Well first up is a guy who we never heard that much about. Mainly because He was a partner to George Salih who gets most of the recognition for those Laydown Roadsters they built. Kevin Triplett did some extensive research to come up with this article on Howard Gilbert, We hope you like it.
aXe
JC Agajanian Race Car Owner, Racing Promotor, Par excelence!
JC Agajanian was not destined to be a race car driver as much as he wanted to give it a good try.
His destiny was to be a race car owner and racing promotor. He owned a huge garbage hauling and pig raising business, which at times paid his way forward in car ownership and racing promotions. He was told by his father, in effect, no way would any son of his be a race car driver.
Back on March 9 1958 I went to my first outdoor USAC National Midget race. This was at San Jose Speedway. Billy Garrett won that race. The thing that stood out in my mind that day was, I noticed a guy with a big Stetson cowboy hat on and cowboy boots to go along with them. He was dressed in a very nice suit and tie. I asked who that was and was told it was Aggie? Being new to the sport I had no idea who that was. That didn't last very long as Aggie was known by just about every one in auto racing.
What a racing career he had. Never one to back off any of his promises to any of the drivers, Aggie could always be counted on to come through exactly as he said he would.
On Oct 18,1965, Parnelli Jones was Aggie's big drawing card. On this night they were at Aggie's Ascot Park in Gardena, California. In warm ups they blew up the engine in the Vel Miletich Offy. So Aggie approached Oliver Johnson and George Benson with, "Can we put Parnelli in Ollie's car for this race? We will give you up front the main event winners payoff!" How could they turn that down? Main event winnings and George didn't even have to turn a wheel. The crowd would be pleased, the guy most came to see would race after all. You guessed it, Parnelli went out in that Johnson Offy and cleaned house that night on the 1/4 mile dirt at Ascot. After the race Aggie showed up in the Johnson pit again and gave him another winners payoff, so both Ollie and George came out of there with a full winners pay off of that purse.!
Another time of interest came at a race just out side of Reno Nevada, at the Lemon Valley Speedway. The date was October 20 1966, That evening it was cold (around 18 degrees), the wind was howling and I don't think they sold 10 tickets? The wind blew so hard it knocked down part of the grandstands backing boards, good thing there weren't that many fans sitting in those stands that night. Aggie said the race must go on. Parnelli Jones won that very cold night, but the big thing that happened was as Aggie and Henry Banks drove out to the track. There was a very sharp turn just before the track, Aggie lost control of his big ole Caddie convertible in the dark and drove it off the road and rolled it. Luckily for Aggie and Henry, they didnt get hurt. My guess is the purse that night came mostly out of Aggies own pocket.
Those were a couple of the good times. However there are at times in racing some very black days
Now move up to November 12,1966 at Ascot and the touring USAC National Sprint Cars were there. We lost Don Branson and Dick Atkins that night. Nobody ever told Aggie race promoting would be free of these types of tragic incidents. How does anyone deal with that?
Well Aggie had seen more than that in his racing adventures. It is a hard pill to swallow, but you go on. Racing as Aggie grew up with back then was a very cold sport, taking drivers it seems at almost every race. It wasnt that often but it sure seemed like it.
Now the blackest day of Aggie's promoting was just ahead. The big race at the Sacramento Fairgrounds mile track came on October 25, 1970. It was billed as the "Open Competition Super-Modified and Caged Sprint Car Championship", later to be called Northern California’s Black Sunday. I was there taking movies.
We lost three drivers that day, two racing and one working the pits. Ernie Purssell was lost in a qualifying race, Then when the red flag came our for that big crash some on the front stretch went out on the main straight, Walt Reiff was one and got collected by a car that couldn't slow down enough in the mud. Then in the main event we lost Jimmy Gordon in a crash down the back stretch. I went over to the start and finish line. Aggie was there declaring the race winner and announced the race was over at that point. The declared winner was the same guy who won all the sprint car races ever held on the Sacramento mile. Jerry Blundy, from Galesburg, Illinois, was that mile master. As I filmed Aggie calling off the race it was very clear how much it was affecting him. To lose a driver in a race was common, but to lose three, that was almost all he could take. Funny but Aggie had promoted races at that track for 20 years with the only major injury a broken arm by Eddie Sachs in a championship dirt car race. My gut tells me Aggie just might have quit the game after that Sacramento race. He personally lost two drivers in his promotions. One who had already won for him on the USAC Championship Trail three years earlier in Dick Atkins, and one who was his next driver, Jimmy Gordon. He had just signed Jimmy to drive for him. Aggie did what he loved, except for driving a race car. And he finally came to rest in peace. Here is one of his obituaries I found on the Internet.
I am not sure who wrote it, but it does Aggie justice.
Joshua "J.C. Aggie" Agajanian (June 16, 1913 – May 5, 1984)
He was an influential figure in American motorsports history. He was a promoter and race car owner.
Agajanian was born in San Pedro, California, just six months after his father had immigrated to the United States with his entire family, including some cousins, out of war-torn Armenia. He grew up a hard-working young man in the family’s refuse collection and hog ranching businesses, which Aggie would later oversee.
At 18, Agajanian had saved enough money to buy a race car. When he told his father that he was going to become a race car driver, the elder Agajanian’s reaction was not what young Aggie had hoped. Looking at the car in the garage, his father said to J.C., "So you are going to be a race driver, that’s fine. Just a few things I want you to do first. Go kiss your mother goodbye, pack your bags since you won’t be living here anymore and while you’re at it, change your name."
Promoting and Racing Life
The racing game was brutal in the 1930s. Drivers were dying almost every other week on the dirt ovals of Southern California and Agajanian’s father understandably didn’t want his son to become another statistic. A compromise was settled upon. J.C. could keep the car, but only in the capacity of an owner. J.C. agreed and at 18 became perhaps one of the youngest car owners in automobile racing. While Agajanian never achieved his childhood dream of becoming a race driver, he did almost everything else, from promoting races to building cars and discovering drivers.
While promoting a race under the blazing desert sun in Arizona, Agajanian purchased a Stetson cowboy hat to protect his head. The hat became Aggie's trademark and he was rarely seen without it.
His trademarks were a cowboy hat and high-heeled boots made especially for him in Spain.
The Armenian heir to a fortune built on pig farming and garbage collection, J. C. was partial to the number "98" and used the number on his Indianapolis, Sprint and Midget cars, a tradition which has continued for generations in the family. He was instrumental in the development of the air jack for faster tire changes at Indy and in the 1930s was president of the Western Racing Association. His race organizer expertise spanned the country and he became the first race organizer to present 250 United States Automobile Club events, ranging from Midget races like the traditional Turkey Night Grand Prix at his beloved Ascot Park in Gardena, California (now held at Irwindale Speedway), to numerous Championship Dirt Car races at state fairgrounds tracks.
From 1948 through 1971, his cars won three pole positions for the Indianapolis 500, set four track records and won the race twice. Troy Ruttman (1952) and Parnelli Jones (1963) both won the 500 in Agajanian machines.
"I didn’t even know my dad was bald until I was a teenager," joked his son, J.C. Agajanian Jr. "He even wore the hat sitting down for breakfast in the morning. My mother was always getting on him about that."
Notable drivers for Agajanian included: Bill Vukovich II, Walt Faulkner, Troy Ruttman and Parnelli Jones.
A few of His most notable Awards
Inducted in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2009
Inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in the first class in 1990.
Inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992 for his contributions to motorsports.
Inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.
Inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in its first class in 2002.
Inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame
Feb 11 2010
Live Oak, CA
OWR3 Contributor
John Buttera- Indy’s last Hot Rodder
The long history of the Indianapolis 500 is filled with the stories of innovative hot rodders using stock block engines. Most fans know the stories of the Granatelli brothers in 1946 with a Ford flathead in a cast-off 1935 Miller-Ford V-8 chassis, or Mickey Thompson, who shocked the Indy establishment with rear engine cars powered with Buick stock block engines in 1962, and a 3-valve per cylinder small block Chevrolet front-wheel drive car in 1967, or Barney Navarro, with his self-developed turbocharged Rambler inline 6 mounted in a 1964 Watson RE chassis. Not as widely known to the open wheel racing community are the efforts of John Buttera- he competed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway three times in the decade of the 1980’s, making him one of the last of the hot rodders to try to conquer the speedway with a stock block engine. Before getting into the details of his Indy 500 efforts, a little background about the man himself is in order.
Buttera and Capps purchased Eagle chassis number 8106 from All American Racers Shown below completly restored
They completed the original assembly at AAR headquarters.
Above pictures by Gene Ingram of New Castle indiana
John Ward, AAR designer recalls Buttera and Capps working at the Santa Ana, California AAR shop for many days, replacing many of the standard Eagle parts with lightweight billet aluminum parts that John would create in his Cerritos shop at night. Ward says that the aluminum parts the pair substituted “made for a good looking car, maybe more ‘hot rod’ than race car,” with the finished car weighing 60 pounds less than a standard Eagle. For a driver, BCV Racing enlisted the services of a fellow Southern Californian, Dennis Firestone, the 1976 SCCA Formula Ford National Champion and who had dominated the 1979 USAC Super Vee championship before moving up to CART and Indianapolis 500 in 1980. By 1982, Dennis already had two Indianapolis 500 starts to his credit.
Although 1987 signaled the end of Buttera’s Indy entries, he often visited the Speedway during May in the years in the years that followed. John Buttera returned to Southern California and to building ground-breaking hot rods at his shop, “Lil’ John’s Place.” One of the Milodon engines from the Indy effort wound up being used John's son Chris' custom 1964 Chevy Nova “No Vette,” featured in Hot Rod magazine. John Buttera passed away from complications associated with brain cancer on March 2, 2008. John Buttera is survived by his son, Chris, daughter Leigh, son-in-law Ronnie Capps, and two grandchildren. Although John Buttera is gone, he lives on through the appreciation of his automotive creations. Several of John’s creations, including the Eagle #8106, were part of a special display dedicated to his memory at the 2009 Grand National Roadster Show. The attached photograph of the Eagle #8106 was taken by and provided by Gene Ingram. The author is indebted to John’s family, All American Racers,
and his long-time friend Bill Simpson for their assistance with this article.
Taking you Back with
Kevin Triplett
Kevin Triplett
Live Oak, CA
OWR3 Contributor
Howard Gilbert
Howard Gilbert had a remarkable 40+ year career in open wheel racing, spanning from front drive cars to modern carbon fiber rear engine cars- this is his story.
Gordon Howard Gilbert was born in the small north central Indiana town of Wabash, Indiana in 1921, and several years later his family moved to Whittier, California, where Howard’s lifelong love of automobile mechanics was first ignited. During World War II, Howard enlisted in the Army Air Corps, hoping to become an aircraft mechanic, but Uncle Sam had other ideas, and Howard spent the war years on Cape Cod as a Meteorologist. After the war, Howard returned to Whittier and began his career as an auto mechanic, and building engines for local racers, as well as participating as a mechanic at the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in 1947.
Only a few years after arriving at Indianapolis, Howard served on his first Indy winner, as a member of the crew of the Lou Moore–owned, Bill Holland-driven Blue Crown Spark Plug Special 1949 winner.
During the winter of 1956-57, Howard, together with fellow Indy mechanic and Whittier neighbor, George Salih, crafted a new car in Salih’s home garage on Milliken Avenue.
Salih and Gilbert had studied the 1952 pole-winning Cummins Diesel and thought that laying an Offenhauser engine on its side would pay benefits at the Speedway by lowering the center of gravity.
Salih, a foreman at Meyer & Drake, convinced his bosses to allow the pair to obtain cosmetically flawed parts to use on their project on credit. Together, the pair overcame the engineering obstacles to properly oil an Offenhauser engine laid over 18 degrees from horizontal, the extreme angle required to make their design succeed. Salih and Gilbert, who also shared the same birthday, worked nights and weekends on their new creation, mortgaging everything they owned, even their homes, to complete the car. After completing the chassis, and out of money, they convinced Quin Epperly to build the sleek aluminum body in exchange for part ownership, and Salih was able to sell exhaust manufacturer Sandy Belond on a $2500 sponsorship deal. Champion Spark Plug offered no financial help to the project, so in exchange for $1000 in contingency money Salih and Gilbert used Lodge Spark Plugs from England, the only car in the race so equipped. Sam Hanks, who had driven the Jones & Maley KK500C for crew chief George Salih in 1956, agreed to drive the new ‘laydown’ creation. The team’s hard work and financial gamble paid off, with Hanks winning the 1957 Indianapolis 500 at the then-record average speed of 135 MPH.
After Hanks announced his retirement in Victory Lane, George Salih and Howard Gilbert were in the envious position of dealing with a flood of offers from eager drivers and equipment suppliers. Jimmy Bryan took over the seat in 1958, and repeated the 1957 victory. The team returned with the same car in 1959 in hopes of a third straight win, but the car retired after one lap with broken camshaft housing. Howard continued to serve with George Salih as co-crew chiefs on the next generation Salih ‘laydown,’ 18 inches shorter than the original, from 1960 through 1963. Salih and Howard continued as co-crew chiefs on the car even after it was sold to a new owner for 1964.
In 1965, Salih and Howard joined the ‘rear engine revolution,’ going to work for mail order magnate’s George R. Bryant team using BRP (British Racing Partnership) built cars. In addition to Bryant’s stepson, Masten Gregory, as the lead driver, the pair were reunited with their ‘laydown’ driver of 1961-1963, Fresno’s Johnny Boyd. After several seasons of disappointing results, during the winter of 1967-68, Howard Gilbert built a pair of cars for George Bryant to replace the aging BRP cars, using a set of Brabham ‘blueprints’ and adding his own ideas to create the new car he christened the “Cheetah.”
After George Bryant’s passing in early 1968, Gilbert sold one of the completed cars to Bill Simpson and the other to George Follmer, with Howard serving as Follmer’s crew chief. In 1968 Follmer’s car was equipped with turbocharged Ford engine, but switched to stock-block Chevrolet engines for 1969, except at Indianapolis.
The highlight for the Gilbert-Follmer team was their shocking victory in the Jimmy Bryan 150, held at Phoenix International Raceway on March 30, 1969. That day, Follmer, in the Cheetah chassis equipped with a Howard Gilbert-built Chevrolet engine, was an even match for field of turbocharged Fords and Offenhausers; Follmer ran a conservative race and let the desert heat work on the leaders’ machines. After Bobby Unser’s Offy engine broke a piston, Follmer’s Cheetah led the final 28 laps, finishing at a then-record average speed of 109 MPH, marking Chevrolet’s historic first Championship victory.
Howard Gilbert was best known to contemporary racing fans as AJ Foyt’s engine builder from 1970 to 1990. During his Howard’s tenure at AJ Foyt Racing, AJ Foyt scored 25 Championship race wins, including Foyt’s (and Howard Gilbert’s) fourth Indianapolis 500 victory. Using Howard Gilbert built power plants, Foyt also won the USAC Championship series in 1975 and 1979, and the USAC Stock Car championship in 1978 and 1979.
Howard was a member of the USAC delegation that traveled to Germany to evaluate the engine for the planned 1980 Porsche Indy car. Gilbert said later, "We took one look at the restrictive exhaust system on it and knew that one slight modification would make much more horsepower than any engine currently running the Indy 500.”
After the After the 1990 season, Howard Gilbert retired to
Februar Februaryy 4, 2008 at age 87.
After the
