Miss Century 21 hydroplane

When the author visited the Museum of Speed in Wilsonville Oregon they exhibited two historic hydroplanes race boats - U-37 ‘Slo-Mo-Shun V’ which was featured in an earlier article and today’s subject, the 1962 U-60 ‘Miss Century 21.’

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This boat was owned during its racing career from 1959 to 1963 by Associated Grocers Cooperative of Washington (AG) in a program run by group’s president Willard Rhodes. AG had owned and an unlimited hydroplane boats since 1955; this boat was the company’s fourth boat. The first boat named ‘Miss Thriftway’ after AG’s successful chain of 74 grocery stores, competed from 1955 and won the disputed 1956 ‘Gold Cup’ before it was destroyed in a crash during the 1957 Governor’s Cup race on the Ohio River at Madison Indiana.

In 1957, Ted Jones designed and Les Staudacher built a revolutionary “cab over” design with the driver seated ahead of the Roll-Royce Merlin engine known as U-62 ‘Thriftway Too.” Jones originally envisioned two engines, so the boat which weighed about 10,000 pounds was underpowered and proved to be not very successful and was retired after the 1960 season. The company’s second U-60 ‘Miss Thriftway’ boat built in 1958 was destroyed that season at Seattle after it lost its rudder left the course at speed and collided  with a Coast Guard utility boat. Both boats sank as Muncey jumped clear at the last second.   

This boat which weighs about 6000 pounds was built in 1959 by a crew led by Jack Ramsey from a Ted Jones design powered by a V-12 Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.  The V-12 1650-cubic inch Rolls-Royce Merlin engine and served as the powerplant for most of the World War 2 British fighter planes, including the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane.

 

 

In the late nineteen fifties hydroplane racing teams began to use the Merlin instead of the American-built 1710 cubic inch Allison V-12 due to its superior two-stage supercharging and intercooling system that gave the engine about 500 extra horsepower over the Allison engine although it was 250 pounds heavier  

Each of the Merlin’s 12 cylinders has two exhaust and two intake valves with the fuel mixture lit by a pair of spark plugs fed independently by a pair of magnetos To transform the engine from use in an airplane to a hydroplane called for the engine to be installed backwards, the supercharger turned upside down so the carburetor was atop the engine instead of on the bottom, as it was in the airplane, and the tail shaft fitted with a special gear box manufactured especially for the application.

Known as U-60 ‘Miss Thriftway’ for its first two seasons, 1959 and 1960 it was driven by William E “Bill” Muncey who had won his unlimited hydroplane race the Gold Cup in 1956 in the original ‘Miss Thriftway.’ Muncey a Detroit native raced 225-cubic inch hydroplane boats in the Midwest before he was offered the chance to drive for the new ‘Miss Thriftway’ team in 1955.

This third version of U-60 won the 1960 APBA (American Powerboat Association) High-Point championship as Muncey won four races the Apple Cup on Washington’s Lake Chelan, the Governor’s Cup, the Detroit Memorial, and the SeaFair Trophy on Seattle’s Lake Washington as well as two second place finishes.

Throughout the history of unlimited hydroplane racing the major prize each season was the Gold Cup, the Indianapolis’ 500’ for the class, which remained true until three factors came into play. First was the expansion of the sport to a more national level, second the creation of Unlimited Racing Commission in 1957 and the third event which was cancellation of the 1960 Gold Cup race at Lake Mead due to high winds. Within a few years, the location of the Gold Cup was no longer set at the previous winner’s home club as it had been since its inception but by competitive bidding from prospective host cities.

This new award process further eroded the importance of the Gold Cup and eventually the Gold Cup became just another event on the annual hydroplane racing schedule. Since 1990 the Gold Cup has been held exclusively on the Detroit River, presented for many years by the Detroit River Regatta Association but in 2016 the race known as the UAW-GM Spirit of Detroit HydroFest APBA Gold Cup was promoted by former hydroplane racer Mark Evans’ Detroit Riverfront Events Inc.

For the 1961 and 1962 seasons, Associated Grocers leased the boat to Century 21 Exposition, Inc. for use as a promotion tool for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair with the boat campaigned as the U-60 ‘Miss Century 21’ with the same crew and driver as in 1960.  

During 1961, Muncey and U-60 ‘Miss Century 21’ won the Diamond Cup in Coeur d'Alene Idaho, the President’s Cup, the Governor’s Cup and the Gold Cup which was contested only once on Pyramid Lake located within an Indian reservation 35 miles from Reno Nevada where ‘Miss Century 21’ amassed the highest point total as it finished second in each of the three heats. This achievement marked the first back-to-back APBA high points championship since Joe  Schoenith’s U-55 ‘Gale V’ driven by Joe’s son, Lee, in 1954 and 1955

The boat is displayed at the Museum of Speed as it appeared during the 1962 season with the Century 21 logo on the tail fin and the 60-61 US-1 national champion logo behind the headrest. During 1962, Muncey and U-60 ‘Miss Century 21’ won 15 straight heat races and five of seven races including another Gold Cup and the boat earned a third consecutive APBA national championship.

For the 1963 season, with World’s Fair over, the boat’s name returned to U-60 ‘Miss Thriftway’ and it won just one race, the Diamond Cup. Associated Grocers Cooperative sold the boat and crew chief Jack Ramsey retired at the end of the season.  During its career from 1959 to 1963, this third version of the U-60 started 85 heat races and finished 77 (including 55 heat races in a row in a period from 1960 to 1962 and finished first 46 times. Between its debut in 1959 and 1963 with crew chief Ramsey and driver Bill Muncey the boat won fourteen races and three national championships in a row.

After the retirement of ‘Miss Thriftway,’ driver Bill Muncey went through some lean years with just seven wins in the next seven years. Over a ten-year period beginning in 1971, Muncey and his Atlas Van Lines team captured 36 race wins which included four more Gold Cup trophies and four national championships. Muncey won a career total of 62 races before he was killed in a hydroplane crash in Mexico in 1981. Since 2011, the APBA awards its season champion the Bill Muncey Trophy.

In researching this article, the author relied heavily on research performed by the late Fred Farley. Photos of the U-60 by the author