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Stu Hilborn's Streamliner Recreation What Warth did was apply his ideas proven on the first car to his next. Rather than spanning a pair of '24 Chevrolet framerails with crossmembers, he welded a '37 Ford front axle and Model A rear axle directly to it. He committed the earlier car's shape to metal and achieved a 132-mph run with a Chevy engine topped with a three-port Olds head before selling it to Stu. Only instead of giving Stu the car's engine, Warth offered the following caution: a V-8 wouldn't fit in the narrow frame. Stu wasn't a name yet but he was far from inexperienced. The father of his pal, Eddie Miller Jr., was the senior Miller of Duesenberg fame. Guided by the senior Miller and helped by the junior, Stu wedged a V-8 between those unforgiving 'rails and clicked off a 134-mph run before the government canceled all official race meets. The war may have suspended Stu's activities but during his stint as a gunnery instructor he developed the ideas that Miller Sr. planted, among them solutions to the fuel-distribution problems that plagued flatheads. His reentry into racing after the war gave him more food for thought: though Stu's engine benefited from the improved fuel distribution that Miller Sr.'s unique four-carburetor manifold provided, the zinc-bodied carburetors bolted to it tended to dissolve and plug up in the presence of methanol. With the understanding that fuel injection would solve the problems in one swoop, Stu set to work; however, with few tools, much less the applied knowledge of how to make a fuel-injection system work, he admitted progress didn't come easy. Ironically, some of the greatest resistance he faced was from the people who stood to benefit most from his labor, the hot rodders of the day. But the ultimate resistance Stu met was the hard-packed El Mirage lakebed at the Aug. 10, 1947 SCTA meet. The wire wheel at the left-rear corner of the car collapsed at speed and sent the car into a tumble. The car's lack of rollcage-one of the shortcomings that killed early streamliners-meant Stu's head and shoulders bore the brunt of the car's hurtling weight. According to Stu, Miller Jr. repaired the car without telling his convalescing pal or taking a cent of compensation, a real accomplishment considering the body's resemblance to a wadded-up paper ball. But repair it he did, and the following year on an unpublicized run Stu proved at least to himself and a few friends that his system did in fact work by using it to urge the car to at least 120 mph. A follow-up run at the July 18 SCTA meet with Howie Wilson at the helm of the car officially vindicated Stu: the car claimed the title as the first to transcend the 150-mph milestone. Stu's newfound fuel-injection device immediately made him the darling child of Lou Meyer and Dale Drake, then stewards for the Offenhauser dynasty. Their dynamometer tests removed what few doubts remained about Stu's system and within a very short time hardly a race car without one of Stu's injectors remained competitive. Once again Stu called on the streamliner to advance his career, albeit in a less-auspicious way: after quitting his steady job to start his injection business, he sold the car to Gerry Grant, owner of Grant Piston Rings. According to photos, the car resurfaced as a would-be dragster at an NHRA meet in Edna, Kansas. Though the Miller manifold still exists on Doc Parson's T roadster, many believe that a subsequent owner dismantled if not scrapped Stu's car. But not all was lost; under the guidance of hot rod pioneer Stu, Hilborn and Miller Jr.'s son, Jim, and Jim Lattin built a faithful recreation of the famed streamliner. We say Lattin built it, but just as it takes a village to raise a child it took a team to build the car. Tom Drissi created full-scale posters of the car from photographs. Lattin didn't go it alone, though-Rick Peterson, Bill Lattin, Richard Lux, and Santos Garcia merged the once anonymous parts into an animated version of hot rod history. From the December, 2010 issue of Rod & Custom |
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