Baxter's Historic Car Races, 2003

Jeffrey Butts

The Saturday morning of the Historics was going to be a warm one. When I backed the car out of the garage at a little after 7AM, it was not too cold to be driving in a T-shirt with the top down. I motored just down the road to Bob McFadden's place and we headed off together towards Skyline Burgers. Fortunately for us, the cops were not working traffic on Murray Boulevard because, like a couple of high school teens, we lined up and did three straight stop light drags.

Once atop the hill, we hooked up with Ken David and his son Kevin (BMW 2002) and Don Harrison and his son Adam (Porsche 911). Kelly Sweeney and his family had gone down to a reunion in Florida (can you imagine the humidity?) and so we would not see the Mustang or either of the Minis this year. Al Kinney had a booth to run (Clearbra of Oregon...and what an image that inspires) and Russ Lindborg had volunteered to set up the Subaru corral thereby depriving us of the big silver Corvette and the butter yellow 356. Still, four members at the "clubhouse" represent more than 20% of the total membership. If you add Russ, Al, and Dave Isselhard (who was racing) we had more than a third of the club in attendance at the track.

This year our route was forced to change. The historic St John's Bridge, a steel suspension bridge built in 1931, was due for repairs so significant that the bridge will remain closed for many weeks. With the Sweeney's out of state, Don Harrison volunteered to lead us to the track. Off we went towards the turn off at Germantown Road. This "back way" from the Cedar Mill area to north Portland winds down to Highway 30 in a two mile stretch of second and third gear corners. Approaching the intersection we saw that we were going to be stuck behind three other cars, a Checker Marathon, a RAV4, and a Mustang. We caught the Toyota and the Mustang quickly but the Checker was flat gone! Maybe he was going to the races! We drove through the Northwest Industrial area and headed on up and across the Fremont Bridge. At this point, bringing up the tail of the group, I was nearly snookered since I thought we'd be following I-5 North and exiting at Going Street so that we'd proceed through the Overlook and University Park area. Instead, we swung south and ended up heading north on Interstate Avenue. Quite a surprise all in all. The area under the bridge and right near where Russell intersects with Interstate has some great architecture. It also has the Widmer Brother's Brewery, one reason I suspect we came this way. The MAX line, scheduled to open next year, now bisects Interstate Avenue. Hooray for mass transit, it means more roadway for the rest of us. We got to the track without much bother, wading through the traffic destined for the Expo Center Antique and Collectible show.

When we were in the paddock area we had a brief club meeting where all members were re-elected President once again. Business completed, the pit crawl began. As usual, the cars were wonderful, ranging from the exotic (Ferrari 312, Porsche 910) to the commonplace (Sprite, Porsche 911). I did see the Ken Myles Flying Shingle as we drove up but it did not race on Saturday. The "feature" event of the weekend was the 2.5 Liter Trans-Am Challenge. The Vintage Sedan Racing Group is running a five-race championship this year. The "famous Amos" at this weekend's race was John Morton, the '72 champion (BRE Datsun). The hero was surrounded by his admiring legion so, forsaking the celebrity interview, I checked out some of the weekend's entries. Some are worthy of note, many actually, but I will just outline a few. The Porsche 910 (910-025) is owned by Seattle's Mike Malone. Debuting in 1966, the 910 was originally intended to be a hill climb car (winning championships in 1966 and 1967). Turns out, actually, that it was a damn fine car for those distance races popular back then. The 910 won the Targa Florio and Nuremberg in 1967 and placing second at the 1968 Sebring 12-hour. This particular car won the Mugello (Italy) 500Km race with Gerhard Mitter driving. Today, however, it was a little disappointing finishing well back after some off-course excursions.

Speaking of Porsche, there was a car that I found to be quite a nice example. Tom Hedges of Hedges Cellars Wines in Issaquah (www.hedgescellars.com) had a beautiful 1969 911E. God knows that there are more than enough 911's out there with big wings and fenders that bulge like Schwarzenegger's biceps. Not that anyone cares, but I personally feel that the 911 aesthetic is lost (and has been for some time). True enough, the basic design is over thirty years old but the current crop has evolved beyond the simplistic lines of the original. Tom's car is very clean, not in a concours sense, but as a tidy little package. The motor is a detuned two-liter 906 engine that puts out about 200 HP. He has been racing for about six years, starting originally in a 944.

The 1958 Sprite was one Portland residents would recognize. The white over moss green, right hand drive car was originally raced and sponsored by Faspec owner Stan Huntley. When he retired from the business, Stan sold the car to his son Shad, who races the car from Eldorado Hills, California. The car is powered by a 1275cc engine (hardly stock) with a single dual-throat Weber and matched to a ribcage transmission. The wire wheel conversion (optional on Sprites back then.and significantly heavier than stock wheels) allows for disc brakes up front. Stan says that the car puts out an honest 95HP at the wheels. Not bad considering the original had less than half that. Shad had a good race Saturday with the ex-Steve Froines 1962 TR-4 out of Martinez, California. There are at least four of us in this club that actually watched Froines drive it back then (Dave Allen, Bob Lawson, Julie Bursi, and me). Unlike the Sprite, it did not double its horsepower in the ensuing years.

Most of the races were quite good and I want to highlight a couple of examples (no, I did not see Monte do his patented, whiz-bang pass this year). Group 7A, pre-1969 European sports cars was a walk-away for a nice little Datsun roadster. The Parts Obsolete gang (with a collection of road-warrior 356 Porsches, see them at www.partsobsolete.com) went at it hammer and tongs for second place. Group 1, mostly pre-1959 sports cars and mostly U2L, also featured some very spirited racing. Don Orosco drove the Corvette powered Scarab Mk.1. Built by Troutman-Barnes, the Scarab is arguably one of the best looking front-engined sports racers of the late 1950's. Don had a great dice with Portland's Tom Black. The program lists Tom as driving a Lotus 23 but, in fact, it was a 2.5 liter Coventry Climax Lotus 19. At the charge for the first corner the Scarab came in too hot and almost looped it. Correcting his slide, he tapped the back of the Lotus going into Turn 2 and passed him. With a small piece of broken fiberglass on the right rear, the Lotus never missed a beat, re-passing the larger displacement Scarab for good shortly thereafter and making it stick to the end. Another fun dice in this heat was between a street legal Aston Martin DB-4 and a "double bubble" Fiat Abarth. Although the Fiat never quite had enough power to pass the DB-4, the guy was all over the bigger car the whole race.

The open wheel cars provided the dust-up that was bound to happen. Going into the first turn on the first lap Lake Oswego's Greg Baldwin did a 180 in his Elden FB. John Dimmer (Lotus 35, Tacoma) managed to slide to a stop and avoid the Elden but got his nose run over by the following cars. This very quickly developed into a bag of cats as a little Winkleman got stopped nose to nose with the Baldwin car only to have Sean Allen's 69 Brabham make contact. The end result, after the pack cleared was four cars stuck in the middle of the Festival corner. The race was stopped, started, and then shortened. All of the cars got taken away on a hook or a flat bed. The Winkleman and the Brabham with broken suspensions and the Lotus with crushed fiberglass. All but one that is. At the end of the race, Baldwin got back in his undamaged car and drove back to the pits. D'oh!

The 2.5 Liter Challenge was up next. I predicted that Morton would charge to the front from his fourth place spot on the grid. In fact there were several Datsun 510's that were having quite a dice along with Berkeley's Jon Norman in a '67 Alfa GTV. Morton made it to second but the winner was a drive from the outside pole by Campbell, California's Jeff Hecox in a beautiful, white BMW 1600 Alpina. As mentioned before, I did not see Monte Shelton race this day, but a successful imitation was done by a nice little Alfa as you can see in the photo on the right. This slide actually started about 100 feet before the apex.

The Historic Stock Car Race series was there again this year and, although we had some close calls, not one of those guys spun in the Festival in spite of the weight of the cars and the demand on the brakes at this 12 turn road course. A great duel up front was especially enjoyable since one of the cars dicing for third was a 1974 Dodge Charger, twenty years older than most of the other competitor cars.

The other races were good, but without the drama of the ones described above. I will say that Group 5, (Big Bore Production cars) was a runaway for the Corvettes. Early on there was a Camaro that was in the hunt for second place but he spun and fell back to 10th. He made a great charge back up front and finished sixth. The top ten order read 1-5 in 'Vettes, the Camaro, and four Mustangs.

It was great fun (again). I was glad that McFadden took the time prior to his sabbatical to come. It was also good to see Ken and Kevin David. They came once before about five years ago and missed hooking up with us. Ken's 2002 looked really nice this weekend. Thanks to Don and Adam for leading the way. Sorry we missed Russ (Suba-duty called) and Al (I hope he made lots of sales). Thanks also to Dave Isselhard for his hello...and glad to see you made it through the Festival unscathed. Sweeney will be back next year. I hope more of you can join us. In the meantime, rest assured, your tenure as club president is safe.