A week ago, Mr. Kellogg told the story of Tommy Lee and his extravagant roadster built by Frank Kurtis. Frank got his start at Don Lee Cadillac, but it wasn't long before he struck out on his own and ... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
I have a new love and it tis this car. How fucking stealthy is this thing? This car is perfect top to bottom....well maybe lose the bumper car steering wheel hahaha!!! Love that it's running an injected Chevy V8. If you find an original article on this car add it to the early Chevy V8 thread!!! http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430018
Nearly all the American sportscars in the '50s had very basic chassis designs with very primative leaf spring suspensions, except the Kurtis cars which came with torsion bars. Most of the earlier cars had a '39 Ford steering box and nearly all came with drum brakes. Some owners experimented with unreliable Halibrand discs also. This chassis was also used by other sportscar manufacturers such as Allied, Sorrell, Glaspar and i'm sure there were many others.
Holy Smokes!! Now that is a sports car! Thanks for sharing it Ryan. Love the angles taken for the pictures too.
This is now the third Kurtis sports car I've seen in person or in photos. One has been at the Historics at Laguna Seca regularly, one I spotted at Hillsborough and this one. All three are painted black!
if darth vadar was a car! man that Kurtis is cooler than a cobra! looks like its' goin fast in the pics... great job Ryan!
Wow, the Kurtis is smooth. Light weight (dig those seats), tube frame and what was probably the best engine, pound for pound, available in its day. It would be a fast street car today. Not bad for a car designed 60 years ago.
Very cool! Thanks for the photos and story. I'm pretty sure Ak Miller's El Caballo II was built on a similar chassis, but had a different one-off aluminum body. And early Hemi power. It was on the cover of a mid-50's Hot Rod magazine. I would love to build something along these lines...
I've seen photos of that car off and on for the past 50 years and it spins my wheels every time I see it. I think that there are some race photos of it that were taken not long after it was built.
It is a stunning car, I had the chance to buy it last year but didn't pull the trigger... it was just too nice to put on the track, hopefully it went to a person that will bring her out to play. The gentleman that restored it has a rather amazing Kurtis collection and is a really nice guy. There was a black 54 KK at "The Quail" last year and there are a couple other KK's that vintage race on the west coast.
Have I ever wanted a Cobra, not so much, but if some enterprizing soul started repoping this thing, well I may just have to go "sporty"!!
Good story Ryan. The thing I find amazing about Frank was the amount and type of cars that came out of his shop during the 40's and 50's. While he was designing and building his indy roadsters, sprint cars, and sports cars, he also found the time to design and build 500, or so, of the most successfull midgets in history. I restored this one in '87, and as I worked on it I marveled at the functional simplicity of the design. frank Kurtis was a true genius.
Wow. Thanks for posting that, Ryan. I have seen some really cool cars, but that is one I have never had the privilege of seeing. A true work of art.
Holy Hotrod, that thing is so cool it made my teeth hurt. It is about as spot on as a hot rod sports car can get. The other picture of the blown inline vehicle is also a mind bender. Thanx for diggin this up! ~Sololobo~
so killer - here at the Classy Chassis show we went to in Houston last summer Love this one with some Gary Howard customs, Lee Pratt's shoebox and Reggie's survivor in the background...
Very interesting! Neat car! Thanks for posting. Reading this prompted me to poke around and I found a cool website with info and pics of some other Kurtis fiberglass bodied cars,( as well as a directory of fiberglass cars from the 1950's and 60's, such as Glaspar, Devin, Almquist, etc): http://fiberglasssportscars.com/Cars/Cars.htm
That's cool! That picture was taken on the top level of a parking garage in Santa Maria at the Santa Maria Inn, in (I think) 1998. That car was owned by Arlen Kurtis, Frank's son. The gathering was our "Muntz Mania" event....I think we ended up with about a dozen Jets and two Kurtis'. Shortly after this photo was taken, we jumped in our cars and cruised down to Buellton in them. Arlen and his lovely wife were invited as special guests to share a bit of Kurtis history with us. We also had Earl Muntz's son and daughter there, representing the Jet.
I think the car with the blown six was built by Lou Borelli, who worked for Kurtis. Borelli and another Kurtis employee, Art Ingels, built 1/4 Midgets, Midgets, parts of the Indy cars, and the first "kart". They left Kurtis in the late 1950s to form "Ingels & Borelli Caretta"; they were the makers of what were probably the best crafted karts of their time.
I bet that thing would fair pretty well in a wind tunnel with that jelly bean shape. That design is so basic and simple. It shows me that less is best, something that I think gets forgoten so often.
That is a nearly perfect minimalist design. I've never seen it before. It may be the most beautiful shape to ever grace four wheels. Thanks for sharing it with us Ryan.
Interesting gas filler. It is exactly like one the Steve Moal offers right now. So the question is: Is the gas filler a Moal or did Moal copy the Frank Curtis design? Rex
Yowsa! My first time seeing this car, and I gotta say I think the Falcon design team took this design and turned it into a family sedan.
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