1960 Ewing “Joe Hunt” Indy Roadster
REQUIST A printable PDF document with Photos

This car is in perfect museum condition restored back to 1960 specification and ready to compete on the track. It has most recently competed at the 2007 Millers at Milwaukee meet and the Monterey Historic Automobile Races.

Roadsters
In the 1950s Indy car design shifted from the old upright dirt car designs to a new lower roadster design. The roadster era really began with Frank Kurtis’ innovative design built around a standard Offenhauser engine placed to the left of center in a lightweight tubular frame. This allowed the driver to sit much lower in the car to the right of the drive shaft. The resulting lower center of gravity of this design greatly improved the handling and the smaller frontal area increased straight-line speed. The design was a great leap forward and it became very clear that if you wanted a chance to win at Indy you needed a roadster. Buy the mid ‘50’s a number of chassis builders besides Kurtis had begun building roadsters; Eddie Kuzman, Quin Epperly, Floyd Trevis, Luje Lesovsky were among the best, but it was A.J. Watson’s shop that produced the most successful cars. Responsible for the beautiful aluminum bodies of the Watson Roadsters was Wayne Ewing.

History of this Car
Ewing had always harbored a desire to build his own Indy racecar and in 1959 he got his chance. Watson had two cars left to build in the spring of 1959 and gave the orders along with his blueprints to Ewing to complete at his shop. One car was for the Dean Van Lines team and the other was this car built for Joe Hunt’s team.

Both cars were exact copies of the Watson roadsters down to the frame layout and construction techniques. Many of the fabricators that worked at Watson also moonlighted working on these two cars. The chassis is a lightweight multi tube space frame with torsion bar springs and solid axels. The engine is the typical 255 cid 4 cylinders Offy producing 350 horsepower on a mixture of Menthol and Nitro.

By 1964 the rear engine revolution had swept Indy making this car obsolete. In the early ‘80s Bob McConnell found the car and began locating parts for a possible restoration. In 1987 he sold the car to Paul Dunnigan who restored it. By the mid ‘90s the car was sold to Phil Reilly, Marnix Dillenius and Andy Sisterino who decided a comprehensive, historically correct restoration was needed. Roger Beck who worked with Kuzma and Epperly completed the nut and bolt restoration to bring the car back to the way it was when it first appeared at the Speedway in 1960.

The car was featured in the February 2007 issue of Vintage Motorsport magazine
<down load PDF Article>

INDY RACE HISTORY
1960 Driven by: Al Herman, Qualified 141.838 (30th)
Ran as high at 16th before blowing clutch on lap 34, finished in 32nd position
1961 Driven by: Danny “Termite” Jones, Practice speed of 141.372 DNQ
also driven by Don Freeland and Paul Russo but neither tried to qualify
1962 Driven by: Keith “Porky” Rachwitz DNQ and Jim Hurtubise DNQ
1963 Driven by: Jimmy Daywalt DNQ, and Chuck Rodee DNQ
1964 Driven by: Chuck Rodee 146.466 DNQ.

About Joe Hunt Magnetos
Taking technology from WWII airplanes, Joe Hunt figured out how to adapt magnetos to racecars and starting with Johnny Parsons Indy 500 win in 1950, Joe’s magnetos became standard circle track equipment and are still manufactured to this day. In the late 1950’s Joe started his own Indy car team and competed at Indy into the mid 60’s with this car.