|
 Just before World War II, racing car designer Frank Kurtis found a Buick - a 1941 Roadmaster
with less than 500 miles on its 165-hp overhead-valve straight-eight - as
a totaled wreck. He bought it, then stuffed it away for the duration of
the war, while he managed Joel Thorne's machine shop. With the war
over, Kurtis removed the body from the chassis, removed the X-member
from the frame and boxed the rails (to facilitate a much lower seating
position), then set about building a new four-passenger convertible
body. To do so, he welded steel tubing to the chassis, cast an aluminum
cowl and windshield frame, then hand-formed aluminum body panels over
the steel tubing and capped it all off with a removable top.
The custom Buick, completed at a cost of $17,000, made its public
debut in May 1948, when Kurtis drove it from California to Indianapolis
for the 500. There it created a minor sensation and caught the eye of
Tom McCahill, who featured it in the October 1948 issue of Mechanix
Illustrated. As Gordon Eliot White wrote in "Kurtis-Kraft: Masterworks
of Speed and Style," taking the Buick to Indy led to much greater things
for Kurtis.
Read the Whole Article
| 
Re: Cool Cars: 1941 Frank Curtis Buick Roadmaster
