40 replies to this topic

[Tex]

I went to a slot car race in Odessa, TX, in early July. About 10-15 miles before you get to Odessa on I-20, you pass through Midland (from DFW area). West Texas was/is oil country. If you didn't know already, Jim Hall (of Chaparral fame) was an engineer and an oil man; maybe that's how he could afford his penchant for race cars.

The Permian Basin Petroleum Museum documents many aspects of oil... how it came to be, how to find it, how to get it out of the ground. There are many exhibits of oilfield equipment, both old and older (including an old wooden derrick).

Anyway, I digress from the reason I'm posting this thread. Inside the museum is "The Chaparral Gallery", a tribute to Jim Hall's fantastic Chaparral race cars! I was twelve years old in the summer of 1965 and discovered the Cox Chaparral. Being a Texan, finding out this wicked-looking race car was made in Texas sent me over the moon! I've been a Chaparral fan ever since. I couldn't pass up this chance to go through the museum and take pictures of these cars up close. Enjoy.

Let's start with the Chaparral 2B, the car Cox gave to us:

Front view:



Back view (pay no attention to that red car... more on it later).



How 'bout a little 2D action? The car that won the 1000km of Nurburgring in 1966.



The 2D from the side:



The 2D cockpit (sorry for the fuzzy pic).



Leap into the space age with the fantastic, high-winged 2E!



The 2E from behind:



The 2E cockpit:



The somewhat elegant-looking yet ineffective 2H:



The 2H in a garage mockup:



Another view of the 2H in "the garage":



Got a dirty rug anyone? The quickly outlawed 2J "Sucker Car":



The 2J cockpit:



An Indy-winning Chaparral... don't know the designation, driven by Johnny Rutherford (I believe)... ground effects car!

]

A rather fuzzy shot of part of the Chaparral Gallery:



Again, sorry for the graininess of the picture. Now why WAS this car in the Chaparral Gallery?!?! My buddy and I were anxious to get to the slot car track in Odessa; I never read any of the plaques, so I don't have a clue why this car was there! The 1967 24-Hours of Le Mans winning Ford MkIV driven by Dan Gurney and fellow Texan A. J. Foyt



Former national R/C champ Rhett McNair in the cockpit of a 2E mockup. It's made from real components, just not finished out to be an actual race car.



Some fat guy who couldn't get down into the cockpit! LOL! When trying to ease down into the cockpit, I got my right foot stuck for a minute, neither in nor out, holding myself up inches from the seat. I thought I was going to have to reach down and untie my shoe to extricate myself. I finally got my foot loose, tried a different approach to getting my foot down in there, but then my fat you-know-what wouldn't fit in the seat! LOL!



Here's a couple of bonus pictures. See if you can guess the nature of this piece of bodywork.

[68Caddy]

Tex,

Thanks for those pics. I always wondered about the love affair with the Chappys. Now I know. I love the high wing and I think the 2H is one of the weirdest cars out there.
The 2B is my favorite Chappy.

Tex, who is that skinny fellow that tries to get into the cockpit? Well some are heavy on what they sit on, but most are heavy-headed which I think is worst.

Love historical cars and thanks for posting these.

Nesta

[Rhett]

Man, that was so cool seeing all those old race cars!

[Mopar Rob]

I just did a Mapquest. Now I don't feel as bad about not making it there when I was in Dallas last year. Albeit cool, I don't think I would have driven over five hours?

Thanks for the pix.

[Mike Patterson]

Tex,

The Indy car is the 2K, AKA "The Yellow Submarine". I can't remember the prominent designer's name who designed it. I saw it race at Mid-Ohio .

Al Unser should have won Indy with it, too. IIRC, some cheap $5 part failed.

I wish SOMEBODY would make a model of it.

[Mopar Rob]

That's Johnny Rutherford's 1980 Indy 500 winning car. Mike is correct the it is a Chaparal 2K. I believe the cars debut was in 1979 with Al, Sr?

[TSR]

See if you can guess the nature of this piece of bodywork.

That's the top piece of the body of a Lola T332 F5000 car, the one owned by Carlton Beale and prepped at Hall's Chaparral works in Midland in the day. Beal was an oil man like Hall and also resided in Midland. Several drivers took turns in the Lola but the best was Brian Redman.

Beal died in 1979, but his son made himself famous recently by trading a $1.5M Bugatti Veyron with less than 3K miles on it for a $100K Corvette ZR1 at the local Chevy dealer. Looks like money is no object when it came easy...

The Chaparral 2 shown in the first picture is closer to the Monogram model than the Cox. Cox modeled their car after the March 1965 Sebring winner, while the car has been restored in its last configuration as it ran in Nassau in November, after several major body upgrades were tried and modified.

The 2K was designed by Brit John Barnard, later a Ferrari designer. It was the first ground-effect Indy car and dominated Indy car racing in 1980 in the hands of Johnny Rutherford.
Al Unser drove the new 2K for Hall in 1979 and won two races, then Johnny R took over.

As far as the Ford MkIV there, the actual car is at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn. The car in the Petroleum Museum was built from leftover bits at FAV in the UK so as to pay tribute to AJ Foyt, another Texan, who co-drove the car at Le Mans. Another similar car is in California in the hands of Tom Malloy.

[Roger U]

Tex,

Thank you very much for the photos. I have been a Chaparral fan since first seeing them in the '60s and have wanted to go to this museum for a long time now, many interesting ideas in these cars. Still hoping to get there one of these days.

[don.siegel]

Thanks, Tex! Had never heard of this museum and didn't know there was a Chappy car display elsewhere...

That first Chappy 2 is great (looks a bit like the Russkit too, with the air duct to the cockpit), and I loved your pics of the 2E and your funny commentary! The 2E is really a small car, and I wonder if the Cox version in 1/24 isn't a bit overscale...

Don

[Zippity]

Where is a photo of the "real" Chaparral??

The 2F?

[Cheater]

Here you go, Ron:

Chaparral 2F

[tonyp]

The 2B in its final form was so cool with all the louvers and spoilers. I have the one Chap book and was surprised that very few actual chassis were built and were simply rebodied and reskinned. If I remember the 2F used the 2D windows and chassis with the flat tub extensions added.

[TSR]

I wonder if the Cox version in 1/24 isn't a bit overscale...

 

Don, all the Cox Chaparral models are spot on for size.
Pretty much all the sports racers in the 1960s were much smaller than modern and frankly bloated racing cars.

If I remember the 2F used the 2D windows and chassis with the flat tub extensions added.

Tony, the 2F used the 2C/2E aluminum tub, one being one of the 1966 2E, the other a new tub as the other 2E became the 2G.

It is also interesting to note that Hall never called the different versions of the Chaparral 2 by any other names, like A, B, etc.
Later historians did that to separate the versions.

[Marty Stanley]

Tex,

Thank you so much for providing some awesome photos of the cars that Jim Hall built and raced.

The photo of the 2B is a very interesting one to look at and contemplate!
 

 

As I look at the air ducting on the hood of the car leading to the driver's compartment, I see something that looks like there was a quick mod done on it shortly after the first lap was made at speed. I see nothing on the duct that would prevent rocks, gravel, suspended particulate of racing surface, small birds and children being directed right at the face of the driver. Quite possibly one of those 'great ideas' gone badly wrong! It's interesting to see that none of the other cars have such a device!

After you show this photo:
 

 

Obviously of a Texas-sized Texan, you ask if anyone knows what this photo is of:
 

 

My guess would be a device to allow for "Texas-sized Texans" to drive little cars with tight cockpits like the Chapparal 2B had.

Is that correct?

The Chapparal was and still is one of the most widely known and appreciated Can-Am cars ever raced.

[TSR]

Marty,

This driver cooling device was extremely effective and was retained on this car from Road America in June through the very last race in Nassau in November. The car, driven by Hap Sharp wearing an open-face helmet and regular goggles, won every single race it entered. I guarantee you that Hap had no more face warps than before these races. The same device was used on several other period cars such as McLaren MK2 and MK3 as well as several other USRRC cars.

As far as the Lola T332 body panel, please see post #7.

[Tex]

Yes, the 2E IS a small car. By contrast, the 2B is larger than I thought it would be. At the far end of the scale, the 2J is humongous by comparison... maybe it's an optical illusion created by its boxy bodywork.

I'll have to defer to Philippe's knowledge of the red body panel. I thought I'd read that it was an actual Chaparral F5000 that Jim Hall didn't finish due to time and/or resources. Hey, if Jim let a buddy use his facility to work on his Lola, who am I to argue?

I forgot to mention that I played it cool when I first walked in... walked up to the reception desk and asked "Is Jim in today?" as if I knew him. No, he was not in that day.

I may have already mentioned it elsewhere on Slotblog! somewhere, that the receptionist told Rhett and I that they take the Chaps out for a quick spin once in a while, just to keep the cobwebs from forming. Someone mentioned that I didn't have a pic of the 2F. Apparently, it was getting outfitted for such an outing as a week or so later I got an email informing me that the 2F would be run around the circle in front of the museum for about 15-20 minutes in a few days (from the time I received the email). Maybe the 2F was over at Jim's test track, Rattlesnake Raceway, for the freshen-up before running it. Rattlesnake Raceway and Jim Hall's shops are across I-20 from the museum, a couple miles down the road; I didn't take the time to go there.

[TSR]

Rich,

Jim Hall spends most of his time in Palm Springs, CA, nowadays.

I thought I'd read that it was an actual Chaparral F5000 that Jim Hall didn't finish due to time and/or resources. Hey, if Jim let a buddy use his facility to work on his Lola, who am I to argue?

 

Actually, some GM engineers in collaboration with Jim Hall were indeed planning such a car and it got built, but it was not very competitive and the project was abandoned. The same guys later modified some older Eagle Indy chassis with very different aero thinking and renamed them "Antares", two of them actually making the field at Indy in 1972 and not doing so bad.

The body panel is definitely that of a T332, trust me on that one. I went to Lola school...

The Lola T332 owned by Hall's friend Carlton Beal (actually the three cars he had) are back racing in vintage racing, but all are painted in a later livery of white with dark red striping. One of them is in Tustin, CA, in a private museum. I cannot recall where the other two are, but Redman drives one of them time to time in demos since he won the championship with it.

[Old pink can guy]

Thanks, Tex and PdL, for the history report!

[Steve Deiters]

I think these are photos of the F5000 car you are referring to.

The origin of the tub for the car was to be an Indy Car with wings that had been approved by USAC when Jim Hall met with them in the mid-'60s. Keep in mind wings on Indy cars, while not unheard of, were not dominant at that time like they are today. They changed the rules and the tub was completed, but not the car.

Fast forward to the early '70s and the tub was finished out by Franz Weiss (Chapparal mechanic and ace engine builder) and others and ran in one or two F5000 races until it was wrecked. The front of the car has a bow type nose like was found on the Antares, but I don't know if there was any overlap in participants on both cars. Don Gates (I think) was the guy who came up with the Antares. I asked Hall about the car once and he said he still had the car at his shop under a tarp. Interesting bit of mid-'60s racing lore. I would love to see a picture of the car now.

I spoke to Ron Low, the staff mechanic at the Petroleum Museum for the sports cars, when I was down there this spring and he really didn't know anything about it and it was news to him. I've been meaning to send him pictures of it. Guess I'll have to move writing that letter to the top of my list and see if we can find out more.

[chaparrAL]

The F5000 grew from a stillborn USAC project. Franz Weis drove it and the second outing was it's last after a crash.

The most elusive and mysterious Chaparral ever? It is said to be under a tarp in the back of the Chaparral shop.

[68Caddy]

Sure like that F5000 it looks great from the side but it has a bit of a canoe nose? Do they have a complete car of that one or is it gone forever?

Nesta

[chaparrAL]

Nesta,

That's a bow, not a nose!, Left is port, right is starboard, or is it the other way around?

[TSR]

but I don't know if there was any overlap in participants on both cars. Don Gates I think was the guy who came up with the Antares.

 

Same group. Don Gates, Paul Van Valkenburg, Jerry Mrlik, and some other guys at the GM R&D...

Jerry Mrlik was also a slot car fan and built some very nice slot cars using Jail Door frames and of course (we ARE in Detroit) Dyna-Rewind motors.

[gascarnut]

Where did you guys come up with this "2B" thing?

There never was a 2B. In fact there was never a 2A until after the 2C was built, and then the press, not the factory, referred to the older model as a 2A. All those variations, with and without the chin spoilers, with and without the louvers, with and without the fins and moveable wing, they were all just called Chaparral 2 at the time.

The 2C was a different animal, different styling (with no intakes alongside the cockpit), all aluminum instead of having a glass-fiber tub, and it only ran twice before being converted to one of the first 2E cars.

See, Philippe, I have learned my Chaparral history now.........

[Rhett]

Here are the photos I took with my phone while we were there. It's a really cool place.