We were recently informed of the death of Larry Crane, who passed away in August. Our condolences to his wife and family. Larry helped establish VeloceToday’s reputation in 2009, writing 22 fantastic columns entitled “A Car Life” for us. He was a pleasure to work with, a true enthusiast, and a great writer. Below is his last column, (though he would continue to write more feature articles for us over the years). Too read more of his work, use the ‘search this site’ function on the homepage and type in ‘Larry Crane.’
A Zagato in the closet
by Larry Crane
Bill Henry called me at Automech. We met a couple of weeks earlier during a Riverside SCCA weekend. He had stopped by the shop and admired my bright turquoise Mini, with the ivory stripe to match its wheels. Now he was proposing a trade. An even trade for pinks. My Mini was only an Austin 850, but I had installed a BMC A-Series comp head and a pair of 1.5-inch SU carbs from an MGA. With the help of a local BMC wizard we had set-up the big carbs to feed the 850 pistons. It worked brilliantly. The morning I re-torqued the head I loaded my luggage and headed across 1500 miles of dust and heat to Houston, Texas — and back. I soloed and rallied the Mini and loved it, but…
Bill said he had a nice Abarth 750 GT with a Fiat 600D engine that the SCCA wouldn’t let him race, and that’s what he really wanted to do. A double-bubble for my 850 Mini. Are you kidding? The following Saturday pinks changed hands and I drove from the north end of the San Fernando Valley out to Riverside in my very own Italian exotic.
It was gray primer over splintered white enamel. There was not a complete two-inch section of paint on the entire car. I started sanding. It was soon obvious that a lightweight Zagato body is a thin aluminum support core over which a slurry of sculptural material is applied and from which a beautiful form is finally carved, primed and painted. One might suppose that an unprotected life in the California desert environment is unforgiving to the various soft materials involved. Southern California is 40-50° nearly every night all year long and 80-100° every day with no clouds to shade the paint during daylight hours.
I worked for weeks, block-sanding and digging out cracks and trying to reform the double bubble form with the thinnest layer of putty I could manage. Over it all I spray-canned more gray primer and began to think of how easy the engine rebuild would be when I finally go to it.
John Rich, the Glendale Fiat / Abarth guru, became a good friend. We were on the phone twice a week for several months as I began to tweek the 600D into a sports car engine. First the block was cleaned and the two sets of sandwiched cylinders over-bored from the paired walls out ‘til the water jacket side became translucent. Matching alloy pistons that created a 10:1 ratio and included an offset for the odd bore centers were attached to the stock rods. After years of Fiat racing John suggested we leave the standard crank because it would flex a little when the hardened Abarth crank would simple explode under stress. A nearly-race cam and a 32mm single-barrel Weber gave the little engine horsepower at 8,500 revs, so once installed between the gearbox and the steel Fiat rear support box, it was twisted somewhere near that range every day. It never leaked and it never broke.
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But it also never started on its starter motor — ever. For the following 18 months it started with a coast down my steep driveway every morning and an end-of-day run-and-bump in second gear for the drive home from work. At the time Riverside was awash in hot rod VW solo two cars that would blow the Abarth into the weeds. Being exotic had its limitations.
As I have written, I got my draft notice on a Wednesday after making a deal with Harry Morrow of Autobooks to buy his Ferrari 195 coupe for $1500. The plan was, once the loan money had changed hands the Abarth would be sold to clear that account. The Riverside County Draft Board changed the course of events. After securing a two-year place in the Navy Reserve I called John Rich. He agreed to take the Abarth as part trade for a new Alfa Romeo Giulia Super. As it transpired John flew to San Francisco and collected the first Super in California and drove it to Glendale for me. When I delivered the Abarth I described the starting ritual. John called for a mechanic to bring a floor jack and put it under the center of the steel box rear engine support. He had noticed a small crack beside the lid latch. With a little pressure under the center of the support he stepped inside and pulled the starter lever and the engine spun and lit immediately. He then suggested the mechanic bring a small welder and run a bead over the crack. Starting problem resolved for the next owner.
Within a week of my return from WestPac, The Giulia Super became a Ferrari 250 GTE as our family car. As if to underscore my ex-military wisdom, its engine blew several sets of rings on the SECOND day. It took several months for the fresh engine to be completed, during which time I was repeatedly reminded how wonderful the Giulia Super had been. Within a couple of years the GTE became a Morris Cooper S Mk II and I went in search of the hot rod VWs. At the end of the day I followed Bill Henry. I just wanted to go racing.
I have a brief story about Larry Crane’s kindness and good nature. Some time ago the Mullin museum was showing an extraordinary collection of Citroens, one of the finest collections in the world. But it is a long way for me to go down there, a whole day’s drive each way, and the museum was only open sporadically. By a stroke of luck, my friend Joe belonged to a club at the Petersen Museum, and they were offered a private showing of the museum. So I went down to LA and met Joe and we took his Maserati 3500 up to the museum, a long drive from downtown LA. When we got there we met Larry Crane in the parking lot. For some reason, he took a liking to us and offered to give us a tour of the museum, where his daughter was working the front desk. It turned out that Mullin had asked Larry for help in organizing the museum, and Larry noticed that in an adjoining warehouse there was a collection of furniture. When he explored it further, he discovered that it was furniture and antiques that had been designed and owned by the Bugatti family. Larry convinced Mullin to decorate a special room upstairs to show off this furniture, and it was spectacular. Larry also took time to show us around the museum, which for a Citroen collector like me was like Heaven on Earth. It was a very special day and I will always be grateful to Larry for that, and I even wrote a column at VT about that day.
Larry Crane was the real deal. We worked together on one book project – an early kind of self publishing, I guess – and it was enormous fun. A great character whom I would meet periodically at auto show press days and BS with.
I got to work with Larry as well, writing for him at Auto Aficionado, sharing press rides and comparing notes on our various drives. He lived in the neighborhood, and would occasionally ride over on his bicycle to see what I was working on, and I would drive over to his home to share what I was driving that week, always in a quick run through the canyons above Malibu not far from our residences.
His knowledge of the Mullin collection was amazing, and his notebook of Bugatti engineering drawings and specifications was fascinating. Spending an hour touring the collection was a huge education, even for someone who grew up with a Type 57 to drive, as I had in college.
My relationship with him was longer than my writing career, as I moved on to working with small volume manufacturers, but we stayed in touch and continued to share rides and opinions.
I will miss him and his council.
Very sad to hear that Larry had passed. During a visit to see him in Santa Barbara with Jim Sitz and the late Ed Niles, Larry made a connection that eventually enabled me to locate the body off my 8C2900 in Antelope Valley, buy it and rteunite it with the chassis back in 1983. Happy memories!