Ferrari Mailing List: Re: It’s insane now

[Douglas Anderson (dnt]

Luke reflects on the past “The kid from Orlando with the loud [new ‘53] Buick!  It was all great until Dad found out about it!”

 

Ah yesh – the nail head big torque early 321 c.i. (?) Buick V8.  That Dynaflow would give you just enough umph without the shock of a multi speed manual or automatic transmission to get the power to the ground without going up in a rooster tail of sand.  Wow – I’ll bet that was some humdinger (old time language needed here) weekend.  The memories.

 

One of the first, well the first, sports car race I went to was in 1961 at the Santa Barbara Road Races held at the Santa Barbara airport.  They just shut the whole airport down.  Imagine that today.  About a week before the race tech would be held at various local places, usually Chevy dealers or Sports car dealers.  It was at this MG / Jaguar dealership I saw one of the first XKE’s brought to the US.  A coupe and a drop head.  No VIN – show only – back to the UK for destruction so we were told.  I fell in love with that car.

 

So at Lee Paring Sports Cars there is this yellow homebuilt roadster with a big Buick and six Stromberg carburetors and muffler side pipes (removed for the race of course).  The guy is unloading it from a trailer and asks me if I could give him a hand pushing it to bump start it.  ME?  SURE?  And that was my first sports car I got close to and the name of the car was Ol’ Yeller.  The owner builder was Max Balchowsky.  Many years later – the mechanic I use is the fellow who worked on the car for the current owner – Ernie Nagamatsu.  Bill would prep the car and off it would go to New Zeeland or England for the big races there.  A real crowd pleaser.

 

In the early 60’s I really enjoyed working on that 55 Buick Century.  Mom’s car.  The engine bay was so big I could almost climb inside to change the spark plugs.  In ’64 it became my daily driver.  Of course having a large car if I had had a tenth of the action I got blamed for I would have been dead or an NFL guard.  One day while dropping a couple of friends off at their house they had been woofing on me about the “tank.”  Soooo I back out of the driveway, throw it in neutral rev as high as I dared and pulled it down to “L” and laid about a 20 foot patch of rubber.  Surprised my friends.  Surprised me.  The second and last time I tried that I laid about 30 feet of oil and shortly after “L” was gone.  Car still ran well as “D” in a Dynaflow never changed gears.  In 1965 I traded it in for a new 1966 Sea Sand over Black VW bug.  Got $200 trade in ($1,600 todays $)  Had that VW for nearly 250,000 miles and several engines and transmissions.  Hot car.

 

Always did like Buicks – well the old ones when each car had its own DNA and was different.  You know way before GM dropped Chevy engines in everything and there was no such thing Buick, Old’s, Pontiac or Cadi engine engineering.  Alas

 

Onward

Doug

 

From: Luke Graves <buyer1 [at] airmail.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2020 11:17 AM
To: 'Douglas Anderson' <dnt [at] dock.net>
Cc: 'The FerrariList' <ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com>
Subject: RE: [Ferrari] It’s insane now

 

I gotcha beat!  My Mother had a new '53 Buick Riviera with dynaflow.  We lived on Orlandoal and I went to Daytona for the races every year.  I was 18 at the time.  The informal races on the beach at night when the tide was out were insane.  thousands of cars lining up for drag races.  We took the muffler off Mom's car and that V-8 was really loud!  The dynaflow was perfect for drag racing on the sand, so, I was consistently beating the hell out of most everybody.  I kinda became notorious;  The kid from Orlando with the loud Buick!  It was all great until Dad found out about it!