Hurst Floor Shift Special 1964

Sick Cylinder

Sick Cylinder

5,287
Sick_Cylinder
Smokey Yunick built the Hurst Floor Shift Special to compete in the 1964 Indy 500 - sadly the car was damaged in qualifying and didn't race. Previously designers had experimented with offset chassis or engines for use on oval tracks and also engines beside the driver, but with this car Yunick was searching for high speed through low frontal area. The engine was the, standard for the era, Offenhauser 4 cylinder which looks very large in this application.

Hurst Floor Shift Special.jpg


The car took its name from sponsorship by Hurst whose floor shifters were a popular fitting on muscle cars of the time, heavily promoted by Hurst's presence at US motor racing events with glamorous ladies - Miss Golden Shifter and the "Hurstettes" who will be well remembered by boys of a certain age!

Below George Hurst and Smokey Yunick pose with the car in Spring 1964.

George-Hurst-and-Smokey-Yunick-with-capsule-car-.jpg


The only video clip I could find of the car:



The car still exists and many more pictures and more information is available from ConceptCarz:

http://www.conceptcarz.com/z18216/Hurst-Floor-Shift-Special.aspx
 
JKgo
My kind of race car: unique, quirky and slightly tragic, seeing that it never raced to its full potential...
Click to expand...

Agreed!

I found this great clip of the 1964 Indy 500 qualifying. You can see the Hurst Floor Shift Special in action between 2.06 and 2.09 and driver Bobby Johns spinning into the wall between 2.28 and 2.36.

This was an era when Indy racing was truly innovative with a wide mix of designs and car layouts.

 
@Sick Cylinder Thanks a mil for the clip. Man those racers looked great. Probably the era of front-engined indycars just before the advent of mid-engined Lotus that obliterated the Yankees.
On a side note, man that flag waver was one BRAVE dude - must've had cojones of steel...:bowdown:
 
Although it looks odd and probably old fashioned to us today, this is was known as the "Capsule Car" - a name which tied it in with the space race which was raging at the time between the Super Powers. It was also based on advanced aerodynamic theory - namely that the parasitic drag of two small objects is lower than that of one large object of equal frontal area - Smokey Yunick had no doubt learned about aerodynamic theory when he was a pilot in WW2.

An interesting experiment in oval race car design which unfortunately could proceed no further as rule changes barred this car and many other radical designs from future competition.

It would be extremely good fun however to drive this car from the cockpit view. I note that in the real car some of the gauges require the driver to rotate his head away from the direction of the track to see them as they are mounted on the body of the main car - I'm not sure how easy that would be in a race at 160mph plus!

5901748539_33a2beb4d6_z.jpg
 
Weird and fantastic concept at the same time.
Feels like the driver is just another passenger.
Somehow I like it.
👍
 

Latest Posts

Back