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Legends of the Quarter-Mile |
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Presented by The Drag Racing Heritage Foundation |
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Roy Steffey |
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Logghe, Steffey & Rupp The "Logghe-liner" & The" Slot Racer II" To back up just a
little, it was during the 1963 season that Jim Marsh was injured in a freak
mishap that lead to his leaving drag racing and Maynard Rupp taking over the
driving chores for Roy. According to Jim's son Johnny Marsh, it happened
while I-94 north of Mt. Clemens, MI was still under construction and Roy and
Jim was helping Connie Kalitta to tune his car. With the road being paved
but not yet open to traffic it was a perfect place to push start and tune a
car. It was during a visit from Garlits that Roy and Jim was riding the back
gate of a station wagon with Garlits driving to push start Kalitta. When the
car fired Connie was to go to the left and Garlits to the right but they
both ended up going the same direction and when Garlits had to swerve hard
to keep from running over the car, Jim Marsh was thrown head first onto the
pavement causing a severe head injury that lead to his being in a coma for
several months. It was really touch and go for a while and although he
survived the accident he was said to have lost the sense of taste and smell
for the most part and his personality was drastically changed after he came
out of the coma. The rest of the 1964 season and the 1965 season were full of changes for the team. At the Nationals at Indy they showed up with 3 cars. They brought the little Chevy car that had come to be known as the “Slot Racer” because it always ran so straight and 2 new cars. One was the “Slot Racer II” that was the team's first Chrysler powered car, but it was also had mounts for a Chevy engine and the ill-fated “Logghe Liner” that was the Logghe’s attempt at streamlining. The Chevy powered “Slot Racer” was now out of date because of the new tires that could hold the Chrysler horsepower. The new “Slot Racer II” was untested and still need debugging and then there was the streamliner, which is a story all to itself. With 3 cars, 2 drivers and 2 crew men, needless to say they were under staffed and did not have the best of meets.
The Logghe Bros, along with
Roy Steffey and driver Manyard Rupp pose with the new But let's talk a little bit about the streamliner. A year or so before, the Logghe’s had decided that making a dragster slip through the air with greater ease was the next step in the evolution of dragster design so Ron Logghe, an industrial designer was given the task of designing one. He read every book he could get his hand on that covered the subject of streamlining. While the books were very helpful if you were designing an airplane, they were of no use in the development of a streamlined dragster. This was uncharted territory to say the least. So Ron was left to his own ideas on streamlining. At first he toyed with the idea of a rear engine car. However after hundreds of hours working with models and trying to come up with the smallest frontal area and the proper 80/20 weight ratio, the new car was a front motored car with the driver behind the rear tires.
The next step was to build a full-size model of the car. This was a long and arduous task that was soon moved to Ron’s garage at home for lack of space at the shop. After the making of many plywood forms which was covered with Styrofoam and filed and sanded to shape the body design was done. They then built a new lightweight chassis and added one of Roy’s proven small block Chevy’s set up with the injected nitro combo that had done so well for them. The new fiberglass streamliner body was added and off to Indy they went. The car made some respectable passes at Indy but it was decided that with the added weight of the body more power was needed and the engine was changed to a blown Chrysler.
While the new car was one of the most innovative of it’s time and was praised by some of the magazines of the day, the truth is, it simply did not work. With Manyard Rupp behind the wheel they proceeded to take the car for some test runs on the new engine and transmission combo. It was during one of these runs on Thanksgiving Day 1964 that the car started to fly. Roy said he saw 5 or 6 feet of space underneath all rear wheels as the car was turning sideways; Maynard wisely pulled the chute to settle it down. This was to be the cars last trip down the 1320 as Rupp refused to drive it and it was parked. Later the car was sent to the Don Garlits Museum in Florida where it remains today. Could the problems have been solved and the car made into a contender?? That is a question that will never be answered but all the many different streamliners that would follow suffered the same fate and the streamlining fad soon faded.
After the Chevy combo became uncompetitive, Roy and crew switched the Slot Racer II to Chrysler power and continued to win. The 354 Hemi and the latest style Logghe chassis worked very well together and with Roy's very capable hands turning the wrenches the team was destined to make drag racing headlines.
As mentioned earlier the tire technology had caught up with the Chrysler power and they were able to get much more of their power to the ground making it less likely that an injected Chevy could compete. Seeing this Roy and the Logghe Bros. built a new car that was set up primarily for a blown Chrysler but with a motor plate that would also accept the Chevy motor. They named this car “Slot Racer II and in early 1965 the team loaded up and went west for a match race with the Chevy powered “Accessories Limited” car. The Logghe’s had picked up a 402 inch Chevy with boxed steel rods instead of their proven 389 with the M/T aluminum rods just for this race. When it came time for the race the new engine gave up before they even made it to the starting line but being true racers and sportsmen the Accessories Limited guys loaned them their extra short block. Time was short to prepare the car and in the ensuing “thrash” something was overlooked and the car would not fire when they pushed down and the race never happened. The Chrysler was put between the rails and they continued to run some more dates while on the coast. However when they returned they decided to repaint the car and since both Roy and his driver Maynard Rupp were both of German ancestry and Schneider Cams who used the iron cross as their logo, was a major sponsor on the car, they named the newly painted car ‘The Prussian”
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