Terraplane at the Fort Wayne Speedway

37 CTS

Here is a 1938 Terraplane from the Fort Wayne Speedway in Indiana.
Does anyone have any knowledge of the car, or other Fort Wayne Speedway stories?

Terraplane33

I remember the runway for a take off to Put in Bay on board of a Piper 180 around 2005 or so, excellent Indiana time !!! As well as the Auburn auction!!

hudsontech

Ran a google search for Russell Tracy Fort Wayne Speedway and turned up a picture of him with Don Brights 1937 Terraplane Coupe. (Posted below)

http://www.kpcnews.net/fence_post/showthread.php?5397-Some-History-About-Former-Fort-Wayne-Speedway/page3

Near the beginning of that thread is a wrecked car (#15) that may have been a 38 T'plane or Hudson - it's a little hard to tell smashed up as she is. I've posted it here.

The Russell Tracy/Barney Barnhill photo posted above is on this thread.


Hudsonly,
Alex Burr
Memphis, TN

Ol racer

FYI

This '38 Hudson Racer picture sure brings back memories of a great era gone by... While the Fabulous Hudson Hornetswon a countless early NASCAR Races, primarily in the Souyh, these old Stock cars sprung up later during the'50's from our mid west to eastern seaboard up toward new England as a result of the Fabulous Hornets earlier success...

These coupes were far from stock with highly modified Hornet motors from 329" to 366 cubic inches. They installed 7x parts that quickly became scare along with Isky & Howard Cams, GMC V6 Valves, homade intakeS, Headers, etc. Most sucessful modified Racers were 'Hornet powered' motors in Ford, Plymouth, and Chevy coupes because Hudson Coupes were real scarce. Cyl Heads had numbers machined off to fool competitors. I seen Intake log manifod carring 5 carburators...but the fastest had 3 carbs, Many used Ford clutches & Tranny because Hudson input shaft wouldnt handle the torque. Most used Ford 3/4 Ton rears and a 'floater' hub on the RF too..

Drivers knew little about Balance, set up's, stagger, etc. If a guy figured it out he kept it to himself...Most cars would bend the axle back on left front and use a smaller tire to help corner . Guys would grind off the tire symbols so others wouldnt know what to use. However these Racers packed the stands with people every nite and they were ruthless trying to get the lead providing Fans with thrilling Races....

Park_W

Good memories here of Ft Wayne Speedway. Grew up in that city, and went to that speedway several times. The photo doesn't show it, but it was a high-banked track, 5/8 mile around. At that time, early fifties, Don Bright built and sponsored a '38T6 coupe and a '38H8 "flat back" coach to run there. As I recall, they were the only non-Fords in the races. Both Hudson-builts were competitive though not frequent winners, but that Terraplane coupe was the sweetest sounding thing out there ... Don built some nice headers that came up and rearward, collecting in about a four inch pipe that went right through the firewall, straight back through the body and out through the trunk lid.

Don built the 8-cyl engine for my '38 sedan, which was my regular driver but also in summer of '53 won the stock class four times at the Half Day drag strip north of Chicago. 17 seconds and 84 mph was its best time, not too shabby for a legally stock, 3300 pound four door! Don was sort of a poor man's Smokey Yunick or Marshall Teague, in that his completely stock rebuilds would outperform someone else's rebuild even if the latter had a 3/4 cam, higher compression and twin carbs. Don was a very meticulous bulder ... attentive to all the small details. He did learn and do a couple of legal tricks to his Hudson race car engines and to mine as well. He did his own babbitt work, and the quality of that work was demonstrated later when Internation-Harvester gave him a nice contract to rework some OEM engine bearings to different sizes to fill some gaps in the stock.

My best memory of the speedway was when in '51 or '52, the Joey Chitwood Daredevil Show came to perform. Part of every show was a "destruction derby" where they'd get several running cars from local junkyards and have a "destroy the other guy's car" competition to see whose car was left running at the end. A few months earlier my folks had put (Mom's and) my '37 Terraplane out to pasture, and when the destruction derby cars were brought out, one of them was our (my!) former Terraplane. I had mixed emotions seeing the ol' girl out there to be bashed up, but my Hudson-lover buddies and I ended up quite proud when it managed to be "last one standing."