1934 Charlie Allen midget

While passing through the Indianapolis International Airport for the 2018 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show, the author spied this 1934 Charlie Allen midget race car on display. 

Owned by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, this car was built by Los Angeles race car builder Clyde Adams, who got his start along with fellow car builder/metalworker Myron Stevens working for Harry A. Miller. After Miller sold out to the Schofield Company and the company went into decline, Adams and Steven left to start their own race car shop.  

The first documented midget car race took place on June 4, 1933 at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, California, and less than a year later, Adams built this car for car owner/driver Charlie Allen, powered by a 2-stroke 4-cylinder ELTO engine.

Outboard motor pioneer Ole Evinrude sold his eponymous company in 1913 to care for his ill wife with one of the terms of the sale that he could not enter the outboard motor business for five years. 

Ole kept experimenting and developed a lighter more powerful two-cylinder outboard motor and in 1921 he founded a new company to sell his invention. Ole couldn’t use his name for the new company so he called it ELTO, which stood for “Evinrude Light Twin Outboard."

During the early nineteen thirties ELTO marketed two two-cycle engines to the midget auto racing community; the ELTO 4-60 (as in this car) comprised of four cylinders with a single rotary valve that displaced 59.4 cubic inches that produced 60 horsepower, lot of power in its day. For lubricant, racers added castor oil to a mix of methanol (wood alcohol) and benzene which created the signature trail of smoke associated with ELTO engines.

In 1939, Charlie Allen continued his ground-breaking ways, as he purchased the first Frank Kurtis-built midget which was equipped with a four-cylinder Offenhauser engine.  

Photos by the author