…As I Was Saying…

The Ol' Yaller Mark I first saw the track in 1957 and gave way to those that followed in the ensuing years. In fact. OY1 was raced until Eric Hauser - the original partner with Max Balchowsky on the car, crashed the car at Riverside in 1961. Despite OY1 being reduced to a pile of, well, junk, Hauser escaped injury but that was the end of the line of OY1.

The Mark II version of Ol' Yaller was as ugly as the original and surprising fast. Into OY2 went a big 401-cubic inch Buick engine. By playing a bit with the cam and the compression ratio, bolting on three two-barrel carburetors, and keeping the revs in the 5,700 rpm bracket, Balchowsky got an honest 300 bhp out of Ol' Yaller II. The Buick sat in a new chassis that was a combination of the old ladder frame and the new space frame construction. It didn't look like much and more than a few questioned its strength, but time was to prove that it was up to the task. The bodywork was a bit more "pleasing" to the eye, but still sporting coats of yellow house paint - brush marks and all.

Ol' Yaller sported Idaho plates and was driven to and from its events by Max's wife Ina. Balchowsky was a master at playing to the press and they lapped up every detail on the Ol Yaller cars - and Max was not one to let minor details spoil an otherwise good story. The truth was that OY2 was a soundly engineered car, well-made, and well-prepared for its sorties onto the tracks of the Pacific Coast. That is, once the early bugs were worked out by dropping the rear of OY2 a few inches and installing a stabilizer bar taken from a pickup truck. For the April 1960 Riverside Los Angeles Examiner Grand Prix, Balchowsky offered Ol' Yaller to a local talent who had "done good" - Dan Gurney.

Gurney took a few laps in the Ol' Yaller several weeks before the race to see what she was like. Gurney found that he genuinely liked the car. So, Gurney agreed to drive OY2 in the event. More than a few wondered if Gurney had taken leave of his senses since Max Balchowsky had just made the changes that tamed the awkward beast and turned it into a worth successor to OY1. Gurney qualified third and was leading the race when the Buick moaned, groaned, and then broke its crankshaft. The brakes, OY2 was still using drum brakes, were fading prior to the engine failure, but the handling and balance of Ol' Yaller II was so good that Gurney was able to stay close to his previous times.

Alas, despite diagnosing and correcting the fault which led to the engine failure - the harmonic balancer slipped, there went the timing and the crank - OY2 was never to fly this high again. The only major success was to be a win by Bob Drake in the West Coast equivalent of the East Coast Nationals, the Pacific Coast Championship. The advent of cars such as the Maserati Birdcage along with the Cooper and Lotus rear-engined cars was to make many rethink the formula for success in American sports car racing.

Max Balchowsky developed a persona which was at odds with reality, but the Press and the fans ate it up. Clad in frayed, white garage mechanic overalls - duly smeared with oil and grease spots from rooting in the dumpsters for spark plugs and other pieces thrown out by garages - Balchowsky encouraged the belief that the Ol' Yaller cars were basically Junkyard Specials. As mentioned, the reality was that Balchowsky was a talented and creative engineer and master mechanic and produced cars which were anything but junk. Winding up in Los Angeles after the Second World War, Balchowsky was soon attracted to the racing side of the Southern California Car Scene.

Building a '32 Ford hot rod, Balchowsky managed to touch bases with every aspect of the sport: street racing, jalopy racing, time at the Dry Lakes and salt flats, and finally, road racing. The Ol' Yaller I and II brought Balchowsky a certain fame that he enjoyed and exploited. Ina Balchowsky was simply a bonus: she could - and did - assemble any of the Ol' Yaller cars either in the garage or at the track. Her primary job was shielding Max from those who would interfere with his work on either an Ol' Yaller or the many other cars they serviced over the years such as the Iso Grifo and the Bizzarini among others. The Ol' Yaller series would get to the Ol' Yaller IX before Balchowsky called it day, the last outing of an Ol' Yaller coming in 1966 at the Las Vegas Stardust USRRC round, where Bob Drake brought OY9 home in 15th place - after which the car was driven back to Los Angeles…. We will see the Ol' Yaller V in action during 1962 and it will give some of the high-rollers just as much heartburn as ever.

One effort which captured much attention was what could be referred to as the Mark 3 version of the Scarab: what was originally dubbed the "Riverside," but would capture fame under the name its Texas investor gave it - the "Chaparral."

After Lance Reventlow sold off his Scarab sports racers - keeping the first one built for a road car - and turned his attention to his ill-timed and ill-fated Grand Prix effort, the sports car world continued to percolate right along. Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes, the fabricators of the Scarab cars for Reventlow, felt that there was still much potential left in the basic Scarab design formula: a big American V-8 dropped into the front of as small a chassis as possible. Troutman and Barnes wanted to use the lessons learned from their experience with the Scarab to build a better, well, Scarab-like sports racer.

Reventlow was not interested in pursuing a new Scarab sports racer, at that moment, so Troutman and Barnes went looking for someone interested in bankrolling the project. They called it the "Riverside," but were more than willing to change the name if necessary. After a meeting in November 1960 in the paddock during the USGP at Riverside - fittingly enough - the Troutman and Barnes design became the "Chaparral" after Texan Jim Hall agreed to front the money to build the car.

The Chaparral used a front-engined layout, but it was smaller and lighter than many of the current crop of both American specials and the offerings from Europe. Although familiarity of the front-engined layout was one factor for choosing to place the engine ahead of the driver, another was the lack any transaxle and final-drive assembly capable of handling the power output of an American V-8. Many of the transmissions being used in sports racers were proving not quite up to handling the strain from the 2.5-litre four-cylinder Coventry Climax FPF engines much less a big V-8 with not only more horse, but far more torque.

The Chaparral was fairly straight-forward at first glance, but the difference was in the details. The craftsmanship was first rate, and pains were taken to lighten the load wherever possible. The 283-cubic inch engine was poked out to 318-cubic inches by Traco and gave about 300 bhp - more or less. The Chaparral also sported Goodyear Blue Streaks when it made its debut in mid-1961. The dry weight of the car was estimated to be about 1,479 lbs., which coupled with 300 bhp implied that there was performance just waiting to be unleashed.

After the first Chaparral was constructed and shaken down, a second team car and two customer chassis were built. One of the customer cars was sold to Harry Hauser for the Meister Bräuser Racing Team. Augie Pabst qualified the Hauser Chaparral on the third row for the October 1961 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at Riverside, but engine problems put him back in his usual mount, a Mark II Scarab. Hall finished third in the race. Interestingly, the winning Cooper chassis driven by Jack Brabham was owned the partner of Jim Hall, James R. "Hap" Sharp, prepared in the same shop in Midland, Texas as the Chaparral and used an engine owned by Brabham - the spare 2.7-litre Climax engine from his Indianapolis foray earlier in the year. The Chaparral was not to shine in the remaining events in 1961, Laguna Seca and Nassau. We will hear from the Chaparral team in 1962, especially after their early appearances in 1962 left much to be desired.

Not all the engines were up front when the 1962 season dawned. Cooper, Lotus, and Porsche supplied most of the rear-engined cars at this time. The Cooper Monaco - the Types 49/Mark I (1959), 57/Mark II (1960), 64/Mark III (1961), and the Mark IV (1962) - was first fielded in 1959. Originally built to carry the Climax FPF in either its 1.5 or 2.0-litre version, the 2.5-litre soon found its way into the engine bay that year.

It was not until the following year that such a combination would become common. Like many of the rear-engined cars of the day, the gearbox and transaxle were problems which were slowly overcome, but still limited the displacement of the various engines used - usually the Climax FPF or a Maserati type - to only the 2.0 to 2.5-litre range. Four of the nine built were delivered to American customers. For 1960, Cooper introduced the Mark II version of the Monaco. Of the two Mark II cars built, one was for an American customer. All three of the Mark III cars built in 1961 were for American customers.

Cooper were to offer the Mark IV for 1962, the first going to Briggs Cunningham in which he placed the Maserati engine which the car was raced with at Sebring. Eventually, several more Mark IV Monaco cars would show during the year. The 1961 season had been a very good one Stateside for Cooper. Roger Penske had emerged as the SCCA National Champion in the D Modified class and Jack Brabham won the October Times Grand Prix at Riverside.

The Lotus 19, unofficially dubbed the "Monte Carlo" - a name which stuck, made an impressive debut in America in 1960 with Stirling Moss winning both heats of the Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna after he and Dan Gurney retired from the Riverside event. Gurney went on to win the big event during the Nassau Speedweeks in the Arciero Brothers Lotus 19. In 1961, the Lotus 19 won the Players 200 with Masten Gregory, Moss repeated at Laguna Seca, and Gurney at Nassau. The Lotus was attracting attention as a possible Cooper-beater.

…And, furthermore…

The United States Auto Club entered the fray in the Summer of 1958 when it first announced that it was forming a Road Racing Division and then that it would conduct a road racing championship. The competitors would be paid for their efforts, a concept which sent the Sports Car Club of America doyens into conniptions. Despite threats of everything from being banished permanently from the club to not being referred to as "gentlemen," enough showed up at the four events that the USAC ran that season. The champion was Dan Gurney on the strength of two second place finishes, at Watkins Glen and Riverside. His haul for the series was all of $2,700. The "leading money-winner" of the season, however, was Riverside winner Chuck Daigh based on the $5,000 he gained from his victory.

The USAC Road Racing Championship ran an ambitious schedule in 1959, 14 events (including three on one day at Meadowdale, USAC awarding points for each "heat" as a separate race), and lost its shirt. Augie Pabst emerged as the 1959 Champion. For 1960, the number of events was scaled back to six events, two of them being the heats of the Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna Seca. The champion? Carroll Shelby, who was to retire from driving due to heart problems and pursue the idea of putting an American V-8 engine in an English sports car chassis. In 1961, there were only four events, three of them having two heats, so there were actually "seven" races in the series, points-wise. Ken Miles, winner of one of the heats at Castle Rock, emerged as the season's champion.

What the establishment of the USAC Road Racing Division and its championship really did was drop a plugged-in toaster into a copper bathtub. The concept of racing for money was not as alien and unacceptable an idea to many road-racers as the Sports Car Club of America thought it to be. More than few road-racers were kindly disposed towards directly accepting money for their efforts on the track, versus the sub-rosa system of winks, nods, and averted glances that existed in the SCCA, particularly at the Nationals level. Racing was expensive. As many had already discovered, the best way to make a small fortune in racing was to start off with a big one, Briggs Cunningham and Lance Reventlow being but two among those of the many who had learned that lesson.

By the beginning of 1962, the USAC Road Racing Championship and the SCCA Nationals (along with the Pacific Coast Championship) had both achieved a certain level of symbiosis and an uneasy truce concerning the players in the game. The fiery events of Summer 1961, noted earlier, were still echoing through the American road racing scene. The SCCA had decided to embark on a path off the trail it had blazed and create a place within its ranks for the professionals. USAC, on the other hand, was wondering if its diversion into road racing was really proving worth the time and effort that had been devoted to it.

For 1962, the USAC Road Racing Championship held its seasonal debut in a place somewhat off the beaten path: Hilltop Raceway, near Bossier City, Louisiana. Bossier City on the eastern bank of the Red River, opposite Shreveport. The raceway itself was about 15 mile east of Bossier City on US 80. The 2.0-mile circuit was literally on a hilltop in the hills which are found in the local environs in contrast to the otherwise flat geography of the state.

The owner, organizer, and promoter of the Hilltop Raceway and of the "Pipeline 200," was one Steve Robinson. Robinson had made the track a reality in spite of no end of obstacles. His unstinting efforts to keep the track open and at least breaking even from its events had so far gone unrewarded. Robinson was vowing that unless the "Pipeline 200" had a good turnout and an equally good gate, the track's future was in serious doubt.

As the leadoff event for the USAC Road Racing Championship, Robinson was hoping for a field of 24 cars, most of all of the road racing hot shoes with a few others thrown in for good measure. The headliner was the first USAC and now the star of the Porsche racing program, Dan Gurney. Gurney was entered in an Arciero Brothers Lotus. Exactly what the nature of that Lotus was a question complicated by Arciero Lotus 19 doing itself no good at Daytona back in February. The Arciero Lotus Monte Carlo made the journey from Daytona beach all the way back to the West Coast. On a trailer attached to the rear of the team pickup truck.

The problems with the Lotus, the time needed to transport the car from one coast to another, and then head out for the Gulf region left precious little time to really spend much time in the shop doing the race prep necessary to win races. Consider that this is in the days before behemoth team transporters that are so common today. It was also a time when the Interstate system was still being built and there were few stretches that went more than a hundred or so miles. Most of the roads between the coasts were two-lane blacktop. And team mechanic Jerry Eisert was responsible for both the race preparation in the shop and wrenching at the races. Needless to say, work on the 19 turned out to be a bit more time-consuming than anticipated since there an engine change and other tasks which had to be performed. And the work was not going well.

Along the way, Frank Arciero picked up the Lotus 18 driven by Gurney and Tony Maggs in Europe at various times for Mrs. Louise Bryden-Brown - chassis '903.' With the clock ticking down and the date for the first USAC event of the season getting closer and closer, a decision had to be made as to not only which Lotus to race, but whether to race at all. After the decision was made to use the Lotus 18 rather the 19 at Hilltop, at the last second naturally, Eisert and the other team mechanic, Bill Lewis, loaded the Lotus 18 on a trailer behind the red pickup truck which had only recently made the trek back to California and set out for Northwest Louisiana. At high speed.

After setting what was possibly the new speed record for red pickup trucks hauling racecars between California and Louisiana, Eisert and Lewis arrived in Bossier City with a racecar still requiring assembly and preparation. Robinson, owner of a sheet metal shop and a air conditioning repair business, turned his facility over to Eisert and Lewis, who fell upon the Lotus with a fervor inspired by the presence of Dan the Man lurking about and asking when the car would be ready.