Customer Reviews

The Vintage Culture of Outboard Racing

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Peter Hunn has done it again with yet another fabulous book on Outboards! Being a member of the Antique Outboard Motor Club Inc. and the Antique & Classic Boat Society one is always on the look out for good books that deal with and speak to our fond affection for vintage outboards and boats. This book more then fits the bill.

In The Vintage Culture of Outboard Racing, Hunn covers a wide, and intricately related, variety of topics. He starts off by giving the reader the necessary background on where the facination for outboard racing competition began and then quickly takes you to the haydays of the 1930s through the 1950s. Along the way you get a sense of the attraction of this sport for both the professional outboard racer and the average family member that was struck with the racing bug. Chapters Four and Five, that deal with Clubs and Organizations and Outboard Racing's Civil War respectively, are pretty indepth and may not be for the everyday outboarder but for those of us that cannot get enough these two chapters make for an interesting read and provide important information. The middle of the book, Part III: The Culture of a Sport, was a delight. Hunn could not have written on this subject without speaking to Hank Bowman and his outboard writing syndicate. A terrifc amount of very relavent information. Hunn definitely took me back to my youth with the chapter on Cottage Racers. I read through it like a Mercury 30H on the straight away! I was so glad to see the inclusion of the women racers of the period, as they brought much to the sport being champions in there own right. The chapters on Racing Collectibles and the pertainent information in the Appendics were equally enjoyable.

Hunn's previous books, The Old Outboard Book, The Golden Age of The Racing Outboard and Beautiful Outboards could be looked upon as the the first three books in the series. The Golden Age of the Racing Outboard certainly provides one with equally indepth and facinating information on the racing outboards and boats that the racers in this book used. The pictures alone tell the story. In fact one might say that it laid the ground work for the Vintage Culture of Outboard Racing.

All in all a well thought out and put together book. If you love outboards and outboard racing you will 'race' through this book. Mr. Hunn when can we expect your next outboard offering?

Peter Hunn has done it again with yet another fabulous book on Outboards! Being a member of the Antique Outboard Motor Club Inc. and the Antique & Classic Boat Society one is always on the look out for good books that deal with and speak to our fond affection for vintage outboards and boats. This book more then fits the bill.

In The Vintage Culture of Outboard Racing, Hunn covers a wide, and intricately related, variety of topics. He starts off by giving the reader the necessary background on where the facination for outboard racing competition began and then quickly takes you to the haydays of the 1930s through the 1950s. Along the way you get a sense of the attraction of this sport for both the professional outboard racer and the average family member that was struck with the racing bug. Chapters Four and Five, that deal with Clubs and Organizations and Outboard Racing's Civil War respectively, are pretty indepth and may not be for the everyday outboarder but for those of us that cannot get enough these two chapters make for an interesting read and provide important information. The middle of the book, Part III: The Culture of a Sport, was a delight. Hunn could not have written on this subject without speaking to Hank Bowman and his outboard writing syndicate. A terrifc amount of very relavent information. Hunn definitely took me back to my youth with the chapter on Cottage Racers. I read through it like a Mercury 30H on the straight away! I was so glad to see the inclusion of the women racers of the period, as they brought much to the sport being champions in there own right. The chapters on Racing Collectibles and the pertainent information in the Appendics were equally enjoyable.

Hunn's previous books, The Old Outboard Book and The Golden Age of The Racing Outboard could be looked upon as the the first two books in the series. The Golden Age of the Racing Outboard certainly provides one with equally indepth and facinating information on the racing outboards and boats that the racers in this book used. The pictures alone tell the story. In fact one might say that it laid the ground work for the Vintage Culture of Outboard Racing.

All in all a well thought out and put together book. If you love outboards and outboard racing you will 'race' through this book. Mr. Hunn when can we expect your next outboard offering?

This book is a valuable source of information on the people who built the sport, the races, classes, and so forth. The big names you'd expect to find like Dean Chenoweth and Hank Bowman are covered but so are many more lesser known people (both male and female) who really made the sport what it was. I found the stories about development of various clubs, the APBA, suburban stockers and cottage racers to be fascinating reading. The author even lists all the different classes as they developed. The chapters on collectibles like toys and accessories make you want to go out and start buying stuff. Overall, this is a rewarding book. It's got some material on motors but Hunn really covers those in more detail in Golden Age of Outboard Racing. Overall, a surpising approach that also has some unusual photos.

Mostly disappointing book, not because of poor research or bad style, but poor subject. This book mostly concerns itself with the political infighting in outboard racing in the early 1950's. I know the header says it covers history to the late 1960's, but that is wrong, apparently written before the final editing cut was done. Almost completely devoid of any technical information about the motors themselves, slightly shakey on chronology at a few points. If the subject as I have described it is of interest to you, you will find this a very enlightening and interesting book, exceptionally well researched and presented.

I raced during this time period.
This book puts in perspective what was going on behind the scenes which I had not known about.
FANTASTIC !

I read this book (excepting the last 2 chapters) after the author's 'The Golden Age ...' and have really enjoyed it. It covers the onset of stock outboard racing with the advent of Mercurys and Quickie lower units, and tells the reader of a peculiarly northeastern phenomenon, 'cottage racing'. The evolution from cottage racing (runwhatchabrung) of family rigs to built for racing stock outfits was very quick, and foreshadows the analogous transition from Pleasure Craft Racing to full blown OPC racing in NOA, 1957-1960. I'm competent to comment here, I was a factory trained Mercury mechanic in 1958 for my parents' E. Ky. dealership, and raced OPC in NOA 1958-60. I worked on KG-7s, Mark 30s, Mark 55s, Mark 75s, Mark 58s, and Mark 78s, and for a short while played with a traded-in KG-7H on a super lightweight old semi-V 'B' Speedliner. It ran an honest 40 mph. Then, I had the local foundry make me an adaptor (by ruining a KG-7 crank and Mark 30 driveshaft-apologies to AOMCI, of which I'm an active member) to run a Mark 30 powerhead on the KG-7 downhousing (the powerhead bolt patterns were identical). On the high flying Speedliner, with the KG-7 Kaminc prop, it hit 53 mph and ran nose-high like an old DeSilva runabout. I nearly blew it over running into the wind one day.

It's correct, as I understand it, that Strang designed the motors, Kiekhaefer was too busy playing with NASCAR to care. The magnificient man was 'asleep' from 1957-1960 while McCulloch and then OMC made headway in OPC. In 1959 a Scott 40 held the NOA straightaway record in the 40-50 c.i. Pleasure Craft Class at 41.5 mpg, and a hopped up Scott 60 ran nearly 52 mpg for the Unlimited record. The statement on page 60 about Mercury bulletins and getting modifications approved fast is correct, the Sportsmaster gearcase for the Merc 800 was sent to us in Aug. 1960 and was approved by NOA at the same time. Earlier, in 1958 (the year we informally received two cupped Quicksilver props from Oshkosh), my Dad had complained about the too-high water pickup on the Mark 78, which he raced in NOA, so Oshkosh quickly sent him a low water pickup that ran out the exhaust snout. That was approved by NOA before the next race! The cupped props we got from Mercury in 1958 were 19" and 21" pitch for the Mark 78, and I immediately cupped all the props for all our motors. Paul Allison had discovered cupping by accident about a year earlier while hauling the trailer up the driveway to his house in Alcoa. He'd been river racing on Ft. Loudon with a 25 Johnson on his first homemade boat. In 1958 in NOA no pleasure craft boat was competitive without a cupped prop and the motor jacked up to 18" or higher.

The squishy soft 1954 Johnson 25 shocks complained about by '36 Class' drivers (pg. 65) appeared (with exactly the same restrictive leaf plate system) on the 1976-1993 OMC 35, which is raced today in Minnesota under the label of 'GT-Pro Class'. And they still have even worse problems with the motor shimmying, because instead of 5000 RPM and 39 mph they turn 6800 RPM and run 46 mph on 11' tunnels and V-bottoms.

The twin Scott powerheads mounted on the Italian gearcase is mentioned on pg. 80. I saw the strange outfit (pretty unusual hydro, with very long, pointy afterplaners) at the Chicago Boat Show Feb. 1858, and saw the failed run for the 100 mph record at the Knoxville Boat Club later that spring. I was afraid of the run, Scott was then our arch enemy!

Hunn's coverage of Claude Fox (I knew him) and the break with APBA ca. 1950 is interesting. OPC/Pleasure Craft racing is mentioned but not covered in the book, although interest had exploded for both manufacturers and drivers by 1960. It's correct (pg. 79) that NOA-OPC was strongly supported by McCulloch (largely through Gateway Sporting Goods in Knoxville) for advertising purposes, but the dream of Scott's winning races died competely by 1960 when the Scott 75 failed miserably against the Merc 800 and OMC 75. 1960 was the year that OMC reentered racing, the standard OMC V-4 75 came with a high geared, Quickie-looking gearcase with full gearshift and was competitive with the Merc 800 until we got the smaller, higher geared Sportsmaster gearcase in Aug., 1960. The shift from pleasure craft (family rigs) to OPC began with the advent of the glass-covered flat bottom wooden Allison-Craft boats in 1960. The Allisons were racing runabouts that passed the specs for family boats, and in Oct. 1960 Allison boats held all of the records in every active classe. My Dad, Paul Allison and I held 4 of the 5 records with Mercurys (the 80-90 record was held by a Johnson, and we didn't think about 'stepping up' with our 57 mph 70-80 rig and taking that record too!). So the transition to OPC began in NOA in 1960.

The book is very good, no author can write without making some mistakes, so I now offer some friendly corrections:

pg. 79: In 1978 OPC did not consist mainly of 50 hp and up, the OMC fat fifty was too embarrassing a thing to be raced. There were three very active classes in 1958, 40-50, 60-70, and Unlimited. In the former the Mark 58 trumped the Scott 40. In the latter two classes the Mark 78 trumped the Scott 60. But as a sign of Allison's talent, the Scott 40 held the 40-50 Class speed record AT 41.5 mph, and as a sign of McCulloch's dedication the Scott 60 held both the other two records. The 60-70 record was 44.5 mph (Crestliner Boat), and unlimited was nearly 52 mph with a highly modified, factory-supplied Scott 60 on 13' Rose Boat (made in Knoxville). My Dad could run 48 mph with his box stock Mark 78/14' AristoCraft but the boat was shorter than the required 14' by about an inch. Claude Turner (Atlanta) made him a special 14' 2" AristoCraft in 1959 that ran 48.5 mph in 60-70, and then NOA disqualified it for 60-70 Class as a 'specially built boat', all the while leaving the 40-50 record to the Scott on a homemade 1958 Allison! Boy, were politics involved. I should now add that our 5 1960 OPC records never saw the light of day in an NOA record book: at the Jan. 1961 NOA meeting the drivers voted to outlaw wooden boats. However, we still have the official record certificates, and my dad, Paul and I were the first (Oct. 1960 at Three Rivers Boat Dock) to break 60 mph in OPC (we all ran Merc 800s with the Sportsmaster gearcases).

pg. 83 gives the APBA standard version of the very late beginning of OPC in APBA, but OPC had already stabilized in NOA by 1960, having exploded onto the scene there in 1957-58. In 1961 Paul Allison made a glass boat (molded from a Rose). From 1961-1975 Allison boats powered by Mercurys typically dominated OPC monohull racing (the Evinrude 75 in 1975 then took over EP Class). So the attempt to outlaw Allison boats in 1961 failed, Paul simply switched gears and got ahead of the crowd again. His boats (by 1970 he'd invented the pad V-bottom) dominated V-bottom racing in OPC up to about 1985. From 1977-1985, I ran Allison boats (with Evinrude motors) in OPC in both NOA and APBA. Claude Fox died in 2007 at age 99, and by 1978 had died his hair red. He was glad to see me back.

pg. 90: all turns in closed course (with few exceptions, like Havasu) were right hand turns.

pg. 99 inspections: 1977-1985 in OPC. In APBA, generally only at the nationals (including especially weighing), and in NOA never in my experience. There was no weight limit in NOA by 1978, and it was clear that in the 40-70 Classes (tunnel and V) the winning motors were highly non-stock. I know this for a fact because I know who made and ran the different modified powerheads.

I apologize for writing so much about OPC, but from 1958 onward that's where the action was in bozt racing (witness Billy Seebold a bit later), and that's (understandably) what's missing from Hunn's fine book. I do fully understand the author's love affair with the "H" model stock racing motors. I still remember watching painfully and wistfully in 1957 as we unpacked a green Mark 55H, and then a local lawyer hauled it off. I saw him run it once at about half throttle on his C Speedliner with 2 guys in front. The bottom had been glassed and was wavy so the boat wouldn't run without porpoising. In the 1970s I talked the then-retired lawyer into letting me take the rig out of his drive-in cellar and run it. I cupped the Mercury prop, jacked up the motor, adjusted the two big Carters, and got it up to about 52mph with the boat porpoising unpleasantly. The acceleration of that motor was lovely and impressive. It's still my second favorite, next to the loop charged 1975 3 cyl. red-white-blue Evinrude 75 (49.9 c.i.) that I raced 1977-1985. That motor is shown in my avatar. I tried to locate the 55H and buy it, but the lawyer's dead and his family doesn't know what happened to he rig.