1954 “Solitary Wasp”

“For nearly a half-century, wherever Americans powered their way to automobile glory, whether on the two-and-a-half-mile Speedway at Indianapolis, the short quarter-mile midget tracks or the dusty half-mile fairgrounds where sprint cars plied their fearsome trade, the name Offenhauser long meant the most dominant engine to power a racing car.” Thus begins Gordon Eliot White’s wonderful Offenhauser: the Legendary Racing Engine and the Men Who Built It.

One particular sidebar of the Offenhauser story that I have long found especially intriguing is that of the 1950s sports cars that raced under Offy Midget power. These cars included: Dave Michaels’ Bandini-Offy; Jack Hinkle’s Kurtis 500X; the (George) Beavis Offy; Alan LeMay’s Lotus (Mk VI) Offy;  Jerry White’s Lotus (Mk IX) Offy; Peter Iselin’s HRG-Offy; Jim Mathews’ MG-TD Offy; Bill Lloyd’s Lester MG Offy; three Cisitalia Offys including the supercharged Cisitalia Pesco Offy Special, Perry Boswell’s Cisitalia Special and Richard Rush’s Cisitalia 202 Offy Coupe (same car?); The Louis Van Dyke International Motors Simca-Offy Special (this may be the same Offy-powered car that was later raced by Dr. William Eschrich as the Eschrich Special Sport Roadster); and Jim Pauley’s OSCA (MT-4) Offy.