“Big Oly” Off Road Racing Legend

Rufus “Parnelli” Jones’ name is instantly familiar to racing fans everywhere and his accomplishments are legendary. He started auto racing in a jalopy as a 17-year old in 1950, and he became the 1960 United States Auto Club (USAC) Midwest sprint car champion in the small-block Chevrolet-powered Fike Plumbing Special.

In 1961, Parnelli shared Rookie of The Year honors in the Indianapolis ‘500’ with Bobby Marshman and repeated as the USAC sprint car titlist as he beat Roger McCuskey, Jim Hurtubise and AJ Foyt. The following year, Parnelli became the first man to qualify at over 150 miles per hour (MPH) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

   

Jones dominated and won the 1963 Indianapolis ‘500’ as he led 167 laps although officials nearly black-flagged Jones due to a cracked leaking external oil tank on the JC Agajanian owned #98 roadster.

In 1964 Parnelli in Bill Stroppe’s Mercury Marauder won the USAC stock car championship with ten race wins that included five consecutive wins at the Milwaukee Mile and his second straight Pikes Peak Hill Climb victory.  Jones came within four laps of winning the Indy 500 for a second time, in 1967 with Andy Granatelli’s radical STP turbine car. Jones led 171 laps, but the car retired with nearly a lap lead after a six-dollar transmission bearing failed.   

Jones, through his partnership with fellow racer Marvin Porter and longtime auto dealer and supporter Vel Miletch, founded Parnelli Jones Enterprises in his adopted hometown of Torrance California in April 1964. Through the years, Parnelli became a successful businessman with his own race team and built a chain of 14 Firestone eponymous tire stores across the Western United States. 

During journalist Ray Brock’s annual Christmas party in 1967, old friend Bill Stroppe jokingly challenged Parnelli to try off road racing. Jones accepted the challenge, but Jones’ and Stroppe’s early attempts with a stock-frame Ford Bronco ended in failure because the machine couldn’t hold up to Jones’ flat out driving style.  

Jones and Stroppe won the 1970 ‘Baja 500’ in the “Bronco Pony,” a modified automatic-transmission two-wheel-drive Bronco.  Although the pair completed the 558-mile triangular course in a record time of 11 hours and 55 minutes, Jones was not satisfied.   

Following that race, Parnelli designed a tube-frame ‘silhouette” Bronco off-road racer and   enlisted the talents of Bill Russell, a fabricator at Stroppe’s shop, to build it at night. When Stroppe learned of the project, it he moved the unfinished vehicle from the Parnelli Jones Enterprises shop in Torrance to his nearby Long Beach racing preparation shop. 

Stroppe knew how to build race cars to handle abuse- his Mercury team won the Pan American Race in 1952 and 1953 as they finished 1-2-3 and with driver Tim Flock Stroppe won the 1957 Daytona Beach race.

During the Bronco construction process, Jones by then retired from driving championship open-wheel cars, helped Ford Motor Company win the 1970 Sports car Club of America (SCCA) Trans-American sedan championship in a Bud Moore built Ford Mustang. Parnelli led all drivers with five wins, but the Trans-Am series did not award a driver championship award until 1972.  

The chassis built by Russell used 4130 chrome-moly tube steel covered by aluminum inner panels and cloaked by a fiberglass Bronco replica body built by Bill Loper three inches narrower with three inches sectioned from the factory dimensions. The most obvious feature of “Big Oly” is the huge aluminum wing mounted on the roof, fitted with retractable Cibie lights, and adjustable from the cockpit in 10-degree increments.  

The ground-breaking off-road machine is powered by a Ford 351-cubic-inch Windsor small-block V-8 mated to a Ford C6 three-speed transmission that feeds power to the rear wheels.  To boost performance to 400 horsepower, the engine is fitted with an Iskenderian racing camshaft, a Cobra high-rise single plane aluminum intake manifold with a single Holley 650 carburetor, and tubular exhaust headers. 

The oil and transmission coolers are mounted up behind the cockpit in the clean airflow, and the engine’s air filter is mounted inside the cockpit to get the most dust-free air possible. The Bronco’s bed also carries the twin 22-gallon Firestone fuel cells.

Parnelli’s Bronco used a twin-I-beam front suspension with the links mounted at the leading edge of the chassis with coil springs and single Monroe shock absorbers with 10 to12 inches of wheel travel. The rear suspension is a four-link design again with coil springs and shock absorbers, a transverse Panhard rod, 9-inch rear axle and a Detroit Locker differential.

All four wheels have Airheart disc brakes with Parnelli Jones 100 Firestone tires mounted on 15-inch US Mag aluminum wheels.  Parnelli and Art Hale started US Mags to supply custom aluminum wheels to sell alongside the line of eponymous performance tires at Jones’ Firestone retail stores.    

Painted red-white and blue when it first debuted, known as the “Crazy Colt,” it carried sponsorship from Johnny Lightning diecast toy cars which also sponsored the Vel’s Parnelli Jones Indianapolis car driven by Al Unser that won the 1970 Indianapolis ‘500.’ In the fall ‘Baja 1000’ race, Jones and Stroppe were leading when the ‘Crazy Colt” broke down and placed 19^th.

Along came the Olympia Brewing Company from Tumwater Washington, which brewed its beer with water obtained from artesian wells. The company which advertised “It’s the water,” wanted to expand sales with ambassadors that included motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel. When Olympia stepped up to sponsor Jones and Stroppe, “Big Oly” was born.  

Driving “Big Oly,” Parnelli, 36 years old, and Stroppe, 52 years old, won the 1971 883-mile ‘Baja 1000,’ that ran from Ensenada to La Paz on the Baja Peninsula, in record time, as their 14-hour and 59-minute run knocked over an hour off the old record. “Big Oly” became a legend as Jones and Stroppe won the 1972 Baja 1000 and the 1973 ‘Baja 500’ off-road races.

The pair also won the 1973 ‘Mint 400’ the premier United States off-road race sponsored by Del Webb's Las Vegas Mint Hotel and Casino in 9 hours and 10 minutes with titles in both the 2-seat car division and the overall 4-wheel vehicle championship.  

In late July 1974 during the ‘Baja 500,’ Parnelli, Stroppe and “Big Oly” crested a hill near Ojos Negros at over 80 MPH when they collided head-on with a motorcyclist. The rider, Michael Vaughn who was not involved in the race and traveling uphill against race traffic, died instantly in the collision. Jones sustained burns as “Big Oly’s” fuel tank ruptured and a broken-hearted Parnelli ended his off-road race driving career on the spot.  

The accident did not end his involvement in off-road racing however, the 1975 Chevy pickup owned by Parnelli and driven by Walker Evans won the 1976 SCORE (Southern California Off Road Enthusiasts) Class 8 Championship. 

With its dominant success in Class 8, with class wins at Baja 500 and Baja 1000, the sanctioning body moved it into Class 2 against single and two-seat race vehicles for 1977, but it remained highly competitive and won the 1977 SCORE Overall Class 2 Points Championship.

Both Parnelli Jones and Bill Stroppe were inducted into the Off-Road Racing Hall of Fame in 1978.

The Aurora HO slot car- author's collection 

“Big Oly” became a celebrity, as the Aurora toy company produced it as a H.O. scale slot car. It co-starred in the original 1974 film “Gone in 60 Seconds” as one of the 48 vehicles stolen, and Parnelli also appeared in the film in a cameo role.

The author took these photos of “Big Oly” at the 2019 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show as part of the ‘Ford Out Front’ display of first-generation Ford Broncos.