Zupan's Historic Car Races, 1999

Jeffrey Butts

I'd like to say that the Zupan's Markets, New Tech Electric, Portland International Raceway 1999 Historic Car Races was fabulous. Does that sound like a stock car driver endorsement? You know the kind of thing I mean, "Shucks Benny, the guys did a fabulous job of preparing the Exide Battery, Shlomo's Grocery, Hoosier Tire, STP Shiv- ro-lay Monte Carlo. It jus' breaks m'heart that we had a tar go down and we slid up into da wall". Well, it is for good reason that it does. The featured marque of this year's race was "historic" NASCAR cars, or "Cup cars" as they are called on the circuit. I am getting ahead of myself, more on that later.

As usual, the plan was for a group of us to gather up on NW Skyline Drive on Saturday morning of race weekend. This tradition was started (can you believe it?) twelve years ago by four of us who worked together. Although the jump off point has changed twice since we began, the core crew has always been the same.

I rolled the 914 out at just after 7:00AM on Saturday and headed up to Skyline Burgers. For once, I was not the first car there. Already on site were Ken David and his son Kevin in their BMW Z3, Don Harrison in his 911, Joe Sweeney in the family 1998 Volvo T5, and Kelly and Brian Sweeney, and Brian's girlfriend Allison in Kelly's trademark Mini Cooper. We were soon joined by Russ Lindborg in his recently tweaked 1962 Porsche 356B and Mark Nast and Verrena Holliday in Mark's silver MGB GT. All heads turned with the arrival of Bob McFadden in his beautiful 1964 XK-E Coupe. Final car to arrive was a very upbeat Sandy Gotthardt in her squeaky clean 911 Targa. While we bench raced and admired each other's cars, a steady parade of equally interesting machinery passed through the intersection. There were Covette's a-plenty, a Ferrari Testarossa, and a nice little Alfa GTA. The Chevy behind the Alfa nearly ran into him at the stop sign and you could hear a collective gasp from all of us in the parking lot. Perhaps the best pre- race show was provided by the driver of a low-boy tractor trailer. Following his pilot car, he blew through the stop sign and made a 90 degree turn down the hill. His load was a D8 Caterpillar and the clearance between the trailer bed and the pavement could not have been more than two inches. His speed never dropped below 20 MPH.

We departed our staging location and wove our way along the top of Portland's west hills. As in previous years, the parade was led by Kelly's Mini Cooper. This year, once down Germantown Road and across the St. John's bridge, we headed in along a different route. We zipped down by the Police Station, hardly attracting any attention from the cop on the sidewalk. With the sun shining we drove along the bluff on N. Willamette Blvd. To our left were joggers and folks working early in their yards. To our right, the view was Swan Island. It was a perfect day for a cruise and the route that Kelly picked was top notch. All of my pre-planning for pit rendezvous was for naught when we arrived at the track. The crowd was enormous. Previous years had about 175 racer entries. This year the total was closer to 300. The collector car corrals were smaller and more tightly packed and estimates were around 1000 cars there. Add to that the general spectator population and the size of the crowd must have brought tears of joy to the eyes of the organizers. The Winston Cup cars were pretty impressive. Although most of them were only a few seasons old, there was an '83 Wrangler Chevy and the 1969 Bobby Unser Torino. The Ford was the car with the biggest engine (at 429ci) if not the fastest. These 20 race cars put on quite a derby.

Club member Dave Isselhard was there with his Concours Mk 1. He was joined by racing buddy Short Cut Billy with his Formula Vee, same as last year. As I mentioned previously, there were quite a few cars. Kelly's cousin Dave Sweeney was a notable absence. He was there with us in the grandstands after lunch, but he had been unable to spend enough time getting his 1965 Brabham BT-14 ready to race. The NASCAR guys put on a great show. They are all out of northern California and were a gentlemanly group of drivers. I was looking forward to seeing a number of them slide into the gravel pit at the festival hairpin, but it happened only once. In the small bore modified race, I was relieved to see an abundance of Chevron cars after their absence last year. The B19 model driven so skillfully in the past by Dave Vehgar was there with a new pilot. He did very well, with one footnote. We have gotten used to Monte Shelton's Festival corner antics. The typical approach is drive hard, passing to the inside approaching the turn. The typical result is to miss the corner altogether or else nearly so, causing carnage instead. This year was no exception. He pushed the Chevron way to the outside, causing the driver to take evasive action over the dragon's teeth. The result was damage to the front end of the B19 and Monte motored away.only to have is car crap out later. In an earlier session, he nearly hit Pete Lovely's beautiful Lotus 49 in the same corner. Speaking of Formula One cars, Peter Giddings was there again, this time in his pre-war Alfa Romeo. It is awe inspiring to watch him drive this car around the track, sawing the wheel back and forth and going much faster than many other cars.

There are two other cars and drivers that I would like to mention. Walt Maas raced 356 Porsches when I was in high school. I can remember him at Laguna Seca, Vacaville, Cotati, and other California tracks. He had a silver convertible D that he raced while working as an aerospace engineer in Lockheed's Sunnyvale, California plant. Throughout the sixties, he raced a variety of cars, including a 911, a B Production Corvette, and even in Formula B. In the early 70's he began racing a 240Z. With help from (but not sponsorship) the factory, he was National and IMSA champion in 1974 in the Datsun. In 1977 he switched back to Porsche, racing a 914-6 in IMSA GTU. His car was powered by a 2.5 liter 260HP engine. In the early 80's he began dabbling in vintage, right about the time that he was racing a 944 Turbo in the Firehawk series. Walt picked up his current car, a 1967 SWB 911 in 1989. It produces about 200HP from the Jerry Woods prepared engine.

Bernard Juchli has been mentioned in my articles before. He drives a blindly fast E-Jag coupe. Also currently from California, he began racing in the late sixties in an Autodynamics FV. He also raced in FF, including driving a 1970 Titan that he bought new for $3900. His name could usually be found in the top ten when the flag fell. An aircraft mechanic by trade (working for his Swiss countrymen on Mirage and Hawker Hunter jet engines), he has since retired and now runs a Jaguar repair shop in the SF Bay area. He originally raced vintage with a D-Jag replica, but was excluded from participating later on due to eligibility issues. The brother of his English born partner found this rusty RHD coupe in Britain. It took them a year and a half to restore it, racing it for the first time in 1985 in Palm Springs. The car has a steel monocoque chassis. The doors, hood, and hatch are aluminum and the windows are Lexan. This green and yellow rocket ship runs a 4.2 liter engine with three dual throat Weber carbs and generates 394HP. Gadzooks! It is for sale, by the way. You can have the car and spares for $62K. Bernard has a pretty busy schedule. He has about 6 races this year in the Jag and a dozen more on road racing motorcycles. Planes, bikes, and cars, our kind of guy!

It was a great race day. Good weather, good racing, and plenty of friends. I'd like to compliment Paul Bates for the job he did with the Cascade region Porsche corral. With so many cars at this year's race, the space provided for clubs was kind of skimpy. The Bates' and the Thompson's did a fine job of keeping everyone happy.