A lot of people played a part in the rich history of Chaparral. Owners, drivers, mechanics, engineers, sponsors, Chevrolet R&D people, etc. Of all the people involved, one person is the pivot point. Without Jim Hall the unique, remarkable and seemingly endless series of events, what Chaparrals’ history really is, never would have happened.
My perception of Jim Hall? Well, over the years, I build myself an image of this man. In the beginning, for me, he represented the exotic world of the far West. In my teenage years, without all the media of today, that meant: cowboys like Clint Eastwood in Rawhide, cars like battleships, endless prairies with endless roads going nowhere. The Michel Vaillant comic book “The betrayal of Steve Warson” didn’t help much to adjust this image! Reading ‘Chevrolet = racing …?’ by Paul van Valkenburgh in the mid Seventies was a giant step. The world of American motor racing was still very exotic and wild beyond my imagination but, on the other hand, it seemed to be bloody serious business as well!
Later on I read about colourful people like Carol Shelby with whom Hall ran a sportscar dealership in the late Fifties. They imported expensive racing cars like Ferraris, Coopers and Maseratis from Europe. Carol later became the ‘Cobra man’, one of Hall’s competitors in racing. I read about four men (amongst them Jim Hall and Hap Sharp) buying a piece of scrubland in the middle of nowhere to build a racetrack named Rattlesnake Raceway. The name didn’t leave much to the imagination of the neighbourhood (during a test session in 1970, the 2J came to a halt at the very end of the track and helpless Vic Elford didn’t dare to leave the car!). The first race took a drivers’ life and that was the end of the competition activities at the track. Hall and Sharp became sole owners and the Chaparral nest was there.
Hap Sharp, forum information about his suicide
Today, September 5th 2009, I was searching the internet for more information about Hap Sharp, still triggered by the Wikipedia line: “He committed suicide in 1993 after some problems in his personal life.”
I found the following information on www.trackforum.com/forums (see 4th post). It was posted on the forum by ‘doogerbeck’ on 06-22-2008.
“I read with fondness the comments regarding Hap Sharp. He was a friend of our family in his final years as I was from Aspen and he had a home there that he spent much of his time at. Hap was a very talented man in many ways and liked to do things in a big way without attracking attention. Much is not known about his business and personal activities but here is some additional information you might find interesting. Hap was one of (if not the) largest land owners in Venezuela and Argentina where he owned 100,000's of acres. it is also down there where he took his life after learning of a serious illness (he always said he would take care of the cure if he ever got it - cancer). So he was a land owner in many countries and in many US states. He also had the distinction of owning the first fiberglass hulled yacht (not boat, think bigger) which he kept in the pacific Northwest while he owned it. He loved to ski, gamble and run businesses in real estate, oil, automotive parts, cars (especially race cars) and many other areas. He was a fun, loving person with a closet interest in technology (camers, computers and the like). Just think of what other inventions and products he would have come up with had he lived even longer. He was a great guy and is missed. I thought you might enjoy some more details about his life....He is up there watching us all and wants us to enjoy life!”
And ‘Gurney36’ posted the following on 06-24-2008: “He also played Polo with the Milwaukee Polo Club around 1970.”
Doogerbeck (and Gurney36); many thanks for sharing this info on trackforum. Of course I cannot verify this info and I hope we can trust it. But I think it is appropriate for this Chaparral dedicated site to pass this info on. If anyone wants to react, please feel free to do so.
Phil Hill, 1927 - 2008
In August 2008 Phil Hill passed away. To many race fans he was the first (and only) American born world champion. To me he was one of the most important Chaparral drivers. He scored the team’s sole CanAm win, co-drove the winning 2D at the Nürburgring and did the same with the victorious 2F at Brands Hatch. His last race he won. Fitting.
I praise myself lucky to have met Phil Hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 1997. A modest little man with an ancient red Chaparral jacket chatting with Hall and various spectators. I observed the man, seventy years of age, climbing out of the 2F, a similar car in which he won the BOAC 500. “I forgot how to climb out of the damn thing!” he muttered, but all weekend he clearly enjoyed being a Chaparral Chap again.
When I think of Phil Hill, I see this tiny jockey-like figure, with that white, even for those days, old fashioned, worn helmet and goggles. He wore the same style at Goodwood! Photographs of the past show his sheer professional concentration when seated in a racing car. But outside the car he is often laughing or making jokes. Prototype 50’s/60’s racing driver. Never seriously injured though where many, many drivers of the era were killed. Remarkable. Phil Hill, many thanks for your contribution to the Chaparral legacy.
Please visit www.philhill.com.
It is interesting to compare Jim Hall with a guy like Lance Reventlow. Both were young and wealthy Americans, both had the dream to build and race homebred cars of their own make as an alternative of buying European stuff. Whereas Reventlow was more of a facilitator, Hall was a creative genius. Lance started his Scarab company a few years earlier, had reasonable success and finally even developed a Formula 1 car. That project was beyond the possibilities of the team however and it became a complete disaster. Reventlow, frustrated, pulled the plug. Where Reventlow stopped, Hall took over. He hired former Scarab duo Troutman and Barnes to design the Chaparral 1. And although its concept, front engine, was already obsolete by the time, Hall continued developing the car. Determined and committed to really understand the car. By doing so his engineering capabilities grew and formed the basis of his very successful career. He became a technical authority himself. In 1965 Car & Driver published a series of articles, co written by Jim Hall, explaining vehicle dynamics “in language your wife can understand”.
In 1970 Hall also stopped (although temporarily). Not because he was exceeding his project management limitations like Reventlow but because he felt he was not being rewarded for all his innovative ideas by motorsports’ authorities.
In my opinion Hall, more than anyone else, represented the very fast journey from the era of ‘backyard specials’ to space age technology. A development in less than 10 years!
The German mechanics
One of the little things about Chaparral that has been intriguing to me in the Seventies and Eighties was this “German Connection”. The fact that an all American ‘cowboy’ racing team, based in the archetypical desolate Mid West, employed mechanics with German names, I suspected, had something to do with World War 2. True? What was the background of Franz Weis and Karl Heinz Schmid? And sometimes you read about another mechanic with a German name, George Goebel? In 1991 the answer emerged. A Pennzoil distributor sent me a press kit on the occasion of the launch of the Hall/VDS PPG Cart Indycar team. Off course, I still have this precious collectors’ item. It contained a backgrounder about Franz Weis and it all became clear.
I learned that Franz was born in 1940 in a region of Europe that was called Sudetenland, historically significant as the region was used as Hitler’s excuse to invade Czechoslovakia and start World War 2. A vast majority of the inhabitants of Sudetenland had a German background (for more details check Wikipedia). Fatherless due to the war, Franz was evicted with his family from their land by Czechs who seized the property. The Weises were relocated in a German refugee camp outside Stuttgart. Here he started to work in the DKW dealership of Gerhard Mitter, a Porsche factory driver. There and then young Franz realized he wanted to become a professional car mechanic.
After he met an American GI and got his working papers he emigrated to the US in 1959. He started to work in a VW dealership in Dallas and went to races. He met Harry Washburn, a leading driver in those days and moved to Shreveport, Louisiana to work for Harry. He then moved to Midland to work for Ronnie Hissom (whom we all know very well). Hissom had a workshop at Rattlesnake Raceway and there Weis met Jim Hall.
When Hissom stopped his business in 1963, Weis became a Chaparral Chap.
Falconer describes in his book how Karl Heinz Schmid became the next German mechanic. It was because of Weis’ homesickness for Shreveport that he persuaded Hall to hire his brother-in-law who still worked in Shreveport at a VW dealership.
I’m not sure how long Schmid stayed at Chaparral. The last pictures in my archive of him are with the 2G of 1967.
Weis became a famous engine builder. In some 1977 article I read his secret: a dedicated attention to detail, recognizing and purchasing the right components from the shelves and taking twice the amount of time other engine builders did. This recipe would lead to many successive championship titles in the Seventies (see Racing other brands).
Apart from being an engine expert he was a terrific test driver as well. In 1977 he still hold the Rattlesnake Raceway record.
Weis left Chaparral Cars after the 1979 season just before Johnny Rutherford joined the team. He set up a business, VDS racing (also based in Midland), with Count Rudy van der Straten.
In 1991 Hall and VDS joined forces to enter Cart racing (see Racing other brands). And there we are at the Pennzoil press kit again. So, did it ALL became clear? No, there’s still this guy George Goebel …
(sources: Pennzoil press kit: content and photo Weis right. “Chaparral” of Falconer/Nye: additional content. “12 hours of Sebring 1965” by Dave Friedman: photo left Weis/Schmid)
Dick Troutman (left) and Tom Barnes. Car builders. Golden duo, synonymous with outstanding workmanship. Together at Kurtis (building Indy cars) from 1949, building all the Scarabs from 1957, creating all five Chaparral 1’s in the early Sixties at their own shop in Culver City. Then Ford Mustang 1 (upper left), strange two wheeled Gyro Car (upper right) and the BRE Samurai to name but a few. Before all that Dick worked at Lockheed as an aviation metal smith and Tom worked in a machine shop. To me, Dick looks like an early Elvis Costello with that spectacles and Rock & Roll hairdo. Tom Barnes looks more like Jack Nicholson. He had a big tattoo on his biceps (lower right). Dick rebuild Chaparral 1 chassis #004 in 1992 and sadly died just before the car was ready. Tom apparently passed away last February. On the official Chaparral website a guest book message (#217), posted by one Bo Barnes on March 14th 2008 reads:
“Tom Barnes passed away 2/12/08. Regards, Bo.”
Thank you very much for your message Bo. These guys were a genuine part of racing history. Luckily, a lot of their cars are still alive and well.
(Picture and content sources: Road & Track 11/’67, Velocità 1/’62, Sports Car Graphic 8/’61, artistry by Jan66)
