Category: 1949 Kurtis Sport Car
Built to contest La Carrera Panamericana, Mickey Thompson’s Allied-bodied Kurtis never got its chance – Daniel Strohl @Hemmings
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
HOMECOMING: A MOTORTREND ICON JOINS THE FAMILY
The story of the 1949 Kurtis Sport Car, MT’s first-ever cover car
I climb in, twist the key, and press the starter. The Ford 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.
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