Review by Pete Vack
All photos from the book used with permissions
Tom Schultz has finally done for Meister Bräuser what needed to be done years ago, though not for lack of trying. Back in the dark ages before blue light, when magazines like Road & Track were popular and widely read, this reviewer had a chance to expound upon the famous race team in R&T’s famed Salon feature.
By the end of 1961, the Scarabs were still potent but the Chaparral gave new life to the team efforts. Here, Heuer takes the Chaparral down the corkscrew at Laguna during the 1962 USAC race, followed by a Ferrari 500TRC Chevy and Ron Dykes’ Maserati Tipo 60. Road & Track decided they wanted a story on the Chaparral 1 as restored by Tom Hollfelder. We were glad to oblige.
The magazine staff wanted to do a story on the ex-Meister Bräuser Chaparral 1 that Tom Hollfelder had resurrected from the dead. I got the assignment. Fantastic, I thought, for the first time a major magazine would bring to light the adventures of the beer-producing-race-addicted group of enthusiasts that centered around (where else) but Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although one might associate Meister Bräuser with the two Scarabs, the Chaparral 1 was responsible for a great many of the team’s victories. It was the chance of a lifetime. (much more than I realized at the time).
The problem was, we were limited to roughly 2500 words. Which is to say, a mere drop in the bucket. The scope of the story was problematic. The story of Hollfelder’s Chaparral 1 could just as easily center itself around Jim Hall and Hap Sharp instead of Meister Bräuser; if we did Meister Bräuser, we would have no room to explain the background of the Scarab years. The owner wanted the story to be about the car, not the Meister Bräuser team, and I wanted to reminisce about Harry Heuer and Augie Pabst, whose unlikely yet logical pairing brought about one of the most successful racing teams in American racing history. The final result was a bit of a compromise and it was published in May 2003. But clearly, the Meister Bräuser story needed to be told properly.
Seventeen years later, that is exactly what Tom Schultz was able to do, in book format, with plenty of pages and photos, results, and a lot of interviews. I was delighted. Schultz is an over-qualified author; the Wisconsin native first attended the races at Road America in 1958 and now serves as the track historian. He has written articles for the SCCA Sports Car, Vintage Racecar and Vintage Motorsports and helped Bob Birmingham with Augie Pabst, Behind the Wheel. Living only 60 miles from Road American, he knows the turf better than just about anyone.
After watching his first race at Wilmot in 1958, Naval reserve pilot and rising executive in the Peter Hand Brewery, Harry Heuer decided he too could be a race driver. He bought a Bocar because it was made in America.
From Heuer’s early days as a race driver with the unmanageable Bocar to the last final days of Meister Bräuser, when the Peter Hand Brewery suddenly pulled the plug on Heuer’s operation, Schultz fills in the program and gets every detail right, obtaining period photos from the collections of Heuer, Pabst, Don Devine, Ron Nelson, Allen R. Kuhn, Dave Friedman and Willem Oosthoek. Schultz inserts R&T articles, programs, race records and maps to provide additional depth.
Only one year later, with approval and money from the Peter Hand Brewery, Heuer had bought Scarab chassis #2, an 18 wheeler, and assembled a superb team. Here is the Scarab as delivered to Heuer from Reventlow.
My desire to write about Meister Bräuser for R&T was probably due to being lucky enough to have been at the 1960 Road America June Sprints when the Heuer team showed up in full force. We were struck by the very professional appearance of the Meister Bräuser Scarabs, one set up for Pabst and the other for Heuer. They looked like winners and were. Despite being all -American, they were glamorous, exotic movie stars of the track, and set the pace for professional teams to come with their 18-wheeler painted to match the blue and white of the two Scarabs. Reflecting Heuer’s sense of humor, the cars sported a cartoon of a helmeted brewer by the fictional name of John Funoc, sketched by Heuer’s cousin Harry George Watt.
As Schultz noted in his book, there was another team, also all-American, that succeeded with class victories that year and were similar to the Scarabs in concept if not in style. As Dic Van der Feen noted in Sports Cars Illustrated, John Staver, Ed Grierson,and Bill Larson were three who thought things through and did so with a minimum amount of fuzz and dollars, created in Bob Dylan’s home town of Hibbing, Minnesota. Seen in the pits at Road America in June of 1960, the contrast with the Meister Bräusers was eye opening, the Echidnas as rough as the Scarabs were polished. Yet both were winners.
Meister Bräuser made a thorough and lasting impression. It was enough to make one hit the local Wisconsin bars and order up a case of Meister Bräu. It seemed like everyone knew about Augie Pabst, but who was Harry Heuer? Given full access to the mind of Harry Heuer, Schultz finally tells the story.
April, 1960, the Los Angeles Examiner Grand Prix at Riverside. Lance Reventlow was asked to drive the second Scarab for the event, but it he couldn’t seem to get with the program. The frustration shows, and the effort came to an end when Reventlow blew the engine.
Perhaps one of the more controversial decisions was the selection of Pabst to drive for the Peter Hand Brewery. Though wildly successful, it had unforeseen consequences. The Milwaukee Journal headlined “Pabst Wins Blue Ribbon” after a Meister Bräuser win at Road America. The advertising slogan, “Pabst, [should be Schlitz?] the beer that made Milwaukee famous” was soon twisted to “Meister Bräu, the beer that made Pabst famous” by a local wag. But the Peter Hand Brewery board wasn’t laughing. Despite the fact he was earning a living owning a foreign car dealership and had no significant shares in the Pabst brewery, Augie was voted out. But as Schultz points out, it took the board 18 months to make the decision to can Augie, and by that time the Heuer Pabst Scarab Meister Bräuser phenomenon was already a legend in its own time. In 1960, the team raced on 19 weekends and scored 18 overall wins if preliminary races are counted. They achieved 19 wins in the SCCA B Modified class and Pabst was the champion with Heuer second.
The Meister Bräuser team not only ran the Scarabs, but another Bocar, the Chaparral 1, and two Isis Formula Juniors. At Daytona in November 1960, bandleader Paul Whiteman gives Heuer his trophy. He placed third in class. A month earlier, Heuer rolled over in the Isis at Meadowdale, slightly injuring himself. He let Denise McCluggage drive the Isis at the SCCA National at Meadowdale in 1961, and she placed eighth in the Formula Junior race.
Timing is everything and clearly Schultz realized long ago that the principals needed to be interviewed in depth. Over the years of gathering material he managed to talk to Heuer, (who died earlier this year), Pabst, Don Devine, and Bill Wuesthoff, and the ensuing quotes are sprinkled throughout the narrative, easing the necessary but often tedious descriptions of races. “I was very fortunate to be able to interview Harry Heuer at length, prior to his passing. If I had been unable to do that, the book would not have been anywhere near as good as I believe it is,” wrote Schultz via email. In one appendix, Schultz provides a brief bio of the people associated with the Meister Bräuser team and a recap of the two major Scarab Reunions, one in 2001 and another in 2008, both at Road America.
Our only serious criticism of this latest Dalton Watson effort concerns the lack of a detailed index, a more complete bibliography, and identifying source material, either in the text or via footnotes.
Meister Bräuser, Harry Heuer’s Championship Racing Team
Author Tom Schultz
ISBN 979-1-85443-304-6 July 2019
324 Pages, 370 images
230mm x 380mm (portrait), Hardcover with slipcase
US $95
Limited Edition of 150 copies signed by Augie Pabst, Bill Wuesthoff, Don Devine and Tom Schultz US $125
Click on ad to order
This is a great book, and a great addition to most any motorsport book library. With that said, I have to point out the following. Schultz also received photos from another collection not listed… mine. Shown in the review here, the third photo down of the “….Scarab as delivered to Heuer from Reventlow.” is a Press photo of Scarab 003 from my collection. Wrong credit is given in the book. This image is one of hundreds of period photos of the Scarab Roadsters I’ve compiled in my research for the 1:12 scale hand built models I will be producing.
I’ve lived in the suburbs of Milwaukee for over 70 years and I’m 99 % sure the advertising slogan was ” Schlitz- the beer that made Milwaukee Famous “. Congrats to Tom Schultz on the publication of his most recently authored book.
We checked on that and found, you are right, but that Pabst owned Schlitz so perhaps that is how it was misinterpreted.