Andy and Mario, Indy 1969 (photo courtesy STP)
Andy Granatelli died on Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013. He was 90. As a team owner he won the Indy 500 twice, first in 1969 with Mario Andretti, and lastly with Gordon Johncock in 1973.
If you were to characterize Granatelli as a shameless self-promoter, a braggart of the first order, you would, in part, be right. But as Mohammad Ali once said, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”, and Andy Granatelli did more that just back it up.
1935 Miller Ford
Granatelli and his brothers had a gas station, and a hot rod parts business in Chicago, named Grancor. They specialized in speed parts for the flat head Ford V8. After WWII they decided to attack the Indy 500 with one of the ten Miller Ford V8s that were entered by Harry Miller in the 1935 500, only four of which qualified. Granatelli figured that what he and his brothers knew about making the Flattie fast, and the reasons for the failures of the ‘35 Miller Fords, that they had a fighting chance at winning the 500 with one of the Miller Fords. Think again.
In 1946 the Grancor Special qualified 33rd and finished 21st, not bad for a car prepared in the Granatelli shop in Chicago and driven to the track after being made street legal (headlights, taillights, mufflers, fenders). The Granatellis didn’t have enough money to afford hotel accommodations in Indy so they slept in their garage in Gasoline Alley.
Paxton-supercharged 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk
Granatelli’s Indy obsession didn’t end with his 1946 attempt. In 1950 the Grancor Auto Specilties Offy-powered Kurtis Kraft 3000 finished 10th with Pat Flaherty at the wheel (Flaherty won the 1956 500 driving for John Zink).
But running an established engine in what was becoming the chassis of choice didn’t hold much allure for Andy. After 1953 Andy was pretty much out of the Indy 500 game in spite of finishing 2nd in ‘52 and 4th in ‘53.
He then concentrated on his business interests which led him to buy Paxton superchargers from McCullogh in 1958. But Paxton superchargers were junk causing Studebaker to stop offering them as options in 1957. Granatelli did a bit of QA and determined that the ball bearings, crucial to the unit’s reliable operation, varied widely in diameter. He remedied the ball bearing situation and the superchargers began to run reliably, and Studebaker once again became a customer.
1965 Indy 500-Bobby Unser’s #9 Novi, Q 8th, F 19th (photo by author)
But Andy had not lost his love for Indy, and combined with his acquired knowledge of superchagers, bought the Novi racing team in 1961. In his words “that sound, that penetrating, stinging roar of a perfect engine in balance of the world” had him hooked as it had so many fans of the marque. Only a couple of problems-Novis with their Leo Goosen-designed supercharged engines were fast but fragile, and since 1941, had yet to win a race though sometimes finishing well.
Guess what? Granatelli found out that the superchargers were running too fast, going into a stall condition at high rpm, thus limiting engine output. He fixed that and figured that he had a natural.
Indy 1965-Granatelli outraged purists by outfitting his team (as well as himself) in STP pajamas (photo by author)
I attended the Indy 500 in 1964 and 65. The Offy’s emitted a low, gutteral groan. The Ford cammers screamed. The Novis shrieked enough to make your short hairs stand up straight. Unfortunately, the STP Tombstone Life Special with its brilliant burnt orange livery and engine-turned gold leaf lettering didn’t get Jim Hurtubise (Herk) past the first lap. I still salivate thinking about that car.
1965 marked the end of the Novis at Indy or anywhere else. By 1966 STP (which Granatelli owned) was campaigning a Ford cammer-powered Loti.
Granatelli finally won his first 500 in 1969 with Mario Andretti. He kissed Mario in victory lane before the race queen could. Hey you goombas! It’s an Italian thing!
Andy, we will miss you. For a thoroughly entertaining read, get “They Call Me Mister 500” by Anthony (Andy) Granatelli.
OK, they say it happens in threes. Kjell Qvale, Stu Hilborn, and now Andy Granatelli. Time’s almost up.
Another legend down for the count… Andy was a very fascinating character to me as a kid; very much larger than life. The STP Turbine cars at Indy was a particularly unique chapter. What heartbreak… Thanks for this tribute.
Here’s an interesting film on the 1967 Indianapolis 500 which focuses on Granatelli and the turbine car:
We should not forget that Granatelli became “Mr. Speed” at Studebaker in the 60s. He was the guy behind the record-breaking runs at Bonneville with the Avantis and Hawks in 1963, getting an Avanti to nearly 170 mph. There was some fast stuff coming out of South Bend in the early 60s (like the R3 and R4 engines), and much of the credit for their engineering goes to Andy.
I understand that he came to work for Studebaker when they bought Paxton Products. Studebaker owned the Chemical Compounds company and put Granatelli in charge of it. He changed the name of that company to STP, which was one of several Studebaker-affilliated companies that survived the death of the auto operation.
The picture of Andy and Mario at Indy is so iconic. Wasn’t it Andy who had a hand in sponsoring Richard Petty when he was at the top of his game? That STP Dayglo Red and Petty Blue Plymouth and Dodge may have been one of the first major sponsored cars in the sport and might have paved the way for the “rolling billboards” that are Nascar racers these days.
Those STP Pit Pajamas are pure Andy Granatelli. RIP, Mr Granatelli.
Granatelli’s 1969 memoir (They Call Me Mister 500) is very entertaining. I was quite amused by his account of their Miller-Ford travails. (If you know the back story of the Miller-Fords, it’s tempting to conclude that they were just cursed. At the very least, they were taken out of the oven well before they were fully baked and they were such a disaster that Ford didn’t get involved with organized competition again until after the death of Henry Ford, who had thought the whole thing was a bad idea from the start.)
Since this posting was to honor Andy Granatelli, the backstory on the 1935 Miller Fords was not appropriate. Maybe a future CC is in order since the characters involved are so iconic. Preston Tucker, along with Henry Miller, got Henry Ford to back ten cars for the 1935 race. The designer of the sheet metal for the cars was Alex Tremulis, of Auburn-Cord-Duesenburg and other auto makers fame. After Miller’s bankruptcy in 1933 Tucker and Miller teamed up to form Tucker and Miller, Inc.
Oh, I wasn’t questioning your judgment in not getting into it here — Granatelli’s book doesn’t either, and I think at the time of the incident he and his brothers were only vaguely aware of just how badly the original project had gone sideways. (If they’d know the whole sorry saga, they might have shied away!) I didn’t know the original story either until some time after I first read Mister 500, but when I read about the whole Miller Ford saga, the Granatellis’ misadventures emerged as sort of an absurd postscript on the whole thing.
As a side note, it was really Edsel that Tucker and Miller convinced to go along with it, on the pretense that it would be good publicity. Henry was unenthusiastic about the whole thing and I get the feeling he signed off on it mostly in the hopes of saying “I told you so” when it went pear-shaped, which of course it did.
Thank you. Now I need to dig out “Ken Purdy’s Book of Automobiles” and read about old-school Indy again. His writing about the Granatelli era got me more excited about that race than the mid-80s race itself.
Thanks for the tribute, sorry to hear of Andy’s passing.
Rest in peace, Andy.
I read the profile on Mr. Granatelli in Collectible Automobile years ago and it was fascinating. A true “car guy.” Thanks for the writeup Kevin.