Frank Kurtis’s shops in and around L.A., an incomplete list

While researching Frank Kurtis’s life for an upcoming Hot Rod Hero article in Hemmings Muscle Machines, Donnelly lent me Gordon Eliot White’s book, “Kurtis-Kraft: Masterworks of Speed and Style,” which detailed Kurtis’s life and achievements. Of course, what interested me quite a bit were the various locations mentioned in the book: Kurtis worked out of no less than seven locations when working on his own, and White included the addresses for several of those locations, making it simple to seek those locations out on Google Maps. So let’s begin.

Kurtis’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1921, and he worked for Don Lee Coach Works for his first several years in California, then set up his first shop in 1929, in the alley behind McKenzie’s Garage at 6516 S. San Pedro Street. The map above, which White provided on the endpapers of the book, shows 6516 as the fifth of six lots on that block. From the looks of the area today, it appears the lot that McKenzie’s Garage sat on has been replaced with a giant parking lot, and 66th Street on that side of San Pedro has been eliminated altogether.

That venture lasted only six months, after which Kurtis retreated to the garage attached to his house at 236 73rd Street. Unfortunately, White didn’t indicate whether that was East 73rd or West 73rd. The former is still residential, but the addresses there seem to skip from 234 to 238. The latter is also still residential, with an actual 236 address, and seems to have garages and alleyways behind the houses large enough to support a small repair business.

Don Lee lured Kurtis back later in the 1930s, and Kurtis also worked briefly for Hollywood Trailer Corp., Dutch Darrin and Joel Thorne, but then in 1938, he struck out on his own again, this time setting up shop in a top shop (possibly Pioneer Auto Tops, judging from the photo?) at 6215 S. San Pedro Street (the lead photo was taken inside that location). That location definitely still exists today, though slightly altered, as Mendoza’s Pressing (what’s written on the building) or Mario’s Professional Garments (the business name Google attached to the address).

Kurtis then went back to Thorne’s shop, and then during World War II ran his own shop on Brand Boulevard in Glendale (White gave no street address). He laid out his plans for the post-war midget at the Tam O’Shanter Inn, then toward the end of the war bought a shop at 1107 E. Colorado Boulevard in Glendale.

Whatever building was at that location appears to have since been demolished to make way for a Taco Bell and a gas station.

The post-war midget proved popular enough to warrant a new location in mid-1946, when Kurtis moved to 4625 N. Alger Street, right by the South Pacific railroad tracks. Another map that White provided shows two connected buildings on the east side of Alger between Sequoia and Baywood, and the two buildings currently at that location certainly look to fit the profiles in the map. Rex Dean, the guy behind VukovichAccident.com, also believes those are the same buildings:

The original building is still pretty much intact. Please note that the address on the buildings do not match the original addresses. There are two similar looking buildings. We believe that Kurtis occupied both these buildings. The temporary structure between the buildings has been added since 1955. Originally the “alley” continued until the railroad tracks. The picture of Vuky’s wrecked car being unloaded at the shop was in the wider of the two openings — the one between the two pink buildings. There is work going on in the buildings so please be aware of that and people may not have time or desire to show your through. If you can get in it would be worth it as you can still feel the vibes from the Roadsters being built in there. It is incredibly fragile to think that practically the entire field of the Indianapolis 500 was constructed in this building.

According to Google, Columbia Fabricating Co. and Tajima Corporation USA currently occupy that location.

After the McCullough fiasco in 1956, Kurtis moved to what White only described as “Earl Farrand’s old Indian motorcycle shop on Colorado Boulevard.” Some cursory searching turns up Farrad’s name, but no street address for his shop. Dean reports the address as 525 W. Colorado Boulevard and claims that some of the building still stands, but Google Maps shows the address as either a bridge parallel to the Ventura Freeway or a residential neighborhood.

Kurtis spent his remaining active years at that location and handed off the shop to his son, Arlen, who in 1977 moved the company to 3951 S. H Street in Bakersfield, where Arlen continues to operate the shop, building limited runs of midgets and Kurtis sports cars and restoring older Kurtis products.

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SIA Flashback – Service With a Smile

The way things are going, 20 years from now, people will read this article and wonder why we even bothered to service vehicles in the first place – not because cars of the future won’t require service, rather because people of the future will treat cars like disposable consumer goods. Which leads us to consider how automotive service used to be – undertaken in well-lit shops, supervised by men in white lab coats – as Ray Scroggins discussed in his article in SIA #46, August 1978. What I wouldn’t give to have a space like some of these shops had.

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more Lost and Found overflow – Take a dip, New car

Okay, that earlier Lost and Found overflow was a bust. My apologies. Then again, Lost and Found is often just an excuse to look at old photos with cars in ‘em, so to make up for that last one, here are a couple others that are already identified, making them more like stumpers than Lost and Found fodder. Both photos come from reader Bob Doss of Green Valley, Arizona. The car above seems to have stalled after fording most of an Ozark creek, giving the kids ample opportunity to play in the creek. “Was Uncle Fred’s car the first Amphicar?” Bob asks.

And here Bob’s father rides shotgun in the family’s first car (bought used, of course) in 1927. The family seems rather proud of their recent purchase.

Got an idea what these cars are? Leave your answers in the comments.

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SIA Flashback - Mopar’s Winged Wonders

While it seems perfectly normal for a collector car magazine to feature the Daytona and Superbird nowadays, it must have seemed a little jarring to readers to crack open SIA #45, May-June 1978, and find an article by Richard Langworth discussing eight- and nine-year-old cars. It’d be akin to putting a 2000 model year vehicle in HCC. Yet a club had already formed (the Daytona and Superbird Owners Association), and all of the people involved in producing and racing the cars were still alive and available for Langworth to interview, thus an article that un-self-consciously looked at a relatively late model car as a collectible.

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Found: the only streamlined Seagram’s Diamond T

As Rollan Jerry wrote in the recent SIA Flashback article on coachbuilt trucks, many such vehicles were built in Canada for beer brewers because Canadian laws at the time banned them from advertising their products in print. Apparently that ban extended to spirits distillers as well, as evidenced by this recently found 1938 Diamond T, a one-off design built for Seagram’s, the famed Canadian distillers.

Yes, it looks rather horrible. According to its known history, after Seagram’s commissioned Toronto-based Smith Brothers Body Works to build the steel-bodied truck in 1938, Seagram’s used it as a delivery van and mobile billboard until 1949, then sold the truck to Holman Construction in Rockwood, Ontario, which simply painted over the door signs, then hauled building materials with it, possibly until the early 1980s, when Holman sold it to a scrap dealer. How it escaped the crusher remains unknown, but it now sits at Ron Fawcett Motors, a well-established restoration shop, in Whitby, Ontario.

I spoke with Art Carty at Fawcett, and he said the company would like to find a buyer who can fund the truck’s restoration rather than restore it themselves, though it looks to be all there, save for the wood structure underneath the steel skin. Seagram’s is in no position to buy the truck back - the company closed its museum in 1997 and has since been sold off to other beverage companies.

We searched American Beer Trucks and the two recent SIA articles on streamlined and purpose-built trucks, but saw no additional photos on the Seagram’s Diamond T, and only have the one directly above provided by the folks at Fawcett. Smith Brothers, however, did build the most famous of the Canadian streamlined beer trucks - the Labatt’s White truck and trailer, so we have to wonder whether Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky had a hand in designing the Seagram’s Diamond T as well.

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Suddenly, nearly everybody’s opposed to cash for clunkers. Will Congress pay attention?

It seems like the tide of public opinion on cash for clunkers has turned heartily to the negative in recent days. That is, outside of vapid local TV news programs, which all seem to be running boilerplate stories that barely address the real effects of cash for clunkers.

* First, we have USA Today calling c4c a lemon, though they haven’t yet grasped a few of the finer details.

As stimulus, cash-for-clunkers means lemons for taxpayers. It would borrow billions of dollars to benefit a single industry and a particular class of consumers who decided years ago to buy fuel-inefficient vehicles.

For most “clunker” drivers, it’s not as though they had wads of cash and were able to choose from a wide range of fuel-efficient, safe, modern cars. Instead, limited budgets meant they had to select an older, possibly fuel-inefficient vehicle. Or they simply didn’t care much for the new cars on the market today. And as we’ve said several times before, though these people are targeted by this bill, they are not the types of people who will want to or even be able to take on a new car loan and payment schedule.

* Though not a nationwide policy influencer, the fact that the Aberdeen American News in Aberdeen, South Dakota, opposes cash for clunkers shows that it’s not just the big-brain think-tank-types who see the flaws in cash for clunkers.

* The Automotive Service Association would like to see a repair option included in this legislation, just as California and Texas provide. From the ASA press release:

The Administration and Energy and Commerce Committee proposal excludes a vehicle repair option. In a letter to members of Congress, the Automotive Service Association (ASA) pointed out: “ASA members are small businesses all across America, actively engaged in their communities, employing a tremendous number of technicians and office personnel. A fleet modernization program without a repair option could be devastating to independent repairers. Arbitrarily removing older vehicles from America’s highways would take vehicles out of independent repair bays, costing jobs and potentially closing small businesses. A repair option tied to higher-emitting vehicles is the most cost-efficient, consumer-friendly approach to a fleet modernization program.  This option would also allow low-income vehicle owners who don’t have the resources for a new vehicle to now have a dependable, lower-emission vehicle.”

ASA argues that any Cash for Clunkers Program should:
• include a vehicle repair option for consumers;
• be administered by the states;
• tie vehicle participation to emissions and improving air quality; and
• provide sufficient repair cost allowances to address emissions repairs.

It makes sense - repairing a vehicle costs less than replacing it, repairing a vehicle uses far less energy than replacing it, and the vehicle’s natural life and usage is extended. Of course, it doesn’t help the car companies (or the insurance companies, or Congress’s greenwashing attempt), so I’d not be surprised if Congress completely ignored the possibility of a repair option.

* We mentioned earlier the Automotive Recyclers Association’s opposition to cash for clunkers, and they’ve released another statement pointing out the flaws in cash for clunkers’ plan to scrap all drivetrain parts from a vehicle, thus preventing repairs to other older cars still on the road.

“One would think that Congress would have learned a lesson from the recent home mortgage mess,” says Automotive Recyclers Association’s (ARA) Executive Vice President Michael E. Wilson. “Pushing consumers into vehicles that they cannot afford is not good for anyone - most of all the American taxpayer.” Wilson added, “The recovery, reuse, and resale of these quality recycled parts must remain readily available to the consumer, who may not want or be able to financially retire their vehicle, and will require access to parts from these vehicles for their future repairs.”

* SEMA has also made another statement on c4c, siding with the ARA on allowing drivetrains to be spared the crusher. Full press release:

SEMA Seeks Protection For Collector Cars and Parts
Amendments Offered As Lawmakers Finalize Vehicle Scrappage Program

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 12, 2009) – The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) urged Congress to include two additional provisions to controversial legislation that would provide a government voucher to consumers who buy a new car in exchange for scrapping a less fuel-efficient vehicle. The provisions would 1) require that scrapped vehicles be less than 25 years old and 2) permit the engine and drive train to be recycled if they have been disassembled.

The recommendations were proposed in a letter to the Congressional leadership as lawmakers finalize an accelerated vehicle retirement program known as “cash for guzzlers.” While SEMA has supported vouchers toward the purchase of fuel-efficient new vehicles as a mechanism to direct new car sales to the automakers and dealerships, the association has steadfastly opposed tying these vouchers to a vehicle scrappage requirement. SEMA offered the amendments as a means to improve the legislation.

Under the draft legislation currently circulating in Congress, the program would last up to one year and potentially scrap one million older cars and trucks. The scrapped vehicle must get less that 18 mpg (15 mpg for heavy pick-ups and vans). The car buyer would receive a $3,500 voucher if they bought a new passenger car that was at least 4 mpg higher than the older vehicle, or a new pickup truck/SUV that was at least 2 mpg higher than the old truck. They would receive a $4,500 if the passenger car was at least 10 mpg higher and the truck/SUV was at least 5 mpg higher. The program would mandate that the engine block and drive train be destroyed.

“SEMA is working with lawmakers to mitigate some of the legislation’s unintended consequences and its potential damage to the automotive aftermarket,” said Chris Kersting, SEMA’s President & CEO. “These commonsense proposals will make sure the government is not spending $3,500 or 4,500 on a vehicle that may only be worth a few hundred dollars but may have potential value to vehicle collectors and to promote the benefits of parts recycling.”

A vehicle that is 25 years old or older is rarely driven, does not contribute to the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, and is worth far less than the government voucher. A 25-year exclusion would also guarantee that older cars that have an historic or aesthetic value are not inadvertently crushed. These vehicles are valued by hobbyists or may be a source of recyclable parts for use on restoration projects.

The letter to the Congressional leadership noted that recycling the engine and transmission is environmentally sensitive. “If the legislation simply requires that the equipment be disassembled as the vehicle is scrapped, it would fulfill lawmakers’ intent to prevent an engine/drive train from being directly installed into another vehicle,” Kersting added. “The responsible recycling of parts is a better solution for preserving natural resources and reducing CO2 emissions than crushing the equipment.”

Rebuilt engines require an estimated 80% less energy to produce than a new engine and cost 30-50% less since the core has been salvaged. Critical internal parts are replaced so the final rebuilt product is one that meets or exceeds original equipment performance standards. The engine/transmission can even surpass new car technology with the simple addition of new-technology retrofit equipment.

SEMA’s recommendations are intended to reduce the damage a vehicle scrappage program would impose on thousands of independent repair shops, auto restorers and recyclers, customizers and their customers across the country. SEMA will continue to promote alternative incentive programs that will help clean the environment, provide for vehicle and parts recycling, and preserve collector cars for future generations.

* If that press release makes it sound like we’re fighting the inevitable, then consider some of the latest news out of Washington. The Detroit News yesterday reported that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are open to the possibility of separating cash for clunkers from the Waxman energy bill to expedite the adoption of cash for clunkers, possibly inserting cash for clunkers into an emergency spending bill that will inevitably be passed (*koff* PORK! *koff*), possibly as soon as next week. And if that’s not enough politics for ya, the Tire Review, an industry pub, has an account of the current committee wranglings over cash for clunkers.

* Finally, turning our attention across the Atlantic to Great Britain, Dep-O magazine has launched a petition to set a 25-year rolling standard to that country’s recently enacted cash for clunkers program (similar to what SEMA requested above). Possibly a bit late, but the petition does have the support of British Motor Heritage Ltd. and the Federation of Historic British Vehicle Clubs.

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The coolest Brazilian Chevettes ever?

Students of nerd car history know that the Chevette had its origins as a world car, developed largely in Brazil, so it comes as no surprise that Carro Antigo, the site full of Brazilian prototypes and other oddities that we featured yesterday, would have a few oddball Chevettes.

Starting with the 1974 Chevette Monza show car, a design study by GM of Brazil and presented at the São Paulo auto show that year.

Four years later, GM Brazil showed off the Chevette S/R, a concept intended to replace the sporty but slow 1976-1978 Chevette GP. Aside from the spoilers, skirts, hood and covered headlamps, the S/R featured a 1.6-liter engine - a whole .2 liters bigger than the engine that then powered the Chevette. Carro Antigo notes that the S/R did go into production in 1981, though sans the body cladding and on the hatchback body style.

Finally, not a Chevette, but the larger Opala Águia (Eagle) concept from 1972. Seems to be mostly a styling exercise that co-opted the Firebird’s screaming chicken. Awesome.

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