I'll bet you have never heard of the Karman Gorilla. Let me tell you about this car.
I had been racing long races like the Baja races and such. Those races are terrible expensive for an independent like myself and thousands of others.....
so there was a movement afoot to promote short course races so that spectators could be charged, and also so we racers didn't have to travel so far. That would cut our costs, and the promoter could make money off the gate, instead of having to charge the racers high entry fees.
Mickey Thompson started short course racing with a couple of Stadium races at the LA Coliseum (One of which I won in that Karman Gorilla against Rick Mears, of all people). That is another story, but has a lot to do with my saying that 'luck beats good'.
Anyway most folks were running their heavy, well built, long course cars on a short course. I think I may have been the first guy to build a car that was intended to last only for 20 minute races....at least I was among the first. Kinda like cheating, to race against the heavy long distance Baja bugs of the day.
So a friend of mine had a junk Karman Ghia that he donated, and, while sitting in a bar one night, we dared each other to build this 'Karman Gorilla' thing. He would provide the engine, and I'd build the car (with a lot of help from my good buddies)
Baja Bugs of that period had 8 or 9 inches of wheel travel and were supposed to be on an unaltered VW belly pan (frame). My premise was to cut much more of the body away to save a 100 lbs or so, and make bumpers out of aluminum to save more weight.... after all, I was only racing for an hour or so, not 24 hrs or so.
Also, I designed for 12 to 15 inches of wheel travel, and I cut the belly pan so that the weight would be about 5 inches lower. The car would actually hit the ground when it bottomed out. The car, being a Ghia, was so radical that no one figured out that I had altered the belly pan.....kinda like cheating.
Anyway, the car was fast. If I didn't break down, I won. I broke about half the time, and won the other half during the next couple years. My investment was about 4000 bucks. As you can imagine my motto was,.... 'Make junk run'.........New parts were pretty much limited to shocks and tires and rims, and the car didn't get them very often.
I used other things on this car that are normal these days, such as, Bell cranks on the suspension so that I could lay the shocks down to keep the weight from being high. I added some spring power by putting air pressure in shock absorbers and taking out all the fluid which made them just air springs. My thinking was that it was hard to put a permanent bend in air.
So even though the car was advanced it still had bugs to work out. Like the axles had half ton chevy u-joints. It turned out they aren't strong enough to use with out the 4 to 1 reduction of a differential. It also turned out that a u-joint won't deflect enough to give you 15 inches of wheel travel, either, with out an hour of clearancing with a die grinder. That was fun work, not.
The first race we ran was at a short course race at Firebird raceway, near Phoenix. We showed up there and no one could believe their eyes. "What had God wrought' was in their minds, and 'what the hell is that?' was on their lips.
We qualified for starting positions. They used the fastest starts last, system. I only ran one of my qualifying laps and was three second faster than the competition. Lucky I started last because as I jockeyed around to get lined up, I left the car in reverse.
When the green flag dropped, I went backwards. That was embarrassing, but even so I passed everyone in that first lap and was going away from the pack. Life was good, .....they had a jump in front of the grandstand where I broke a u-joint and didn't finish. That and beaking another u-joint at the first Coliseum race is how I knew that I needed a bigger u-joint.
The next day I was doing well, and was way out front, but this time the bolt that holds the inside end of a rear swing arm came out near the last lap. I limped for a whole lap to finish, and only one car was able to catch me, and I finished second.
That race put me on the map. I wasn't smart enough to sand bag, and just barely beat these guys. No, I wanted to look good. Well, that scared half the competition to not participate in a lot of the racing in the southwest. Of course, there was another group that upped the money that they spent on their Baja bugs, and eventually smoked me a couple years later.
After the success at the Coliseum We decide to take our big heads to Colorado to the Pike's peak oval track. They built an off road track in the infield. We got a group of us together and borrowed a motorhome and set off. There were about 10 cars to race. One of them was driven by Roger Mears. We two were the class of the race, and we raced wheel to wheel for about 6 laps. I passed him once, but I left the door open and he block passed me in a corner. Sonofabitch...stupid, stupid, stupid...But I had more laps, I would get him back...... I thought. It was not to be, as I lost a hot wire to the coil before that happened.
We had to race again the next day. We got into the starting line, and had to wait nearly an hour while they watered the track. I thought that I was about to go to sleep. I remember thinking I'll check my pulse...I bet it will be about 60....no way, with out doing anything, it was running 110.
The watering guys put way too much water on the track. It was impossibly slippery. At about half a lap I spun out and was crossways in the track. Mears was out front. The rest of the field was a 100 yards back already. I thought, I can get started by the time they get here. I gunned it, and just spun the wheels in the sloppy mud, and managed to move just far enough to get in the way of the next car who couldn't turn or stop.
Bam!!!.........Fuck, fuck, fuck. He hit me in my drivers corner post and front wheel. I could still run but had a crooked wheel. I was still faster than everyone but Mears, but I needed to win to have any reason to continue. They tallied the two motos together.
I reasoned that it was useless since Mears was so far out front. So I pulled into the pits. As I recall, a couple laps later Mears broke a throttle cable, and the guy who hit me won the race. What a screwed result. I had pulled in to save the equipment for another day when I had a no chance to beat Mears. Bad choice, on that occasion.
So anyway I campaigned that car at the local tracks. All the short course track had a high speed jump in front of the stands. If you could fly flat over that jump that would really help. That took a lot of rebound control in the rear shocks. So to that end, I revalved the shocks with a whole of rebound control.
Wow, in practice that worked like a champ. I was flying and landing like a butterfly. Whoa Doggies!!! This was going to be something. Well the race came along and I was being pushed by some guy. I was going faster than I had in practice over two bumps in a row that were about 12' apart. I hit the first bump, which compressed the suspension, and then with all that new rebound control, I hit the second bump with my rear end all sucked up by those shocks. There was no suspension left so the car bounced off of the compressed tires and did 2 complete endos before it hit the ground again, and a couple more before the world quite rotating.
That was all she wrote for that day, and the beginning of the end. Which brings us to the last race of its career.
My boys that had helped me for the last few year deserved some reward, so I agreed to put the car back together, and let two of them drive the car for a 400 mile 'long course' race out near Las Vegas.
The first driver started the race and got about 2 miles before a distributor failed. I got to Hurf quickly and put in another distributor, but he probably lost at least a half hour. After that, he finished his 125 mile lap. The second driver only went about 30 miles before a piece of the frame gave way that anchored one of the rear trailing arms. That failure was a direct result of that previous endo.
This poor bunch of scaliwag talliwackers Worked long and hard to bring this old 'Karman Gorilla' to a place of respect
The car was getting old. That was the ignominious end of a once proud race car. She had some good runs, but this was a poor way for the once proud 'Karman Gorilla' to go out.
