Cars
Pixacar Editors
Tue Sep 18 2012 23:12:03 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
A roof-top roadster with an Indianapolis 500 resume that has delighted (and confounded) Indianapolis for more than half a century will be gone this week.
The race car, perched since 1961 on the roof of Safety Auto Glass, 1122 Southeastern Ave., has been sold, said Steve Perkins, Safety Auto Glass president and the car's owner.
The 1954 Indianapolis 500 roadster will be removed from the roof Tuesday and taken to a private garage for an extensive renovation. Given the 50 years of exposure to the elements (not to mention the time, in 1964, when high winds blew it off the roof and sent it crashing to the sidewalk) the car's refit is expected to take several years, said Gary Schroeder, of Burbank, Calif., one of the two buyers. Schroeder runs a company that manufactures parts for race cars and also owns several antique racers. His partner in the deal is Chris Paulsen, Indianapolis, an owner and chief mechanic of Indy race cars.
Neither the seller nor the buyers of the roof car would disclose its sale price. In a 2004 interview Perkins said he'd recently turned down $20,000.
Since Perkins took over the business started by his father, who died in 1991, he had batted away "40 or 50 offers" to buy the oddly positioned car. "But now it's just time," he said. "It's the right thing to do and these are the right people" to own the car next.
Schroeder and Paulsen have both restored vintage race cars. Paulsen recently built from scratch a replica of the 1963 winner, a car similar to the one on the roof.
The roof car turns out to be not just any race car. It is one of roughly 60 so-called "roadsters" built for racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the 1950s and 1960s, a time many racing aficionados consider open-wheel racing's golden era.
It's not just any roadster, either. Built by Kurtis Kraft in 1954, it was driven briefly by Bill Vukovich, the two-time 500 winner who some consider the greatest driver at Indianapolis. Another highly regarded driver, Sam Hanks, the 1957 winner, drove the car in the 1955 and 1956, finishing second in 1956.
Donald Davidson, the auto historian, figures there are about 40 roadsters still accounted for. In recent years several fully restored cars have sold in the $200,000 range.
Perkins' father, Safety Auto Glass founder Robert Perkins, and several other Indianapolis businessmen bought the car in 1957 and attempted to qualify it for the 500 the next four years. The car was aging, however, and could not gather sufficient speed. Perkins and his partners gave up on it, but rather than selling it for scrap Perkins had the idea to set it on his roof for marketing reasons.
Its value there was "hard to calculate," said his son, "but when I'm giving directions, I always say, 'We're the red brick building with the race car on top,' and 90 percent of the time they say, 'Oh, yeah. I've seen that a million times.'"
Such recognition is impressive when you consider Safety Auto Glass's smallness -- the company, which replaces and tints car windows, has just four employees.
Hanks, the last person to drive the car in the 500, "was never happy about it being on the roof," said his widow, Alice Hanks, in an email from her home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. "Sam had a lot of sentiment about some of the cars he drove, especially the ones he did well in. Sam said that 1956 was one of the hardest races he ever drove."
"At first," said Davidson, "it did seem like a sad end to a glorious racing car. But it became such a landmark, such a talking point. I myself sometimes detoured past it just to see that it was still there."
The two new owners will split the restoration duties. Schroeder will make the necessary interior moving parts from his plant in California. Paulsen will do the body work at his C & R Racing garage in Indianapolis. "A lot of the car is salvageable," Schroeder said. "The tail can be straightened, the nose can be straightened. And the frame -- cars were built so heavily then, so the frame is still in tact."
Then what? What does one do with a 1954 Indy race car? Paulsen and Schroeder will take it to car shows and take turns driving it in vintage car races.
Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043 and follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.
