Frank Kurtis has been selected as the winner of the 9th Annual Shav Glick Award. This Justice Brothers–sponsored award recognizes distinguished achievement in motor racing by Californians, and is named in honor of the late Hall of Fame motor sports writer for the Los Angeles Times. Kurtis’s son, Arlen, accepted the award.
Born in 1908, Frank Kurtis fell in love with racing and the Indianapolis 500 as a young man, devoting his life to innovation in racecar design. His cars helped fuel the postwar midget racing craze, and his supercharged V-8-powered, front-wheel-drive Novi Governor Special (pictured), driven by Ralph Hepburn, broke the track record at Indy in 1946 with a qualifying run of 133.944 mph. That mark lasted four years before another Kurtis Kraft design in the hands of rookie Walt Faulkner surpassed it, and that same year a Kurtis-built rear-drive machine with independent front suspension won the 500 in the hands of Johnnie Parsons.
In 1952, Kurtis debuted the Indy roadster, featuring a lowered profile made possible by seating the driver alongside the driveshaft instead of atop it. Pole position at Indy in ’52 was taken by still another Kurtis design, the Cummins Diesel, and in 1953, 24 of the 33 Indy starters were cars designed or built by Kurtis, a record that still stands. Kurtis Kraft cars won five Indianapolis 500s in six years between 1950 and 1955.
