The Legendary Larry Erickson

THE LEGENDARY LARRY ERICKSON is a passionate automotive enthusiast who first found himself at the Bonneville Salt Flats during a college break. Alone at Speed Week with just a sleeping bag in his El Camino, he began sketching the impressive vehicles he encountered. His artistic talents didn't go unnoticed, sparking connections with fellow racers and enthusiasts, and leading to him designing some iconic Speed Week posters.

Larry's early experiences evolved into a fascinating career in hotrod and car design. Designing cars for notable figures like Billy Gibbons, Larry goes through the creative processes behind some of his design vehicles such as Gibbon's Cadzilla and Coddington's Aluma Coupe. Listen as he recounts his personal experiences building a roadster for the Grand National Roadster Show and the unique partnerships that have fueled his passion for automotive design.

Listen to Larry's takes on some of his favorite land speed cars and motorcycles. His views on these cars are fascinating from a design point of view. His love for land speed and its cars did not stop with his admiration for them. He eventually designed his own and very beautiful roadster which is featured on this year's Speedweek Poster. 

Chapters

• 0:01 Intro to landspeed racing
• 10:18 Building and Racing Car Development
• 16:13 Exploring Car Design and Craftsmanship
• 23:59 Designing and Racing Land Speed Cars

Transcript

Intro 0:01

Welcome to Landspeed Legends, a podcast talking to the men, the women, the legends that make land speed racing great. Discover the stories of these ordinary people whose passion for land speed racing has made them legendary. And now here's your host the Bonneville Belle, the High Boy, honey, the salt princess, alison Volk-Dean.

Allison Volk Dean 0:31

Tell me about how you first came out here. That was a neat story.

Larry Erickson 0:36

Well, like a lot of kids that grew up you know 60s and 70s and 80s, my dad was just a Bonneville fan, you know, never came up here, but you know people talk about it. It was like big deal. You knew what a big deal was and we'd always had cars and old cars and stuff like that. So I was at Art Center, which was a college in Southern California, and it was their week break and I remember looking in Hot Rod magazine and it said, okay, speed Week is the same week as your week break. And I called my mom up and I said, hey, I'm going to take a little side diversion to Northern.

Larry Erickson 1:12

California and I came out to the salt and I put my sleeping bag in the back of my El Camino and I thought how hard is this? Well, it wasn't how hard it was, it was how cold it could get at night. So, yeah, I slept that first night out here and I thought, man, this place just looks amazing because you're watching the sun go down, but freezing, and so, yeah, that was my initial trip and it was just out of that legacy. You know the history of the place.

Allison Volk Dean 1:39

Yeah, yeah and so, and you kind of got hooked up with some other people racing. So what was that?

Larry Erickson 1:48

Well, you know, I've always been drawing cars and so I was going around with my little sketchbook and I was drawing cars and I'd spent a long time in Larson Cummins because I just loved that Lynn Yankle streamliner, you know, and it just was an incrediblele Streamliner, you know, and it just was an incredible pure little shape.

Larry Erickson 2:07

You know, I was going to design school, so automotive design, so looking at that thing's like looking at a dream you know, so I'm drawing away and and sooner or later somebody got bored and come over and like, what are you doing here so much? And I said, oh, I'm drawing a car and all that other stuff. And he says, oh, yeah, you draw a lot of cars. I said, yeah, he goes, you're going to finish this one. I said, yeah, and he goes. Well, where are you staying? And I said, well, I was staying in the back of my pickup. He goes well, we got an extra room. You know, that was just the beginning of people being really nice to you.

Larry Erickson 2:45

And I also drew I can't remember the first name, but it was Young Brothers, it was a 39 Chevy and I'd had a 38 Chevy drag car, and this was a 39 Chevy with the fenders pulled off and I was drawing that car and a couple other ones. So then I got to meet those guys and somewhere along the line I met Monty Wolf and he's looking at my stuff and he goes well, what'd you think about doing a poster? And I said, man, I'd love to do a poster, you know. So I did their posters for about oh, I guess about five years. And you know, at the time you got a lot of things going on and you're young and you don't realize how significant that is, and so I kind of fell out of doing it. I think I got married moved to Detroitroit.

Allison Volk Dean 3:27

All these things going on.

Larry Erickson 3:28

You know life, but uh, I still have that plaque that gave me, with a streamliner on it. It's just just so fine and of all the things you do in a 40-year career, you know things stay with you yeah, yeah, that's really neat.

Allison Volk Dean 3:43

And um, monty wolf is. I don't know if you knew this. He was like one of the reasons that I started this podcast.

Allison Volk Dean 3:49

Oh, cool yeah because he would come and sit with me and when he died I was like dang, I wish I would have had some of those stories because they were funny and crazy, and I'd have people like Otto Reisman come and sit next to me when I was doing the two club booth, and I was doing the two-club booth and anyways. So after you kind of had this little, how did you get back into Bonneville?

Larry Erickson 4:25

I got a friend of mine, Jack Chisholm, owned know 200 hours on forming with a file and I just couldn't get over how nice it was. And Jack walked up, I didn't know him, we started talking and he said what were you doing here? And I said, oh, I got some sketches with these guys. We went over and looked at them and he goes oh, that's cool, you know. And he obviously was interested in design and all that stuff. And uh, what I didn't know was Jack was putting air conditioning in Billy Gibbons cars. So he calls me up modern about six months later and he goes uh, he goes, hey, uh, billy's thinking of doing a cattle custom Cadillac, you know. And uh, I said, oh yeah, what's he doing? And we started talking and he goes what would you do? And I said, well, I like the 48, 49c net because it's got the you know, suede back.

Larry Erickson 5:15

You know, it looks like a streamliner you know back section of it, not the front, and he goes, yeah, what would you do to it? And I said, oh, you know the usual things, you know section it and stuff like that. He goes well, send me a note telling me what you would do to it and what kind of motor it would be. And because I'm not an English major and because I draw cars, every day.

Larry Erickson 5:37

I just drew him a picture so he shared it with Billy. Billy liked it. We did one sketch, so he shared it with Billy. Billy liked it. We did one sketch. And the next thing I knew I was sitting in Hot Rod's offices up there on Wilshire or wherever they were, and there's Billy. I hadn't met him up until that point. There's Billy and Hangred 8 Harry was there, hibbler he was a big get in it and these guys together. But I started working with Boyd's Shop in Southern California. We did a couple of other things besides Kadzilla. We did the Illuma Coupe, which was all custom built body and really that was styled after the Christman Brothers Coupe.

Larry Erickson 6:17

It isn't literally like it, but it's the same idea. You know where you got these two matching shapes together which, in the case of Christman Brothers C coupe, were two 44 hoods welded together, and I'm sure someone's going to email you and tell you they were 39s.

Intro 6:32

But anyway they were two. 44 hoods.

Larry Erickson 6:34

and then this really chopped five window body with a hemi stuffed in the back of it and we were supposed to put a Cadillac in the back of the Illumacoupe and Cadillac was like hot rods. So Boyd found another motor and that got me into trouble, but Boyd worked out for Boyd, okay, anyway, so, yeah, so that was a long winded version of, and every one of those guys I dealt with, you know Boyd, all the guys. There were two things there was Bonneville and there was Harry Miller.

Larry Erickson 7:05

And the rest of the stuff was in a club way behind that stuff, yeah. And both those things are Southern California things.

Intro 7:12

Yeah.

Larry Erickson 7:12

Harry's shop was in LA and Bonneville started primarily by people from LA. Yeah, you know it's supported by the world now.

Allison Volk Dean 7:20

Yeah, very cool. So at what point right now you do own a car. Do you go from there to kind of like your current car, or where is it in between?

Larry Erickson 7:32

Well, I was building a roadster to go to the Grand National, because that's where I grew up, northern California. You go to the Grand National. I spent about 10 years doing that and Boyd and I were trading efforts. You know I'd work on Boyd's car, he'd work on stuff for my car. So I had Boyd's corners on it.

Larry Erickson 7:54

I had a Potvin blown small block in it which, if you're listening to this podcast, they don't work on the street really well, but they're really cool Anyway so in fact I got it from Dean Moon, and I got it from Dean Moon because he'd seen the posters and he wanted to reprint them, I'm sure without permission. But anyway so and then Dean wanted me to do a cover of his catalog and I said, well, if you get me a potvin set up, you know it took forever, but so, yeah, I built that roadster didn't win the AMBR award. When they told me it was going to cost me $15,000 to have it detailed, I said I'm happy with coming in second.

Allison Volk Dean 8:33

Yeah, yeah, no kidding.

Larry Erickson 8:35

Yeah, so that kind of led to meeting a lot of people in Bonneville and I thought, you know I went to all this trouble to build this, what if I built a race car?

Allison Volk Dean 8:43

you know, I'm not that far away from a race car from here, yeah Well it was really low and it was long.

Larry Erickson 8:49

I probably should have just stripped that thing down and worked on that. It would have been easier.

Allison Volk Dean 8:53

So you built this race car.

Larry Erickson 8:59

And what did you build? We took 32 Ford frame because I had it left over from a personal project and I just started drawing. You know these Bonneville cars in side view they're so low and they just look like you know 100 miles an hour standing still. You know they're really tucked in. You got these great tires, love those 18 inch rims on the back and I set the whole thing up. In fact I got some old Firestone IndyCar 18s to proportion it and the rules would allow you to stretch it All the good things. And I wanted it to have a deuce grill and Frank Iacona's I think it's Iacona's, frank Iacona's Bonneville car, little 29, orange and black. It was in Rotter's Journal a couple decades ago.

Larry Erickson 9:45

That was one of the cars we looked at. We looked at that car I think it's Ruiz's car out of Santa Barbara, that Sam Foose painted a 471 car, jerry Kugel's car, the little 29. And those were probably the big ones at that time and that was when I started. That thing was probably right when folks were starting to settle them down, really bring the body down.

Allison Volk Dean 10:11

What year is?

Larry Erickson 10:11

this it's a 28.

Allison Volk Dean 10:13

I mean, what year are you doing this, sorry? What year are you starting this?

Larry Erickson 10:16

Oh God, I started in seven, I think.

Allison Volk Dean 10:18

Oh, seven. Okay, and so sorry, but what year is the car? Did you say?

Larry Erickson 10:21

The car's a 1928, late in the year because it's date stamped still on the cowl Cool. And it's a Ford Model A pulled out of a Montana ditch got two bullet dents in the cowl. Oh wow, the only thing we could save was the cowl and the door inners. Everything else was either rolled by a friend, so I work with metal shapers. So it's steel from the cowl back, except for the tonneau, and then it's aluminum with the tonneau and there forward with a deuce grill.

Allison Volk Dean 10:53

Yeah, it's a beautiful car.

Larry Erickson 10:54

Well, thank you, a lot of really talented people help Just get it right. It's one thing to sort of draw it, it's a world of difference to make it.

Allison Volk Dean 11:04

Yeah, so okay, well cool. So what year did you get it done?

Larry Erickson 11:09

Well, technically we didn't get it done by the first Bonneville. We spent four days in a—.

Allison Volk Dean 11:14

Were you trying to get to the 2008 Bonneville we?

Larry Erickson 11:16

were trying to get to—no, we were trying to—oh, no, no, no.

Allison Volk Dean 11:20

Okay.

Larry Erickson 11:21

The first time we tried was 18, it would have been 20. First time we tried was 20.

Larry Erickson 11:32

So you know, as we built it we learned more. And then we had Gary Maurer, a fabricator out of Michigan who's built a lot of drag race cars. He came on to the project and prior to that it had been Dennis Kelso and myself and you know we'd been around race cars and stuff and knew some of the things, but Gary knew all the trick stuff you know. And so then it kind of got more complicated and that was probably about I don't know, five or excuse me, 15 or so, and really a good friend told me you don't want to drive a car, you want to build a car.

Larry Erickson 12:09

You know, and I really love the build, you know, and meeting the people and talking. I mean, jerry Kugel was fantastic, I'd call him up answer questions and Jack and Seth, so yeah, the people and the craftsmen.

Allison Volk Dean 12:28

Yeah, we're very kind to you and good to you.

Larry Erickson 12:32

And so, yeah, we got to. For the 20 event, we got to a rented house mask on In.

Allison Volk Dean 12:42

Tooele.

Larry Erickson 12:43

Tooele.

Allison Volk Dean 12:44

Tooele. Yeah, he was telling me, it's not Tooele, not Tooele, it's Tooele. Okay, sorry about that, it looks like Tooele, though. In all, fairness.

Larry Erickson 12:51

The house is great. It's huge, had a pool, had everything.

Allison Volk Dean 12:55

Oh nice.

Larry Erickson 12:55

But mostly has three bay garage with no dividers. So we got it together, we got out here and that's when I really got a feel for the folks working here. You know a lot of people helped us out. They took us through tech. Russ Ayers helped us.

Allison Volk Dean 13:11

Oh yeah.

Larry Erickson 13:11

You know, and we got it through tech and it was literally the last hour on the last day because I think it was World Finals, it wasn't Speed Week, oh wow, so you were really just getting there at the end and we almost ran out of wind and Bill Lattin pulled up in this giant pickup, got out and said I hear you guys are new and we're going.

Larry Erickson 13:33

yeah, and he goes. Well, we're going to get you to the line and he goes. When are you going to be ready? And we all looked at each other and we said try an hour. And he came back, took us up. We made one pass, we broke some small thing. They gave Dennis his rookie license because he managed to pull a chute under power enough to hold air in it. And we came back. The year ran 178 in third gear had a much better motor.

Larry Erickson 13:59

And so now we're back with even more motor. And this year we got two runs in. We had a new water system and something wasn't quite right and we thought, hey, you know, we went through tech without an issue, you know we ran on a short course, got those two passes in, let's be happy.

Allison Volk Dean 14:21

Yeah.

Larry Erickson 14:22

So we got a long list of things to do and we'll be back.

Allison Volk Dean 14:25

Okay, so that's what you did this year is those things?

Larry Erickson 14:29

And it was painted this year.

Allison Volk Dean 14:32

It was painted. It looks like it's all metal.

Larry Erickson 14:34

No, it's a Porsche gray. We picked a color that looked like metal, because everybody said it looked good in metal.

Allison Volk Dean 14:39

It does it really is. It's really a beautiful car. You can tell that it's done by. So is that what you do by trade? Is you just like draw the cars, yeah, or do you Okay?

Larry Erickson 14:54

I've been in the automotive industry of the vision Automotive industry. That's really cool, so like if you pick a car you know, mid 90s Cadillac, the 92.

Allison Volk Dean 14:59

Seville we did all exterior surfaces. Oh cool yeah.

Larry Erickson 15:01

And you start out with drawings, but you work with clay modelers and engineer and data, and it takes, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people to come up with a form.

Allison Volk Dean 15:10

Yeah, but you're kind of the visionary, well, yeah somebody.

Larry Erickson 15:14

Some folks wouldn't call it quite that. No, you know you take in a lot of requirements and out here. You know a lot of the requirements you learn are once you're running.

Allison Volk Dean 15:24

Yeah, you know.

Larry Erickson 15:24

So coming out here figuring out what people are doing, Everyone is great, you know, even your direct competitors are great at sharing knowledge.

Allison Volk Dean 15:33

Yeah Well, that story you told about Bill Latin reminds me of World's Fastest Indian. I mean, it really is that way where they're very accommodating.

Exploring Car Design and Craftsmanship

Larry Erickson 15:54

They want to see people succeed and you want to see people do good, because we love this sport and we want it to keep going. So, yeah, and and you know I spend a lot of time with people around cars and what drives them to their you know their decisions and their, you know purchasing choices and stuff like that and it really is an interaction and it can be with a person or an event and and you just come out here and it's, uh, you know it's. I mean, there's so many different kinds of cars. I went down the line yesterday just photographing every different type of car I could find.

Larry Erickson 16:18

Oh, yeah, oh yeah, mini pickups, you know.

Allison Volk Dean 16:20

Well, tell me about some of your like favorite ones, like what is something that really stands out to you? Some of the cars just Well on a traditional end the 199 Roadster.

Larry Erickson 16:31

I mean that's just nailing it down. They're just a beautiful car. And then there's another one, and I'm going to forget my numbers. That's okay. It's a modified Roadster, really pointy nose. It's cherry red with scallops on it.

Allison Volk Dean 16:45

I got my phone out.

Larry Erickson 16:47

I think it's the Cornfield Customs car. Yeah, it is Cornfield Customs. I think that's called the. Salty Bitch is the name of the car I think that's called the salty bitch is the name of the car. Yeah, I think that was on his shirt, and then there's a blue rear engine Lakester that showed up. They're out of California. Metal work was killer.

Larry Erickson 17:04

I mean just obviously somebody had been around a lot of cars because where they terminated their body panels and how they broke the body up and nice forms. The metal guy is somebody out of Roy Brizio's shop in Northern California and you know what you'll find is you'll find all of these crossovers. I was in line in front of what's his name? Eric Hansen, I think it is, and he had Chip Foose wheels and I know Chip Foose, yeah, and I didn't know he made Bonneville wheels. He goes. Well, my shop used to be next to his shop.

Larry Erickson 17:38

Oh, that's cool so there's all these little connections.

Allison Volk Dean 17:40

Yeah, Really cool. I love hearing the cars that you look at and how you look at them. It's very, you know it's interesting.

Larry Erickson 17:47

Well, there's a couple that aren't up here, like the wagon, that big crazy Plymouth wagon, that matte black thing that's on the shirt.

Allison Volk Dean 17:55

Yeah, the event shirt. Yes, it's so cool?

Larry Erickson 17:58

I mean, that car was never cool, ever. They made it cool.

Intro 18:02

It is now.

Larry Erickson 18:04

But yeah, and you'll see things like you know, there's a guy up there with a 72 Ford I'm trying to remember the model name that they had but it's two-door coupe. It's got the oval grill in it because in 73 they ruined them, put big bumpers and I used to work the ford dealership. I always liked that little coupe.

Larry Erickson 18:24

Yeah, torino, torino torino, okay, yeah and uh, and it's brown and it, he lowered it and you know, just it upright. And so all the things they do, all the things they do, you know, in a lot of ways the guys in the studio would like to do that.

Allison Volk Dean 18:41

That's the one you were talking about. The rear engine, that was Eric Hansen. Okay, sorry, keep going.

Larry Erickson 18:44

Yeah, but you know, GM used to have a standard formula in their studio of how you could cheat the drawing. So we used to make these full sign drawings of a car before you'd start a clay model. They wanted to make sure they were making the right decision. But what they would do is they would lower it a little bit and they'd stretch the axles out a little bit, and so all that thing falls in line with what people do with Bonneville cars so you'll see some mini pickup out here, and and it'll just—there was a little like gold-colored one yeah yeah, oh, it's beautiful, yeah, and then people will put the work into them.

Larry Erickson 19:20

You know, not everybody builds a. You know, grand National level. Pomona Grand National level car. But there's some serious work out here, tight fit, you know just great craftsmanship.

Allison Volk Dean 19:31

Yeah, and speaking of the Grand National, I, you're a judge. With it there's a whole bunch of them up there.

Larry Erickson 19:38

There's some other ex-Bonneville people on that judging group.

Allison Volk Dean 19:41

Cool though.

Larry Erickson 19:43

But yeah, there's a group of us that basically judge the AMBR Award America's Most Beautiful Roots and I won't give out any names because we'll probably receive the threats but it's supposed to be a secret who the judges are. No, I think it's just that they'd just rather like get on with their job and you know not get any emails about why their roadster should be. I don't think their pictures have been put in a paper though to tell you the truth, yeah.

Larry Erickson 20:11

But no, it's, it's a huge honor to be in with that group, you know, and a lot of building experience there. You know, no-transcript, you go through those cars and a lot of that is craftsmanship but a lot of it is a subjective decision on how things go together. You know, and some of them just hit you like a brick and some of them are just spread all over the place and you go well, what were you really trying? But no, it's incredible efforts, people to go to win that award.

Allison Volk Dean 20:42

Yeah Well, and I just like to hear the breakdown of how you look at it, because I just look at it whole car they'll stand back literally and they look at the proportions in the set of the car and the gesture of the car.

Larry Erickson 21:14

And other people will go up and they'll look at some little part of the car you know, yeah, but generally it's broken down to things like proportions. So that's you know where are the wheels sitting in the relationship. So like drag cars, you know, in the old gasser days they'd take that rear axle, move it forward to get weight transfer and it'd look goofy as all the get out. That's where a funny car came from.

Larry Erickson 21:36

And then. So proportion's a big thing, and generally lower and longer works well, and even though cars are really going higher and taller right now, you know, they're going.

Larry Erickson 21:48

You know they're getting thicker. If you look at all those lines they put through the car that's to break it up. It's a little bit like your you know outfit. So you know they're trying to shapes. You look at the way lines turn and one of the ways that you can tell whether a person at a distance is skinny or not skinny is not to look at the part of the person that's pointed towards you.

Intro 22:21

It's to look at the outer profile of them.

Larry Erickson 22:23

And a car is the same way, so you have cars that look great from certain angles and then as soon as they rotate, they go. Something's wrong. So you know a car needs to sit on its wheels in a solid way, you know, like a 50s cars, and the wheels tend to be tucked in. And there are some beautiful cars that will break the rules, an E-Type. The wheels and tires are way underneath it, but the way the shape of the body is it kind of floats.

Larry Erickson 22:49

Yeah, it just works so interesting. So there's no set rule, and if you look at auto companies, they've spent billions of dollars trying to come up with a formula, and AI won't come up with it either. No, it'll just copy what's out there. Yeah, exactly so you see these guys, and some of them built them. They just simply wanted to go faster. Yeah, and the aerodynamics are really pushing things around.

Allison Volk Dean 23:11

Yeah, and that's.

Larry Erickson 23:12

that's the whole purpose of the car. Generally speaking, lower is better.

Allison Volk Dean 23:17

Well, that's cool and so out of your experience. So you OK. So we talked about some of your cars, but is there a specific car like the way it runs, or another car that you just have that's not by the way it looks? I don't know how to say what another car that's a favorite of yours, I guess would be a car in general. That's a favorite, yeah, like maybe of the faster ones, Like what? What do you look at when you're looking at them?

Larry Erickson 23:42

Well, you know, some of the streamliners are just stripped down to that simple shape.

Allison Volk Dean 23:47

Yeah, yeah.

Designing and Racing Land Speed Cars

Larry Erickson 23:48

And then other ones are more complex. Yeah, you know, like when we build surface for a car, there's simple surfaces. It's like it's called a drag surface. It just goes straight through. Then you get to things like Speed Demon. That's a very complex surface because it has to do with pressure differentials and so it's got kind of a little wave to the side of it you know, and I'm sure an aerodynamicist could discuss why it's doing that.

Allison Volk Dean 24:14

You could ask Tom Berkland, there you go, he would know exactly, you know that is a beautiful car. Yeah.

Larry Erickson 24:21

It looks more like because it doesn't have a relationship to its wheels. They're not visible. I think it's more of a beautiful shape.

Allison Volk Dean 24:29

Yeah.

Larry Erickson 24:29

And when I go to you know beautiful cars, you know I mean Cessol Streamliner when it was originally built, and I forget who was the first owner on that one, but that was a front engine one. That was a nice little car, you know just had this little tucked back canopy, but it had open wheels, you know, yeah, so you tend to like something in every category.

Allison Volk Dean 24:50

Yeah, it's very interesting the mini pickups this year there's a couple of them that are looking pretty cool they were, and they did good too.

Larry Erickson 24:57

I saw them in impound a lot and then there's a little Scirocco, a little white one that's with the Hudson Boys, or no, it's not a Scirocco, it might be a Scirocco, it's a Volkswagen two-door coupe just cleaned up and dropped down, Not a lot of add-on stuff and and just pulled out nine inches over subtle things and I used to do chopper bodies for this crazy guy in Santa Barbara for about nine months, and so we looked at a lot of motorcycles and I still like looking at them.

Larry Erickson 25:41

One of the guys I used to work with runs Harley-Davidson's group, Brad Richards, and I know he's run a bike here before and Brad's just a real hot rod guy. He just knows you know it's like you give him any car and he'll fix it.

Allison Volk Dean 25:53

Yeah Cool, yeah Cool. So what are your guys' plans with your car for next year? You got you kind of accomplished some things this year and or I don't know if you're coming back in September or October.

Larry Erickson 26:04

Well, probably not September, end of October. I've got some other commitments, but definitely next year we're kind of on the line. We sort of what we wanted to do this year is find out how much horsepower went to go about 210. And we thought we had enough. But you know, we had a problem with the water tank and that's, you know, something we've got to fix. So we bowed out but we got about 591 a horse. If the car's slick 591, you know, john, I'll get his name. It's a maroon car. He held the C record for a while. Anyway, a couple people Jerry's looked at at it and he said, yeah, I might get to two, you know, with that little of horsepower, cause some of these guys are running like eight, nine or a horse.

Allison Volk Dean 26:53

Yeah, and what is the engine size?

Larry Erickson 26:55

Small block Chevy but it's a old school so it's a, you know, original Chevy. It's a world products with a set of AFR heads on it. It's got a good torque curve so it should pull the gear. It's pretty flat going out.

Allison Volk Dean 27:08

Is it?

Larry Erickson 27:08

C-class.

Intro 27:10

It's.

Larry Erickson 27:10

C-class because of the displacement. But we actually have two motors under construction. One is the sponsor of the car, american Speed. He's got a Buick V6, and we're like a bunch of ex-GM guys. So we like the old GM motors. So this is a stage two Buick which guys have run out here before. It's like a race motor with a couple cylinders cut off. So we got that and we think that can go 600 horsepower and then we're thinking of building a DAIR car because we love 302Z28 motors, and so it's really to find a speed that you can run and be competitive.

Larry Erickson 27:51

You know the guys driving. Yeah, they got a Jones for a hat, yeah.

Allison Volk Dean 27:56

Oh, yeah, they want that right now. Well, those roadster classes are hard, they're not easy.

Larry Erickson 28:02

Well, that's what's great, and that's one of the ones that started it in the very beginning you know, I love the. You know I was talking to Greg Sharp used to be the historian at the NHRA Museum. He's just a great wealth of knowledge. And I said, greg, I want to like gather all these pictures of roadsters over the years and see how they evolved, you know. And I said, could you send me some? He goes, how many do you want? And yeah, so many cars run out here in a roadster class.

Allison Volk Dean 28:33

It's just a great place to run, even though it's a hard place to run. Yeah, yeah, well, that's cool, that's exciting what you guys are going to do, and it sounds like you are. You're hat hunting a little bit.

Larry Erickson 28:41

Yeah, and hunting is a key word, not capturing, no, I think you know. One of the things that tipped this over was the picture of the Sad Teague and Bentley down in the Mexican desert, and they're sitting around the back of the car and it's the end of the day you know, and they're out in a runoff area, hopefully someplace safe.

Allison Volk Dean 29:05

Anyway, probably not, and it was.

Larry Erickson 29:07

I think it was a Tom Senter article and it was just about the comeback of the car after it had been damaged a year before, I think, an accident, and it was just that mojo of something that's so timeless. It's like you want to win in roadster class. Just go take your head and beat it against a tree. You know it is that much competition and there are people with more motor and and more experience, and so you're always going to be behind.

Allison Volk Dean 29:37

But just to run with those guys, it'd be great yeah, well, and you never know, like you never know, until you're out there doing it until you know yeah, well, and then you were telling me that you have some posters that you've designed that are at Carmen's Black and White, to go look at. I'd like to go look at them, now that I know, yeah.

Larry Erickson 29:56

When I was in school and Monty said that to me, monty Wolf and he said, yeah, send us something. The first one I did was atrocious, it's like the worst poster on the wall. Then I got better and better and my favorite one was I think it's the 37th or the 38th, but I've got like a front. Like you're looking down the lineup, I had Al Teague's early car when he had the rear motor he hadn't gone to the enclosure yet, I think, but the front wheels were underneath and so his streamliner. And then a guy out of Michigan Mattson, I think was his name who was running a Vincent, and just the way it ended up. And out here you got this incredible perspective. Everything's on perspective here, you know, even the mountains. So but yeah, it was fun doing those posters and you know, and you look back on that stuff and at the time you're you're just trying to get them done at the last minute.

Allison Volk Dean 30:57

I think I drove.

Larry Erickson 30:58

Monty nuts for a couple of years, and you know, just to been a little part of something.

Allison Volk Dean 31:04

Yeah, what years were they that you did?

Larry Erickson 31:06

Mostly, I think, 83 through about 87 or 88.

Allison Volk Dean 31:10

Yeah, now we know what to look for.

Larry Erickson 31:11

Yeah, and then I did a couple of later ones. I did one just recently of the 911 car and without having run I got it, leaving the line and the parachute removed before a flight flag is still on it.

Allison Volk Dean 31:29

Oh no, I got some shit over that which I deserved.

Larry Erickson 31:35

But no, you know, yeah, really cool and then I worked with Greg on the other one. I did the 40th anniversary one, 88, and it had all the little cars in it.

Allison Volk Dean 31:46

Yeah, really cool, that's really neat, lots of fun. Yeah, that is fun. Anything else that you want to add I don't want to take the BNI to SCTA.

Larry Erickson 31:54

But you know, hopefully they're. You know it was a rough week but you know everything we got was worth the haul.

Allison Volk Dean 32:04

Yeah, it was worth staying.

Larry Erickson 32:05

Yeah.

Allison Volk Dean 32:06

Go home and rest. S-e-t-a-b-n-i.

Larry Erickson 32:08

You leave it with memories, that's for sure.

Allison Volk Dean 32:10

Yeah Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thank you, thank you All right.

Intro 32:16

Thanks for listening to Land Speed Legends. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, keep up with the show on Facebook and Instagram under Landspeed Legends. Until next time.