5 replies to this topic

[cabianca]

On 3 January 1950, a road race was run on an undeveloped subdivision on Singer Island Florida, just offshore from Palm Beach Shores. The winner was a Duesenberg-Ford (flathead V8) driven by George Huntoon. The car was supposedly based on Fred Frame's 2nd place Indy 500 car in 1931. Pictures of the Frame car and the car in question seem to bear this out. In 1950, it retained the 2-man body made in the Duesenberg works with fenders and lights added to meet sports car regulations. To my knowledge, the car was never raced again. Does anyone know of any other result for the car and where it might have gone. The owner was I.J. Brundage.

[MPea3]

i just spoke with norm frame, fred's nephew, who lives here in atlanta. unfortunately, he knows nothing of what happened to the 1931 car. it was an interesting conversation though, as he said that it was common to take the old indy cars and drop other engines into them as needed, and that his uncle raced a duesenberg with an offy engine into the 40's as a sprint car. he also said that in the late 40's and early 50's it was also common for pre-war indy cars to end up in the south, chopped up and changed around to fit whatever class they needed to be in. he cited as an example the 1941 winner, the Noc-Out Hose Clamp car built by Curly Wetteroth and driven my Floyd Davis and Mauri Rose, as having been eventually found in South Carolina withint the last 30 years, before being returned to the speedway for restoration.

[MPea3]

I just spoke with Norm Frame. He was recently approached by a gentleman from Wisconsin who claims to have the car Fred Frame finished 2nd in in 31, and is supposedly restoring the car to it's original form. Then he tells me that he promptly lost the info about the guy and has NO idea where it is or how to find him.

[Gerr]

MPea3, Ask Mister Frame if the gentleman's name is James Haag.

[MPea3]

He says he thinks that's it...

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by MPea3
i just spoke with norm frame, fred's nephew, who lives here in atlanta. unfortunately, he knows nothing of what happened to the 1931 car. it was an interesting conversation though, as he said that it was common to take the old indy cars and drop other engines into them as needed, and that his uncle raced a duesenberg with an offy engine into the 40's as a sprint car. he also said that in the late 40's and early 50's it was also common for pre-war indy cars to end up in the south, chopped up and changed around to fit whatever class they needed to be in. he cited as an example the 1941 winner, the Noc-Out Hose Clamp car built by Curly Wetteroth and driven my Floyd Davis and Mauri Rose, as having been eventually found in South Carolina withint the last 30 years, before being returned to the speedway for restoration.

Yes.

In the early days of NASCAR, that circuit had an open-wheel series, whereby old 30's and 40's Indianapolis cars were fitted with stock, production engines, and run on 1/2 and mile dirt tracks. That is what apparently happened to Wilbur Shaw's Shaw-Gilmore Special, the 1937 Indy winner, for example. I suspect that most of them were run to junk though, and then scrapped.

The Sparks-Weirick "Catfish" car seems to have suffered a similar fate, in the late 1940's. Andy Granitelli and his brothers came up with that car, and, after fitting it with WW-II surplus RATO (later called JATO) rocket-assist units for "barnstorming" the midwestern county- and state fair circuit in the late 40's, this car disappeared from the scene as well.

Other 1930's Indy Cars found their way to the old IMCA circuit as well.

As for a Duesenberg/Ford combination, Fred Roe, in his excellent book "Duesenberg, The Pursuit Of Perfection", shows at least one picture of a 1934 Ford powered by a Model J engine, and in the late 1940's, a 1932 Ford Roadster was run on the dry lakes with a Model J engine in it (this latter car still exists, I believe, in the NHRA Museum at Pomona CA).

Art Anderson