A priceless piece of MotorTrend history joins the family.
flathead V-8 fires up instantly and quickly settles down to a growling idle. I pull the shifter across to the left and back, engaging first gear in the three-speed transmission. Ease out the clutch, and the low, broad-shouldered convertible oozes forward, vintage whitewall tires squirming on the concrete.We're old friends, this old roadster and I; most of the 70 miles on the odometer are from when I drove it for afeature story eight years ago.
Kurtis-Kraft, Inc., the company Kurtis founded in the late 1930s, made most of its money churning out hundreds of oval-track midgets, plus racers for the famed Indy 500; Kurtis cars won five of the six 500s held from 1950 to 1955. Just before the outbreak of World War II, however, Kurtis had built a handsome, Mercury-powered sports car for a wealthy Denver cattleman, Bill Hughes. He reportedly charged Hughes just $900 for the car.
It's highly likely Kurtis would have heard about that sale. At about the same time, he had customized a 1941, turning it into a two-seat sports car that he drove to Indianapolis for the 1948 500. It impressed a lot of people in Gasoline Alley that year, including Ford scion Benson Ford, who urged him to build copies.
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