The history of the Excalibur J race cars is as follows :
The first 2 cars were built by Ray Basasie and the 3rd by Paul Ottman Engineering in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The 3rd car was built exclusively as a race car where the first two were built by Brooks Stevens as sports cars for the Kaiser automobile company. They all were eventually powered by a Willys F-head engine after Henry J. Kaiser acquired Willys.
After racing and displaying the cars by Brooks Stevens, Henry J. Kaiser decided instead on the Dutch Darrin designed Kaiser- Darrin. Both the Excalibur Js and the Kaiser-Darrin’s were built on the Henry J chassis. After quite a successful few seasons of racing the cars were stored away at the Brooks Stevens Museum in Mequon, Wisconsin.
Sometime in 1957 with encouragement of his two sons Brooks Stevens contacted the brothers Hal and Bill Ullrich to dust off one of the Excalibur Js and go SCCA racing again. He was quickly told by the Ullrich’s “not with a Willys F-head powered car!“ Brooks asked what they had in mind and the brothers said they had been developing a GMC supercharged Jaguar C-Type engine with gearbox that showed promise. Brooks gave the go-a-head to modify the 3rd Excalibur J race car with this drive line.
The car was given a styling upgrade to the front sheet aluminum and a very large headrest tail fin a la Jaguar D-Type and also popular with Indy cars of the period. Hal Ullrich went on to become SCCA B Modified National Champion for 1958 culminating with a race at Road America with Carl Haas as co-driver. In this form the car was raced a few times into the next season.
Eventually being street driven by Brooks’s son David. After some engine trouble David decided to pull the super charged Jaguar engine and install a 430 ci Lincoln V-8 laying on its side. Dry summed and fuel injected. David also had the entire front sheet aluminum changed again and the excessively tall tail-fin head rest cut down. In this iteration the Excalibur J probably looked its best. The car was drag raced with the powerful Lincoln engine and the poor Henry J frame did not hold up and was badly bent. The car was disassembled and the parts put on shelves at the Brooks Stevens Museum. Since the super charged Jaguar engine was put on a stand at the museum and the body and many other mechanical parts were at the museum it was decided to pass this pile on to the Ullrich brothers as a retirement project sometime in the 1980’s. A frame from a Henry J was located but sadly nothing moved forward.
After Hal’s passing and Bill’s heath failing the Ullrich massive collection of tools, machinery and automotive projects was passed on to a close friend of the Ullrich’s. Bill was by now living in a nursing home and was only to happy to pass on very helpful advice and information on the automotive projects. Sadly the body work was stored out side for years and was eventually removed by two brothers in the scraping business. They realized the body was special and with Bill’s help identifying it’s origin it was sold to a collector in Wisconsin.
Having all the mechanical parts for the car I tried with the help of both David and his son Tony ( Brooks’s grandson ) to purchase the body. But, no luck. The owner of the body sold it to another race car restorer. After months of taking with this man that the parts should come together to build the B-Modified race car with out success I decided to have an aluminum body built. The Steven’s family graciously loaned me one of there two Excalibur J race cars. The body from the cowl back was very close on all three cars and the front end was re-created from pictures. The car should be completed sometime this year. The man with the body has decided to re-creat the drag car. So before long of the three Excalibur J race cars built there wii be four. Not a bad thing. THE MORE THE MERRIER !!!