Word: racer
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Last week when I opened the door to go into F. A. O. Schwarz, I was nearly struck down by a runaway Yellow Tornado Racer. As the thing tore out for the gutter, it was followed by a saleslady who later explained that she had been demonstrating the racer (it is propelled by compressed air) and that it had gotten out of hand, as toys sometimes...
...strip the bodies from junkyard cars, replace them with low-slung, homemade roadster bodies. On the engine they install a high-compression cylinder head, a dual manifold and a special camshaft. After months of work and $800 to $1,200 spent for parts, they have a racer that will turn up 140 h.p., capable of speeds over 100 miles per hour. They have been clocked at better than 140 m.p.h. at the Southern California Timing Association's Muroc Dry Lake track, a center of U.S. "hot-rod" racing...
...make a deliberate play for the hot-rod market. He introduced a two-seater "Hotshot" Crosley roadster, looking like a dime-store version of the once-famed Stutz Bearcat (see cut). Although Crosley estimates that not more than one out of 100 owners will use the Hotshot as a racer, he has made it easy for them to do so. Windshield, lights, bumpers and top can be stripped off in a few minutes, readying the car for road or track racing. Its overhead-valve engine, already built for a 7.8 compression ratio (the highest for any U.S. passenger...
...auto racer himself, Moore selects his drivers more carefully than a horse trainer selects a jockey. His pit technique is unbeatable. During Holland's one pit stop last week, two front tires were changed and 15 gallons of fuel blown into the tank from pressurized drums in 52 seconds. That was good enough, but it did not equal Moore's own record of 49 seconds for a major pit stop of a winning car, established eight years...
...speedboat racer himself, Vincent once took such a battering from Gar Wood's backwash that he emerged from the cockpit of his boat black & blue, and groaned: "I'm through with this. I'll fly airplanes." Fly them he did until four years ago when he turned 65 and felt he "should depend . . . on the skill of someone else much younger." Packard is still depending on Vincent's skill. It set a postwar Packard record by selling 11,594 cars in March...