Tribute.
The story behind this little white modified is the story behind two cars, actually. Their history spans nearly the entire length of time that men (and one woman in particular) tested their mettle—and their hot rods—on the hard-packed lakebeds of Southern California’s Mojave Desert. One of the cars is a true pioneer of dry lakes racing, a participant before most of the young men in the fledgling sport were called off to war. The other is a tribute to that car, built by men with deep roots in racing on the lakes and at Bonneville.
If you are familiar with the history of dry lakes racing, then you know the names Karl and Veda Orr. Karl was a racer even before he moved from the Midwest to California in the 1920s; once he arrived in the Los Angeles area, he was quick to pick up on the local racing scene and the speed contests that were going on in the desert.
The Orrs were members of the Albata car club, which was one of the charter members of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) when it was formed in 1938. Karl was among the racers at the SCTA’s very first meet in July of that year, where he was clocked at 125 mph one-way in a Cragar-powered modified.
(A bit of trivia: That July meet at Muroc was actually the SCTA’s second attempt at a lakes race. The first, in May 1938, “turned out to be a failure because of a strong wind and 10,000 unruly spectators,” said then-SCTA President Ed Adams in a story in the January 1941 issue of Throttle magazine. “It was at that meet that members found they had ‘something on the ball’ and instead of being discouraged, came back fighting to make their next meet a decided success.”)
Karl’s wife Veda helped him at the lakes and became a racer in her own right, running 120 mph in a Deuce roadster prepped by Karl. Not only was she the first woman to race in the SCTA, she’s also credited with keeping the association’s flame lit during the war years. Prior to the war she covered lakes racing events in a newsletter she called CT (for California Timing) News. During the war she produced special issues of CT News that went to hundreds of racers overseas.
Right around the time the SCTA was forming, another hot rodder named Bill Warth built a modified for the lakes with a canvas body and a four-cylinder Model B engine. After driving it for a few years, Warth sold the modified to Karl and started construction on another car, a streamliner this time, one that would find fame with its second owner, Stu Hilborn.
Karl kept the banger engine in the modified but discarded Warth’s canvas body in favor of one made of metal. He raced the car that way in the 1941 SCTA season, but then upped his game for 1942 by replacing the banger with a flathead engine. The new engine helped Karl win the SCTA’s championship before racing was suspended for the war.
“Karl Orr was famous for getting power out of a flathead,” says Jim Lattin, owner of the tribute modified. Among his “horsepower secrets,” according to Lattin, was the use of a 180-degree crankshaft, which changed the flathead’s firing order to ensure each cylinder’s intake charge wasn’t diluted by exhaust coming from the port next to it. He also used a camshaft, developed by Ed Winfield, with a higher lift than most other racers used.
The fate of Karl’s modified is unknown. The SCTA changed its rules in 1946, discontinuing the modified class. Those modifieds that were raced after 1946 did so in the streamliner class, sometimes with a tail section added to the abbreviated modified body. Karl ran his modified as a streamliner in 1947, but after that the trail goes cold.
Chapter Two
If you are familiar with Bonneville racing, you likely know the name Bob Kehoe. In the late 1960s he teamed with Bruce Geisler to build a ’53 Studebaker coupe known as the Hanky Panky Special. Over the years the car set a number of records and got both Bob and Bruce into the 200 MPH Club. When they teamed with Gale Banks and powered the Stude with a Banks-built twin-turbo small-block Chevy, it went 217 mph on the salt, earning the distinction as the world’s fastest gas-burning doorslammer.
That is, until Kehoe got involved with an even faster car, a 1968 Corvette called the Sundowner. Working with Duane McKinney, and with Banks power aboard again (this time a twin-turbo big-block), the Sundowner Corvette eventually ran nearly 241 mph at Bonneville in 1982, stealing the fastest doorslammer crown from Hanky Panky.
Yet Kehoe was an old-school hot rodder, too. He was an active member in the Four Ever Four Cylinder club, built several banger-powered cars, and campaigned his Sprint-Car-inspired Riley Special at the Antique Nationals and local hill climbs. “Bob did most of the work on this car, and loved driving the crap out of the thing,” said fellow Four Ever Four club member Clark Crump. “He really did drive this thing hard, and it was a pretty fast contender on the hill climbs.”
After finishing the Riley Special, Kehoe decided he wanted to duplicate the Karl Orr modified. He located an original race car frame with a wheelbase and side rails that were exact duplicates of the Orr car. His friend Dennis Webb, who had built the Riley Special’s body, fabricated what Lattin describes as an “authentic, beautiful” body for the tribute. Kehoe mocked up the car, built a flathead, and had it “up on wheels, looking like a car,” Lattin says, when tragedy struck. Bob had a fall, never fully recovered, and passed away in August 2014.
Bob’s widow, P.J., sold some of his cars to friends and fellow hot rodders. Lattin got the in-progress modified, as she knew he would finish Bob’s unfinished dream.
“All the hard work was done,” Lattin says. “A few parts needed to be located—appropriate Stewart-Warner gauges, the correct carburation, and so on.”
Jeff Arnett, working in Jim’s shop, is responsible for the major part of the restoration, making use of Jim’s historical knowledge and experience. “A little paint and upholstery, with the number 1 on the car, and it’s finished,” Lattin says.
The Lattin-Arnett-Kehoe-Webb tribute to the Warth-Orr modified joins Lattin’s remarkable collection, which includes historic race cars (we featured his “Number 12” lakester in the September 2016 issue) and a few perfectly-executed tributes. Three of the latter were displayed together in the Quest for Speed exhibit at the 2016 Grand National Roadster Show: the Orr modified, Danny Sakai modified, and Hilborn streamliner.
Like most of the cars in Lattin’s stable, this one is no museum piece. He drives it, happily, as you can see from Tim Sutton’s photo shoot at El Mirage.
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