Originally posted by KarlOakie Research
It certainly fills in some of the gaps in the story that I wondered about, especially since there were several versions about this or that aspect of the tale, the truth of which seems to be almost too crazy to be true. The problem, in my mind, has been simply sorting out of some of the actual relationships and what Howard Gilbert relates seems to make sense to me.
I have often thought about saying something about how the American racing car industry was devastated and all but destroyed by the British constructors, but given the tenor of things here that is probably something best left for another day and place. My feelings on this have shifted over the years as I dug more and more into the past of American racing. However, what was done is impossible to undo and you simply have to look at and work with the cards that history has dealt us.
Truthfully,
British constructors really did not devastate the "American racing car industry", nor did they destroy it either! Frankly, there really was no American racing car industry, at least nothing as exists today (For example, an Indiana University Economics Professor just released data from his survey of auto racing's impact on the city of Indianapolis (which is a huge place, actually, about 25 miles on a side, with 2 or 3 small suburban entities as merely enclaves). He reports that automobile racing companies (of course, headed by Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation) generates 3/4 of a BILLION dollars in annual revenues, not counting the addtional billion dollars or so that race fans bring into the city when attending the 500, the US Grand Prix and the Brickyard 400. Of course, this also includes those companies and teams located in Indianapolis who are associated with Indianapolis Raceway Park (NHRA drag racing), and the various sprint car and midget oriented companies within the city.
Prior to the "British Invasion" of 1963-66, there really were no "works teams" in either USAC or their forerunner, AAA, not since Duesenberg in the 20's. Virtually all open-wheel racing was carried on by privateer car owners, privateers in every sense of the word. They bought a chassis (occasionally commissioned a chassis to be built), went to Offenhauser for the most part (certainly from the middle 1930's through 1963) for an engine, and innumerable sources for suspensions, axles, steering gear, brakes, and wheels. Tires came from but one source from the 20's through the coming of Dunlop in 1964, and Goodyear in 1965, that single source having been Firestone. Race cars tended to be maintained for several seasons, tuned by a single chief mechanic (who might have had an extra stooge or two around his shop when prepping for a race, and of course, and extra pit crewman or two come any race. The same chief mechanic would also repair the same old, same old car after a crash, often pulling miraculous resurrections of badly bent cars.
Once it became obvious that rear engine cars were the way to go fast, in fact the American open wheel racing car industry really grew up, developed far beyond what had been, for decades, an mere 'cottage industry', with the influx of major sponsorship money. One can credit the "tire wars" between Firestone and Goodyear 1965-74 for that growth, primarily. Both tire companies were suddenly buying chassis almost wholesale, even multiple chassis for top teams. Goodyear underwrote the pioneering turbocharging efforts by veteran mechanic and engine-builder, Herb Porter, which in turn put Offenhauser securely on the map for another 10 years after the rail-bird pundits had written off the old 4-cylinder. Firestone, on the other hand, backed buyers of Ford 4-cams, and helped to underwrite the development costs involved in turbocharging the pioneering Ford engines. From 1967 out until the development of really aerodynamically sophisticated chassis in the late 1970's, USAC's Championship Divisions entries were simply dominated by the likes of All American Racers Eagles, 66-67 Halibrand Shrikes, Gerhardt's, and numerous other chassis built in the US. Only the occasional highly competitive Lola and of course Team McLaren managed to break seriously into the scene in those years.
Some behind the scenes suppliers who made considerable money in Indy cars, and their construction were the likes of Fairfield Manufacturing in Lafayette, who custom-produced then, and may still produce, gear sets for racing transmissions on a moment's notice, down to little shops like that of Lafayette's Dave LeFevre, whose radiator shop (LeFevre's is the largest, best known radiator shop in Lafayette) built dozens of radiators and oil coolers for Indy cars through the 70's, well into the 1980's. But at the top of the game, the "little guys" did fade into the background, to be seen nowadays only at Oldtimers' events, or they filtered downstream into the ranks of midgets and sprint cars--the latter becoming overwhelmingly popular by the late 1970's across the rural midwest and southwest.
The big decline in US-built racing chassis came in the latter half of the 1970's, when the same engineering and construction skills that were more and more required to build a successful Indy car chassis became those of the aerospace industry. Simply put, Britain had far more of those skilled and highly trained individuals than that country had jobs for, while in the US, aerospace industries were in an absolute boom period--which drove the wage rates for that kind of work out of reach for even the likes of a Pat Patrick (a Michigan oil driller) and of course, Roger Penske.
So, it does seem to me that the British Invasion of the middle 1960's, rather than diminishing the "American Racing Industry", actually forced a considerable evolution in it, older, less sophisticated chassis builders, such as the legendary Frank Kurtis and his fellow LA constructors simply faded into retirement (most of them were of retirement age or past by then, at any rate), and spawned a tremendous cash flow into Indy cars, the likes of which were scarcely dreamed about until Brabham's Cooper and Team Lotus showed up at Indy.
Art Anderson
, but you're actually making things much too complicated. Like I said earlier, Indy is well documented and there are very few questions. I have a lot of source material and photographs of most of the cars, so barring the as of yet unforeseeable blah, blah, blah, I think you could do much worse than trust me for what I am going to tell you here:
The engine was in fact probably a bored-out Miller 122. So, please delete this paragraph from your memory banks as well as your records! 
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