chapparal was my favorite body style when I used to race (slot cars) as a kid. Still like them today.

Neat sleek design, with rear engine. Never got to do the slot car thing. Watch others, never had the bucks to buy one.

Road

Road America

Our team on the false grid waiting to get on the track. We have the red Allard. I think it's a P1. The yellow car is a Kurtis 500. Our team had a bunch of different Allards, kinda hard to remember all of them. I think it ran a flat head Ford or Mercury, with an Offenhauser intake with twin carbs.

Car was probably running hot and Leo took the hood off. We ran a very safe operation, Leo was a good team manager, safty first all the time. The owner of the team was also a good safe driver. The first several years he would go early to the track and take the racing class to learn better driving techniques and learn the track. Jimmy raced professonally in the off road Baja off road racing and they grandfathered him in with a racing licence. He was no fool and took many driving classes to get the skill to be on the track.

Kurtis 500

Same car company that built the Kurtis Sport. They also built Indy cars and some other styles of street cars. The 500 really had a neat look.

Bob Fergus/Lotus11

The late Robert Fergus was on of the greats in vintage car racing. He raced competively from the very early 50's till his death in the 90's. A true gentleman. I got the oppurtunity to visit his garge in Columbus, Oh. and his summer home in upstate Mi.. Got to see his cars, boats, and airplanes. Was driver of the year and decade in SVRA. Watching him run in the front of the pact in that Lotus was unbelievable. Those cars were incredible.

Jeff standing


Jeff, can't remember his last name was Bob's team manager. The Lister Corvette was extremely fast. That guy was a professional drag racer. He gave Bob a run for his money in that lister.

Allard JR


Probably Allard's best road race car. Nice body style. Still had the same underpinnings as the more famous J2's and J2X's. That means it was not a good handling car.

Althugh we actually won a couple of races, for all practical purposes we never gave anyone a run for their money. Our team's motto was to look good, run good, and have a good time. We worked hard back at the shop to acheive our limited goals. The team manager pointed it out to me. We came , unloaded our car, did a minor cleanup and a few minor adjustments, and had a nice day/week of casual racing. Leo said, watch the other teams. they were working the as....'s off. We were sitting back with cold drinks and enjoying the local ambiance. We would leave go to town for a nice lunch and even a movie. We would come back to shut things down in the pits. Car was dialed in and so were we. The other teams became jelous, and let us know it. We were stars.

That's the way to do it. If you make it so much work that you lose the fun, why do it.

!st Class Race Team

Thx Jeff; I was fortunate in many ways to be associated with this team. The owner driver was quite wealthy and treated the team manager and me with the best of whatever we needed. We stayed at the same hotels/motels he stayed in. Ate at the same reataurants he dined in. First class all the way. We were also fortunate to have a guy who wasn't trying to reinvent himself as A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti , or Al Unser. He drove the cars well within his ability, usually from the middle to back of the pack. We absolutely built the most safe and reliable race cars on the track. No shortcuts, We always went with the best equipment and parts available. One of my favorite cars was Max Balchowski built Ol' Yaller 7. Raced hard for over 20 years, and went through many owners, drivers, and race teams. Was still being raced in the early 90's when we acquired it. On inspection the car was found to be a complete rolling wreak, totally unsafe right down to getting into and out of it; much less racing. We spent 2 years alone on the chassis and suspension to make the car safe. We built a lot of cars in house, but the shear volume of cars led to some work being farmed out. We had a dedicated group of tech's in the Mid South who did a lot of the work. Some I've allready written about in this thread. The work they did was the best quality of any in the entire world. We also used venders all over North America to get the best equipment available. Like I said I know I was fortunate to meet and be associated with these people. I plan to go a little further on them a little later. Most are motorcycle riders and enthusiests as well.