Sometimes on the salt, the unexpected happens- you're thrashing in the pits, things haven't went right for a day or two, and it's frustrating.
That happened to me this year-we were having fuel issues, and blew a freeze plug. We were all working to get the car back on the track. I kept noticing a gentleman of Japanese descent watch us curiously, and he seemed pretty interested in the flathead.
I got to a point where I could chat, so I made my way over to him.He introduced himself, and we chatted about the FlatCad for a while.
Walter Nakamura was his name, and he owns the Meteor lakester-very probably the first Cadillac flathead powered dry lakes racer! Needless to say, I forgot what was going on in the pits, and chatted about the car his dad and 2 friends had built. Wow, what are the chances?
This is some of the story about the car, that I 'borrowed' from elegantcars.com:
The Meteor was raced at Muroc and hit 104 mph in 1940. Records show only 29 cars broke the 100 mph barrier in 1939.
In 1940, three West L.A. high school buddies were obsessed with hot rods and dry lakes. George Nakamura, Dick Phippen, and Carl Hoogoian had little in common, except their interest in fast cars.
Nakamura found the Meteor with its bird cage-like framework, which has riveted sections of aluminum scrap from Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach. It had two velocity stacks pointing skyward with a pair of Stromberg 97 carburetors.
When Nakamura bought the race car, he drove on the streets of Culver City with its headlights buried inside the nose and 1939 Ford tail lights.
He drove it regularly until a minor head-on collision sidelined it. Nakamura was slightly injured, but the Meteor was relegated to a yard because he was unable to pay the storage fee. The yard owner removed and sold the flathead engine in the Meteor.
When the three friends were able to get the rest of the car back, they installed a 1937 Cadillac LaSalle V-8 engine, which still remains in the car six decades later.
The lives of the three young men changed when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, except their friendship.
By mid-1942, Nakamura and his relatives were interned with thousands of other Americans of Japanese descent at Amache Internment Camp in Colorado. His two friends were appalled by this. Nakamura was given a 72-hour notice to leave Culver City, so Phippen offered to store the Meteor.
When Nakamura returned three years later in 1945, he started his life over again. Walter Nakamura, the elder Nakamura's son, often asked his dad about the Meteor, but his father refused to discuss it, possibly because he feared his son would be injured while racing it. After George Nakamura died, Phippen called Walter in 2003 and asked if he wanted to take his dad's car home.
Walter was able to get the Meteor back on the road with the untouched patina of storage corrosion and dust.
Walter Nakamura plans to bring the 1939 Lakester Meteor to Santa Barbara from his home in Pleasanton, California.