Mexican, anyone?
Allied-bodied Kurtis never got its chance
Mickey Thompson sped along at 100 miles an hour or so. He didn’t have another land-speed record or motorsports title in his sights. He didn’t even have his hands on the wheel of a specially prepared racing machine. Instead, he was in a rush to get out of Mexico, and though he narrowly escaped retribution this time, karma caught up to him a couple years later when the cancellation of La Carrera Panamericana kept him from racing a one-of-two Allied-bodied Kurtis on the international stage.
The 1953 flight out of Mexico, as Erik Arneson detailed in “Mickey Thompson: The Fast Life and Tragic Death of a Racing Legend,” followed his and Rodger Flores’ crash in a six-cylinder-powered Ford sedan during that year’s running of La Carrera Panamericana. While La Carrera began in 1950, it was Thompson’s first time running the Mexican road race and contending with the country’s notoriously tight and dangerous roads at speed.
Allied-bodied Kurtis never got its chance
Related – Record-setting, and stylish, the 1949 Kurtis Special that blazed across the salt at Bonneville powered by a Ford Flathead V8