Max Balchowsky's 1959 Old Yeller II - Jay Leno's Garage

wow it's got plenty of power jesus what a thrill this is a car i read about for years and years i never thought i'd get the opportunity to actually a car featuring today one of the most legendary race cars of all time certainly if not the most legendary in american racing uh this is a car with a storied pass built by a guy named max pochelski it raced against ferrari maserati everybody beat them all just a home home-built special just that classic american success story driven by the greatest drivers of the era carol shelby dan gurney bob bondurant max himself just an amazing amazing story and the caretaker of this car the owner of this car is a man who has kept it he's kept the history going he's preserved it exactly as it was it's still racing this car has been racing every year since since what 1959. so uh please welcome dr ernie nagamatsu ernie come on in my friend he has been in the racing game i know you're a dentist by trade but i always think of you as a racer and you do beautiful work he's written a number of books legends motorsport and he's done beautiful i guess sculptures you'd call them right you did them for all the all the great drivers sirtees everybody it's nuvalari's little turtle yes yeah i i've got one they're just a fantastic heirloom from from well just the greatest error in racing the late 50s this was the time of home built specials like this and this really did beat all the ferraris and everything didn't it yes it did and it represented america because against the factory team cars it was a buick nail head that just represented american racing and it had had a lot of buick parts and had the fin buick brake drums yes i remember and they were the most beautiful brake drum in america at the time it sounds silly to say but the beautiful all thin aluminum uh almost like the alfin brake drums yes yeah right almost an american version we don't think of buick as a race car motor but the buick nail had 401 cubic inches uh what it made up for in crudity it overwhelmed in power and torque didn't it just just the torqueiest motor ever this thing yes i think the torque alone is the thing that attracted max to this buick motor because out of the 50 trophies that were given to me my max half of them were drag trophies from san fernando he would go there and they would open the gate and they'd wave him in he'd take a run he'd win everything but leave the trophies and come home he was testing torque this had more torque than anything available now max balczowski was an amazing guy i met him a few times didn't know him that well but i had met him a few times he was quite elderly which means he was the age i am now when i met him and uh just one of those home built you know there was an era in america in that first 25 to 30 years of like duesenberg and all these kind of engineers that were just intuitive guys that could look at something and go oh one ten thousands okay and it was exactly right and max was one of those guys the year i was born 1950 opened a shop here in hollywood and as i remember he didn't put his name on it did he never did no he people just knew oh that's matt you went down there and it was sort of the gathering place for all the hot rodders i remember i think they also used to go to bob's big boy there's a bob's big boy here that had a car night every friday night and it started just about 1948 1949 so max and all those guys and there's so much history in this area right around my garage that even amelia earhart lived right down the street and her hangar was right over there so this has always been a place of horsepower be it automotive or aviation but this is the car that was just the legendary car i mean this is sort of max's idea of a joke the white wall tires but originally he used them because they were a softer compound isn't that correct yes uh in fact what i have is i always carry with me is is the gardiner reynolds lighter and this was one of the first things he gave me and gardner reynolds was the company to go to for recaps and max was the first one with a durometer he was asking for quicker cure times to get softer tires while everybody else was going continental dunlop's very hard compound right and he knew ahead of the game that you needed softer compound and we should explain what retreads are because a lot of if you're under 40 retries i think are illegal now but they used to take a ball tire and they would cut a new tread in the tire which which made it especially thin and a lot of times they even take old rubber melted around the tires and a lot of times you get on the road just see those things fly off and they'd especially on a motorcycle it couldn't be anything more dangerous but recaps were quite popular because they were cheaper ten dollars you got one for ten dollars fifteen dollars so and so that's why he liked having these old white walls to give it this kind of ratty feel i mean it's so different than what we do now we try to make the car look sleek and sporty whereas he put a lot of engineering into it but wanted it to look kind of ratty ass basically yes and so he finally found a set of good years on station wagons that were recalled and there was an extra soft compound so he collected them all from his friends and so that's why one of the first questions they ask is why white walls and the reason is it was a softer compound goodyear right that's funny and it has a four-speed muncie transmission the same as period corvette yes okay and you almost didn't need you could have done it with three gears in this thing couldn't you he always said there was one race he lost all the gears except fourth and he all he did well because he his mantra was torque is everything oh well let's look around we'll take the hood off in just a minute it and this is a classic case of form follows function because he didn't sit down with a pencil and design the sports car he just put the pieces on and they looked the way they looked because that's the way they look and it wasn't like i need this fender to go this way he wasn't an artist he was a race car guy and an engineer and if it made it go faster he put it on didn't he yeah yeah when he drew the chalk lines on the floor at hollywood motors uh right on hollywood boulevard he laid out this chassis and then he pulled out a studebaker huge truck radiator because the big problem with the nail head is that it would overheat and he complained after a few laps it would overheat that's why the nose is so ugly and big because we he needed a big radiator and it's called nail head because this buick the valves are very small that was sort of not really small but slightly smaller than every other v8 yes in the general motors line but that that made it more torquey didn't it yes yeah it gave it a little bit more torque and how about did he keep standard pistons and crank and cam shaft or did he modify those as well yes he did in fact that's the thing is that it was very streetable drivable and it was a race motor but he didn't do much and he kept everything loose on the top side and he always said he could rev it out yeah it's just so funny to think that something like this that looks like this beat ferrari maserati jaguar i mean don't forget this is the 50s when jaguar ruled le mans jaguar had the fastest car you could buy certainly in america if not the world the 120 jag yes you know cars didn't go cars barely 100 so a jaguar 120 that's why it's called the 120. so that was unbelievable the fact that this beat all of those cars in the races is pretty amazing pretty amazing what else have we got here obviously made the exhaust system himself in that period when this car was built there was curtis and there was indianapolis and if you hit the wall at indianapolis you may not walk after that but he was cognizant of that so what he did is that there's upper the upper a arms are jaguar 120 and he drilled holes in the upper arm and studebaker lower a arms it's for crush ability and so there was a time i took a whack and the whole front end crushed back and pushed back because that was crushability and the other thing is uh on the driver's side over there he had a nerf bar in other words lotus and chapman the sidebars were right next to your hips over there jay will realize when you're riding it feels like the door is left open right because there's a nerf bar a chrome molly piece that far away from the driver's seat to protect and and also shifting the motor that's a hot rod trick right pushing the motor back it gives it good balance and stability that's for safety too did we even say the name of this old yellow that's the name of the car yes in other words uh it was the old yeller number one was named after the movie right and there's always a dispute was it oh yellow or old and whatever but it is y-e-l-l right e-r and not a-r right right it's ogler and that's a badge i just buy an old yellow it has crushability it's just one of those catchphrases it's funny and even the gauges i'm trying to figure out what that the speedometer is turned sideward oh that's a tachometer and what is that out of yeah that's a great question for years of we didn't we weren't sure but somebody spotted it and it came from a door ready oh it's ready oh yeah they're ready and so max tried to sell doretti's with a buick he had them and he transplanted a buick and but that comes from a door ready that's a cluster okay and the others look like is it still warmer i can't see yeah there's a mix of gauges that we've because you've got a fire system in it and actually pretty comfortable chair it looks like yes well padded out just those legendary names and this was just for the year 1960 isn't that yes and every one of them max was thinking of of building other cars which he did nine and a half more but he knew that it was like a casting call everybody wanted to drive this because it broke records right track records and so they all lined up but he he had all the biggest names into the driver's seat now i think in 59 carol shelby had won le mans in 59 days yes yeah so he comes back from le mans and wants to drive max's car and then i think he had the heart problem so he quit racing a few months after that probably right so i think the key thing is that at elkhart lake in july 30th in 1960 max was asked by carol let's go and that's the biggest person america will split 50 50. right let me raise your car so he took it and everybody was there including the maserati long nose right sure sure everybody was there every factory team car sent their best cars carol shelby and scarab was next door at the front in p1 and p2 carol jumped out and he was leading by 51 seconds wow over everybody and that they believe was a genesis of the cobra thinking right sure well american motor yeah lightweight chassis let's go racing yeah oh it's great now you were a kid at this time right oh yeah max was in the movie stunt business right like bullet and yeah love bug and everything else i met him after the racing period but we became good friends oh okay okay so you didn't follow it as a kid in period no i didn't i didn't but he gave me all the archives before i even got this car i have all the photos the lap sheets i have the programs i have everything and i didn't have the car yeah and he helped me search out cars and finally we got this car and this has always been a valued car this was never an old race car that's stuck in the back and then discovered years later it's been raised continuously correct yes and there was only a period of two years that is sat in a backyard in fresno right but what had happened is that they continued racing after the the high water mark of racing and went scca racing so when this car was found it had a chevy motor all right and it had disc brakes and it looked oh it had flared out rear fenders for wider tires and that's when it was found but it's been only two or three years out of racing but we've raced it at goodwood silverstone australia and new zealand and so it's been around the world racing continuously since the fall of 1959. well i remember seeing it in the elvis presley movie viva las vegas yes which is like the dumbest car movie i think is that the one where elvis is driving a cobra and the girl runs them off the road and the crowbar goes in the water and when they pull out of the water it's a tr3 yeah that was a second he worked with him on that max did all the stunts right right so he did but because max was a stunt coordinator for the prepping the cars he picked customer cars and so if you look at all those movies they're customer cards with a number on the side that's funny they're not full race cars that's funny that's funny so so what made you so you put did you put it back to the original configuration no it got put back just before i bought it right and the gentleman that had it had it for sale but he was kind enough this is called a junkyard dog but it was like he was kindly enough to wait and call me every other month saying this is the last price and finally came to the point where he said there's a guy with a trailer and a check coming and i said check's in the mail so so tell me what so what was have you been trying to buy it for years and years or what was this no it was a period about a year that it the guy that had it posted it up for sale at big bucks beyond my budget right right but he was kind enough to keep calling me saying knowing i knew max and i had the archives he said you sure you should buy this car and he saved me by making a call to me saying that guy's coming with a trailer and i said that's it yeah yeah now was this hard to explain to the wife why you bought this which i think most people don't know consider just an ugly old car what how how much was that did you did you tell your wife exactly what you paid for actually not because fortunately we had max over for dinner and oh and and got to know max really well we took care of him quite well and so it was all part of family and his wife also worked on the car she did welding and stuff right she did i know i know with that yeah she welded the chassis and pete brock the famous r.p brock designer you know he worked at hollywood motors for max and i know i keep thinking pete brock must be 150 years old because he's involved in every important car i mean the stingray i mean cars it was 60 70 years ago and he looks younger than me so i i don't get how that works but he he's just an amazing guy yeah he's just an amazing guy i know and he was involved in this too which uh well he gave me a beautiful little sculpture yeah of this car and this is really quite a famous car in american road racing you know i always used to think the 60s were the golden age but i realized the 50 was 50s were really if not the equal maybe even a better golden age because there were so many homemade car uh lance revlo and the the scout all those kind of cars uh racing against jaguars and exotic cars from europe and and this one will just come out of the back kind of taking up the whole row with the goofy white wall tires or what i mean imagine you're in italy and you're reading about ferrari let's say the ferrari has gone to what is that again in front of the ferrari here this big goofy looking car yellow with white wall tower that's hilarious i don't know what those wheels are those wheels buick rims what are they they look awful yes they're actually uh standard rims they're not any racing it's just fun to see an era when you could build your own car you could drive this to the track race it beat everybody and drive home again yeah he never had a trailer and so and we really enjoy taking it around because people treat it like a people's car they come up and touch the fenders right right they don't touch fenders or ferraris in maseratis right right but they'll come and check if it's aluminum and they have wonderful comments one lady in england said oh that's as lovely as a box of toads box of toads why is the pump yes all right i'll give you that can we can we take this hood off and see the engine let's see i got i know you you've got some guys with this where's our guys going oh let's see if i can assist here ladies and gentlemen the very famous jimmy shine thank you look at that thank you sir thank you thank you now see i thought you would have though they made a uh custom dress-up kit for the 401. remember it had the fins but that that was not functional so there's no reason to have that so well this is standard yeah this is a color in other words if you don't see this green color it's a pukey green and if you don't see it then it's not the buick color are these webers on here uh no the stromberg oh strombo stromberg's okay that's right yeah max did design one i have the one he designed oh oh often houser made this intake manifold yes i didn't know they made it for the fur wouldn't be working yes oh very nice so you can see that it is set back uh way back here and so it's it's really quite a balanced car you'll find it's easy to drive dan gurney said it's easy as driving or pushing a baby carriage right well there you go and what what would you say the horsepower is about three and a quarter three thirty at least that but yeah when you got 6.6 behind you that's a lot of wind in your sails yeah well i mean it's like they say horsepower sells cars torque wins races that's right yeah yeah and max always said there's no substitute for horsepower right right yeah yeah yeah and that's sort of modern that's a little later extra big pan on it yeah it really is something it really is something yeah and i think there's little bits that still belong from that period because that door he made and the handle the swing mechanism he made but that never fit in all the pictures and it still doesn't fit the door has a big gap in it and um and this is a this is an aircraft filler cap and that's what max had so it's sort of a tribute to max inside as you open up we have the safety fuel tank right racing tank but it's sort of a tribute to max gotcha there's a lot of dents but we've left it the way it is and haven't changed anything just so impressed can i take it for a ride yes you're welcome wow it's got plenty of power jesus you know the genius of this car is brakes are excellent the steering is so light feels like ernie said unbelievable what a thrill this is a car i read about for years and years i never thought i'd get the opportunity to actually drive so that's pretty cool [Music] this car was born like six seven miles from the shop that was kind of cool there's so much history around this part of burbank because after the war all the engineers all the airplane guides come out and work at lockheed all the other airplane factories they bought expensive cars or they bought cheap cars and hot rodded them like max did and this thing is boy it's really brilliant you see why he was able to beat maserati and a lamborghini that lamborghini but ferrari and alfa romeo he had this enormous 401 cubic inch engine where they were running 2.5 liter 3.5 at the most even the jag was what 3.4 so you can see why this thing had a bit of an advantage [Music] but it's kind of cool to sit in the same seat as stan gurney carol shelby paul bondurant oh guys i was fortunate enough to meet you know i was 10 years old when those guys drove this and car matter what gate you're in you're fine there's so much torque it just pulls you through you know this is very much like briggs's cunningham car you know i've got that cunningham and that's got the 331 chrysler v8 in it obviously it's more expensive car than max finished better but it's basically the same idea big torquey american engine with food horsepower that just overcomes every other any other problem it's funny having just one piece of quote race car equipment on this car buick standard rims standard buick engine got the stromberg carburetors okay i'll give you that muncie four speed uh all american pieces well we've got those jaguar arms it's a four speed four-speed four-speed muncie out of a corvette i love this error when a regular guy with no money but a lot of ingenuity and skill to build a race car and take on the best the world had to offer [Music] amazing like this i guess it's kind of an inside joke this farmer only goes to 100 because this is certainly capable of way more than that i was home away in third gear monster [Music] nobody ever bothered to fix i can never imagine a ferrari oh my god [Applause] sold i'll buy it great but you know that is one of the best cars i've ever driven is that right i'm stunned at how good the steering and i expected that i thought i'd be doing this i mean it's one finger it feels almost like chrysler power steering from the 50s so it's so light and the torque the torque yeah this has more torque than a hemi for some reason it seems oh yeah what is this weight 2400 no about 22 20. 22 boy it really it's nimble it's nimble it's fast and it shifts like butter just clicks through the gears it runs at 160. it's so funny it you think it looks crude so you think it'd be crude yes but it's not i mean i think this handles better than probably any corvette from the period yes you know certainly 59 to 60. but it's really the weight also really helps it's it's a balanced car yeah i'm i'm just surprised what a pleasure i mean i'm a little big fart so my feet are kind of in my face i mean obviously it was the seat would be back a little bit further brakes are good uh the torque is excellent the steering is what it made i mean you could drive this 24 hours not kidding exhausted yes i mean it really is impressive well you you're a wonderful steward for this ernie thanks for saving this piece well i'm i just no it's really important because you know some guys would take something like this and stick it in the museum it would never run again but yeah you take it out and you let comedians drive it which makes no sense at all but it really is just just an impressive piece of machinery now i want to go back and read more about it and read more of the history and stuff i'm going to check into it and see what's amazing is that it's like it talks to you yeah you know as you're driving you realize it's a responsibility it's not just a ride yeah you know i i i agree with all of that it just has such it has such personality yes you know it really has a soul to it it really is you can tell i always like one i say one man's vision because men build cars in those days women build cars now too but it's one guy's vision of what he thinks yes a car should be and it does exactly what he wants it to do you know i laughed when i said oh spinal it goes to hundred and eight right it's not even hooked up because this thing is over 100 all day long so yeah he'd just be breaking that that cable every other day but but ernie thank you i can't thank you enough what a thrill wow it's great to have you thanks thanks for being a great steward so what i'll do is i'll put your name with mark's a lot underneath there yeah that's just right yeah 100 a year you put me with crayon underneath uh shelby and those guys well it's fun to sat where they sat i tell you and that also adds to it you're sitting where the giants sat you know and it really is it really is something well congratulations my friend you got a a real and thanks for taking such good care it starts on a button it doesn't stall it doesn't lurch with the clutch i mean everything about it is just just perfect except the way it looks congratulations my friend thank you you're welcome hey we'll see you guys next week thanks for watching this piece of history [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 464,082

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Max Balchowsky, Old Yeller II, Ernie Nagamatsu, Jimmy Shine, Dan Gurney, Carrol Shelby, Buick, Nailhead, car porn, historic car, classic cars, gearhead, Shine Speed Shop, Junkyard Dog, Pebble Beach Concours, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, max balchowsky old yeller, 1959 Old Yeller II, old yeller 2, old yeller ii race car, dan gurney interview

Id: zBs6O_D1D3k

Length: 29min 54sec (1794 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021