356 Registry 33-4

hen I started this story, I envisioned it as a continuation of last issue’s article about Ed Trego’s Imported Motor Car Co. In Wfact I wrote the entire first draft with that theme in mind. Dur- ing the writing process I spoke with Glen Carroll, Ed Crawford’s mechanic, Ed Crawford, Ed’s wife Margo and his son Bill to fill in details. I felt my draft article was missing something essential. On Christmas Eve, FedEx brought me a nice present. It was 15 pounds of memorabilia that Bill Crawford had gathered together. There were wonderful items in the box. Of course there were pho- Spyder Man tographs of cars racing around the track but there was so much more. There were photographs of the people who loved sports cars, there were handwritten lap sheets recording achievement, there was a dinner menu from Ed Crawford’s appearance with the Porsche factory race team at Le Mans in 1957, there were newspapers telling about Fangio’s kidnapping at the 1958 Havana Grand Prix. There were memories. So indulge me if in this article I bring you a story not just about racing Porsches but of times past and the people that lived then. And so it begins About the time John Shakespeare purchased the Imported Motor Car By Phil Carney Company, the complexion of road racing in the United States started to change. Amateurs were still welcome at road racing events but expensive high-performance cars were taking all of the wins. One amateur was a young twenty-three-year-old by the name of Edward Webb Crawford. Ed’s father was a successful businessman which allowed Ed to live a comfortable lifestyle. But instead of country club pursuits, Ed wanted to live life to its fullest and his first interest was sports cars. Although Ed lived in Northfield, Illinois, in 1953 he traveled almost 200 miles south to Hoopeston to find a sports car that would serve him well. Perhaps Ed had seen reports of Imported Motor Car’s achievement in racing a Porsche 356 SL and figured he would purchase a car from the people making headlines. The car Ed bought was a $4,700 America Roadster. It was an expensive car by anyone’s standard but Ed evidently figured if he wanted to be a winner, he needed to buy a car capable of winning. To be frank, the Porsche America Roadster is more of an interesting sidebar in Porsche history then it is a competition suc- cess story. Sixteen of the aluminum cars were built before body-builder Gläser-Heuer went bankrupt and Porsche discontinued the project. Nevertheless, Ed had pretty good ex- Between 1953 and 1957 Edward Webb Crawford (seated) raced exclusively in periences with his AR for about nine months, obtaining first in class tro- Porsche-powered cars. He was most often the winner in the races he com- phies at Indianapolis, MacDill, Iowa City and Wilmont Hills. Glen Carroll, peted in and much credit is due to the work of his mechanic, Glen Carroll a mechanic at Imported Motor Car Company did everything possible to (right). Sometimes the events were local races, sometimes national events make Ed’s Porsche as competitive as possible. Turn signals were removed, and sometimes they were on the international stage. Memories have faded as a gas filler through the hood was added, the interior was stripped and re- to whether this photo was taken at a local race at Camp Atterbury, Indiana or placed by black flock and the gear shift linkage replaced by a stiffer mech- at Louisville, Kentucky. That is not important. Instead note the smile on Ed’s anism that resulted in the classical H pattern being inverted (first at lower face while he sits in the cockpit after his Spyder was unloaded from the trailer. right). Still Ed must have thought the AR was limiting his ability and he Also smiling is his mechanic Glen Carroll. They were about to put on their best began racing Trego’s Glockler-Porsche No. 2. The car had seen lots of use show for sports car fans. They were having fun. by that time and it was on its last legs so not especially competitive. 16 Volume 33, Number 6 • Porsche 356 Registry The transition to serious competitor When the Imported Motor Cars relocated from Hoopeston to Danville, Glen Carroll received an offer from Ed Crawford too attractive to turn down. Glen had serviced Ed’s cars and earned a highly respected reputation as a race mechanic. In 1955 Ed turned his Northfield horse barn into a shop and in February sent Glen off to New York to pick up his next Porsche race car. The car was a brand new, four-cam Spyder, one of the first, if not the first, “customer” Spyder. These cars differed slightly from the factory pro- totype Spyders with smaller rear fins, thicker aluminum bodies and added bracing in the frame. The changes brought the weight up to 610 kg (1,350 lb) but the 547/1 engine was conservatively rated at 110 hp by the factory. It would not be long however before American enthusiasts quickly learned some tricks that pulled 130 hp out of the four-cam. On Glen’s trip back from New York, one of the Spyder’s AC electric fuel pumps failed but Glen made it back to Illinois in time to sort the car out before it saw its first track time. In addition to replacing the fuel pumps with Bendix units, Glen removed the front parking lights and fabricated air ducts to improve brake cooling. After these modifications it was off to Florida for the Fourth Annual 12 Hours of Sebring on March 13th. Today the 1955 Sebring race is largely remembered for its minute-by- minute battle between Ferrari and Jaguar. Briggs Cunningham entered his D Type Jag driven by Mike Hawthorne and Phil Walters. In the Ferrari garage was a 750S Monza driven by Phil Hill and Carroll Shelby. These were the first two cars off the line and for the entire 12 hours of racing they were never separated by more than seven minutes. On the last lap, the gap between cars was only 25.4 seconds and this tight margin resulted in confu- sion. The Ferrari was given the checkered flag only to have the ruling changed during the cool-down lap. The crew of the D Jag was then directed to the podium but their car run out of fuel before reaching the winner’s cir- cle. But with this achievement, Phil Walters became Sebring’s first two-time winner and Briggs Cunningham received his third consecutive win as a car owner. In Class F, the big challenger for Porsche was the OSCA MT4. This car first appeared in 1948 and the MT4 designation stood for Maserati Tipo 4. Initially MT4s competed in the 1.1 and 1.3 liter class but in 1954 a twin- plug, twin-cam 1,492-cc engine producing 120 bhp @ 6,300 rpm became available. This engine performance combined with a car weight of just 1,280 pounds made the OSCA a natural competitor for the Porsche Spyder. The big advantage however was the final drive ratio. While Porsche initially used gearing in common with their 356 street cars, the Maserati Brothers selected a gear ratio suitable to individual race tracks. Road & Track re- ported this in a June 1955 article stating, Sebring’s “longest straight is 4,620’ and some cars, notably the D-Jaguar, Ferrari and Porsche 550 don’t have time to peak in top gear.” They also stated the OSCAs were “ideal cars for the Sebring course.” Top: The America Roadster Ed bought from Imported Motor Cars was a “veteran” racer; well proven but becoming outclassed by the OSCAs. The solution was Porshe’s new 550 Spyder with a four-cam engine. Initially set at a 9:1 compression ratio, Glen Carroll bumped it up to over 10:1. He said later, “The Germans didn’t real- ize how good our gasoline was.” Above: Glen drove the 550 from New York in the winter and by spring it was treated to a blue paint job after some modifications to the tail. Left: At Sebring in 1955 the car wore number 70 and finished 14th of 42 finishers (another 36 cars were DNF). Porsche lost the 1500 cc win to an OSCA, but in 1956 went to the head of the class and stayed there. That year Crawford co-drove a Factory-entered Spy- der but did not finish. www.356Registry.com • March / April 2010 17 In the eighty-car Sebring starting line-up, there were five OSCA MT4s in class F matched up against five Porsche 550s. (Max Hoffman fielded a Type 550 equipped with a 1,089-cc engine.). One very interesting detail is that Briggs Cunningham was listed as the official entrant for both the #64 OSCA driven by Bill Lloyd and George Huntoon as well as the #68 Porsche 550 driven by Huschke von Hanstein and Herbert Linge. Factory drivers Von Hanstein and Linge put on a terrific show, particularly when night began to fall and they continued to take each lap right on the edge. Unfortunately this proved very hard on the brakes and they eventually had to give up their first-in-class position (seventh overall) to the Lloyd/Huntoon OSCA. Another OSCA entered by Carlos Braniff was third in class Margo Crawford admires her husband’s new Spyder Glen pulls Ed’s Spyder off of their Porsche-branded trailer followed by the ex-Carrera winning 550-004 to get it ready for racing at Elkhart Lake.

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