Mechanical Lunacy & Oddball Machines
They Put WHAT in That?
Most race cars begin with a familiar plan.
Engine. Transmission. Tires. Steering wheel.
Then this bunch shows up.
Pick Your Mechanical Bad Idea: E.J. Potter | Green Monster | Breedlove’s Three-Wheeler | Walt Arfons Jets | Vanishing Point | STP Turbine | Bigfoot 5 | Bigfoot Rear Steer | Hell on Wheels | Cool Bus
Somebody finds a surplus jet engine. Somebody else finds a Chevrolet V8 and a motorcycle frame. A turbine wanders into Indianapolis. A pickup truck grows tires ten feet tall. A tank decides it would rather be a wheelstander.
Eventually even the school bus gets involved.
This is what happens when capable mechanics are given machinery, fabrication tools and insufficient supervision.
Some of these machines chased world records. Some raced. Some existed primarily to make a crowd stare at them.
None suffered from an excess of ordinary thinking.
Motorcycles already had engines. E.J. Potter apparently considered that a starting suggestion.
Art Arfons had a useful ability to look at military-surplus machinery and see something considerably faster than the government had intended.
Craig Breedlove built something fast enough to chase records and unusual enough to make officials argue over whether it was actually an automobile.
Once a jet engine became available, Walt Arfons rarely seemed troubled by the question of whether it belonged in a race car.
Sammy Miller built a match-race machine so brutally quick that giving the other car a head start began to sound perfectly reasonable.
Andy Granatelli brought a turbine to Indianapolis and very nearly made everybody else explain why they were still bothering with pistons.
Monster trucks were already large. Bob Chandler apparently regarded that as unfinished work.
Building Bigfoot bigger created an obvious problem. Eventually Bob Chandler still had to get the thing around a corner.
A tank shape does not immediately suggest high-speed wheelstands. Bob Perry apparently considered that a lack of imagination.
The school bus had already found its useful purpose decades earlier. Ken Nelson decided to give it another one.
Bottom Line
There is conventional race-car engineering.
Then there is this bunch.
E.J. Potter put a Chevrolet V8 in a motorcycle.
The Arfons brothers found useful employment for surplus jet engines.
Craig Breedlove made officials argue over how many wheels an automobile needed. Andy Granatelli nearly won Indianapolis with a turbine. Bob Chandler built a truck around ten-foot tires.
Then somebody built a wheelstanding tank.
And a wheelstanding school bus.
Some machines exist because racing needed them.
These existed because somebody wanted to know whether they could be built.
That usually produces the better story.
↑ Back to the Top — Before Somebody Finds Something Else to Put an Engine In