Program cover for Santa Barbara’s inaugural road race. This 1953 event was sponsored by the city’s Junior Chamber of Commerce and California Sports Car Club, whose president then was Bill Pollack. 16 races were run over the Labor Day weekend with the cooperation of the Long Beach MG Club. The program stated: “All the drivers are amateurs who receive no compensation for their efforts. Most of them own their own cars and use them in their daily work.” Courtesy Edgar Motorsport Archive, from “The Programme Covers Project” at www.progcovers.com

Continuing where we left off in Part One, Phil Hill was driving his 250 Mille Miglia from home in Santa Monica up Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Barbara, about 85 miles. Sunny and hot, it was Labor Day weekend 1953, and what seemed like every sports car devotee in southern California was headed for this pretty beach resort north of Los Angeles and first Santa Barbara Road Races at its municipal airport. Cars of competitors and revelers alike paraded along beachfront Cabrillo Boulevard and uptown State Street. Barstool racing was rife, and Margaritas in high demand. Gracious race promoter George Cary entertained an entourage of owners and drivers. Adjacent Montecito hosted fabulous garden parties, while the wealthy and famous congregated at Santa Barbara’s Biltmore where a Concours d’Elegance would be after the races.

On pass from the Air Force, I was here with my bride Patti. The shooting had stopped in Korea, it was the summer’s capstone holiday, and joie de vivre reigned.

Phil wound through the carnival jam and stopped to fill up his Ferrari. "It was a Shell station," he recalled in our recent conversation, "just as the road was starting to climb up out of Santa Barbara after you’d done those stop signs." Traffic fell behind in his Ferrari’s mirrors as he accelerated up Hollister Avenue toward the airport.

Sunday, September 6, 1953. Phil Hill in his Ferrari 250 MM passes Bill Stroppe’s ditched Kurtis 500S to take the lead early in Santa Barbara’s main. Spectators and course workers helped shove Stroppe back onto pavement to rejoin the race. Note the California license plate on Hill’s Ferrari, making it legal to drive to and from the event. Photo by Ben White, Courtesy Edgar Motorsport Archive.

Of the whopping 135 entrants for Cal Club’s Santa Barbara inaugural meet, only two were Ferraris: Phil’s 2.9, and a late model 2-liter 166 Mille Miglia Barchetta. John Edgar’s 340 America that Jack McAfee won with at Palm Springs had broken at Offutt Field in Nebraska, and was still not ready for Santa Barbara. So my father tooled his Bugatti to SB’s opener, joining festivities in the rare capacity of observer.

Santa Barbara’s lone Barchetta entry belonged to, and would be piloted by, Hollywood screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, who had scripted the movie "Mildred Pierce" for Joan Crawford, winning her an Oscar and him a nomination. Randy, sharing a fascination for speed with other Hollywood notables, was raring to be part of the sports racing scene.

MacDougall’s Ferrari was superior to earlier 166s, sporting the three 4-choke Weber setup along with 12 intake ports and roller cam followers. Its powerplant was seen as a 2-liter version of the 250 MM’s and, with Vignale coachwork, the two cars appeared quite similar. However, a liter short and down 100 horses from Phil Hill’s 2.9, not to mention driver skill, victory for MacDougall was far from a sound bet. Hill’s competition would come from another source, commonly known as "American Iron."

Making its potent, albeit DNF, road race debut against McAfee’s winning 340 at Palm Springs, Bill Stroppe’s Mercury flathead V-8 Kurtis 500S, after victory at Seattle in August, was the man/machine duo for Hill and his smaller overhead Ferrari to beat at Santa Barbara on Sunday, September 6, 1953. Builder Frank Kurtis patterned this new American sports racer after his famed Indy cars, turned out now with fenders, lights and doors. Weight was a scant 1900 pounds, and power ferocious.

A boisterous, standing crowd of 15,000 lined the 2.2-mile 9-turn airport course anticipating the 35-lap main. Stroppe leapt to the front in dragster fashion, chased by Bill Pollack’s Ardun-Merc Maneco-Glasspar, relegating Phil Hill in his 250 MM to third. On lap 3, Phil got past Pollack and pulled in tight behind Stroppe, who then went hard on the throttle for a 30-second lead over Hill by lap 6.

Said Phil of this match between big Kurtis and little Ferrari, "The 2.9s were a much better road car than they were an airport circuit car, because any time you had time to really pile on the cornering, it just got steadily worse. The front end would rear up and the car would roll to beat hell, and it just ate up an enormous bunch of linear distance to come down and start going in the other direction."

Hill was getting the best possible out of his 250, not near the cubic inches of Stroppe’s Kurtis-Merc. But Stroppe, in his effort to reel in Phil’s Ferrari, gambled too high. On a narrow section Stroppe lost control, fought the slide, and skidded into a ditch. Breezing by, Phil peered over at the stuck Kurtis, shark-toothed nose aimed pitifully skyward, and took the lead as spectators scrambled to un-ditch the banged-up American flathead.

The incident cost Stroppe over a minute before he got back on course, tires smoking, rejoining the fray in 8th place. Even so, stop watches and calculation predicted Bill Stroppe would catch the Ferrari by race end.

Phil had a different slant on how things were going. "I was getting better at driving the 2.9," he told me, "and Stroppe was always slowing down so he wouldn’t slide off the road." In spite of his lean-sensitive 4-chokes, those flat corners at Santa Barbara were still Phil’s best friend.

Bill Stroppe on the September 1953 Santa Barbara grid in his Kurtis-Mercury flathead. It was a DNF at its March debut, but this American “Indy” sports car won a chain of victories over the summer of ‘53. During the eight years following World War II, builder Frank Kurtis designed and produced more than 500 midget, sprint and Indianapolis-type racers. Photo by Ben White, Courtesy Edgar Motorsport Archive.

By lap 21, the Kurtis was running second again, and Stroppe blasted to within 100 feet of Hill on the start-finish straight leading into lap 25. Turn 1 shot up in front of the Kurtis, its tires now slicked by Stroppe’s scorching pace, and he spun, stalling the engine. Fired again, he re-entered, still ahead of Pollack and closing to within sight of the Ferrari before the checkered waved Phil Hill home the race winner.

What happened to MacDougall in the 166? I asked Phil if Randy’s Barchetta gave him any concern at Santa Barbara. The answer was short, to the point. "With the 2-liter? Never!"

Except, possibly, for Briggs Cunningham’s cars, the new Kurtis at the end of 1953 was the fastest sports car in America. But bigger, more powerful Ferraris were on the way, as well as a certain driver who would become legend in them. That very same day of Phil’s inaugural Santa Barbara win with the 250 MM, a rising newcomer was wrestling a red Cad-Allard to victory on another airport course in rural Louisiana. His name, Carroll Shelby.

Phil Hill and I concluded our conversation talking about this former rival of his. "That Shelby’s something else," Hill said. "He keeps going, that’s probably his salvation." Phil then spoke for himself as well as for his old friend from Texas. "I’m not sure anybody has to slow down."

William Edgar, co-author with Michael T. Lynch and Ron Parravano of their book, American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s, makes available for media his Edgar Motorsport Archive of 1950s sports car racing images at www.edgar-motorsport.com