Salem GMC Kurtis Byers Special - unique racing car as a concours beauty
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Summary
Many Specials were built in the 1950s and 1960s, but few have such an interesting component list and history as the sports car built by Steve Salem on the basis of the Kurtis 500XX chassis with a Byers SR-100 body, which impressed with both beauty and performance. This vehicle report not only tells the story of the Special, but also that of the American carmaking legends involved.
This article contains the following chapters
- The designer Frank Kurtis
- The plastics specialist Jim Byers
- The do-it-yourselfer Steve Salem
- The engine supplier General Motors Truck Company
- A convincing result
- Rediscovery and rebuilding
Estimated reading time: 7min
Preview (beginning of the article)
Nomen est omen? American one-offs often had multi-part designations and the Salem GMC Kurtis Byers Special, even if it was never called exactly that, illustrates this particularly well. Four stories come together in this racing sports car. And the fact that it did not race, but rather enchanted with its beauty, was not actually intended. Frank Kurtis was best known for his Indianapolis racing cars, which were almost unbeatable in the early 1950s and often made up almost half the starting grid. He was born the son of an immigrant in Colorado (USA) in 1908 and the family moved to California when he was 14 years old. From an early age, the young Kurtis worked as a mechanic and coachbuilder. From the 1940s, he began building monoposti for the famous Indianpolis 500-mile race, with one of his cars setting a new lap record as early as 1946, followed by the first victory in 1950.
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