The Don Zabel Story

The most legendary of hot rodders, racers, race car builders, and speed equipment manufacturers hung their shop coats in Glendale. Their diversity ran the breadth of motorsports like Ed Winfield, whose high-performance Ford Flathead heads, intake manifolds, and cams were the ones that set records.

Winfield was on the same street as famed land speed racer and subsequent tech writer, Barney Navarro, who machined his heads and intake manifolds for Flathead engines as well. Close by, Frank Kurtis, race car designer/manufacturer (Kurtis Kraft), cranked out over 550 turnkey Midget racers and Indy-winning Champ Cars from of his facility. Not far was A.J. Watson who built winning Champ Cars (seven 500 victories) out of his small garage-he built the last roadster to win the 500 in 1964 driven by A.J Foyt. The Justice Brothers Race Car Repair & Fabrication (Ed and Zeke) plus Bob's Big Boy Drive-In, all got their start in Glendale. "We hung out at Bob's. That's when they had the carhops you know," Don reminisces. "Everyone went there." Get the picture?

When Don was 12, he came home with his first car, a '14 Model T roadster. "The guy down the street had it," he says, "and had nothing but trouble with it. He finally gave up on it, had it half apart, and wanted to get rid of it. I gave him $5.

"My dad came home that night and found it in the driveway and had a fit. But I found out later he said that I, being a dumb kid, would never get it running and he'd never have to worry about me driving it. But I did get it running. At first I drove it up and down the driveway, then around the block, and ..." Don quickly states with a twinkle in his eye, "I never did nothing illegal you understand," he laughs.

Body Beautiful
Don's first hot rod was a three-window Deuce coupe. Naturally, the in-thing (then and now) was a roadster: "There was an older guy a couple of blocks away who had a roadster. He was getting tired of the open car. He used to drive by our house all the time; I was still living at home with my folks, and I kind of wanted to trade him cars. He didn't want to trade his whole car because mine was half hopped up messing around, so we decided to unbolt the bodies and trade them."

"After the military closed Muroc, we experimented with a bunch of other dry lakes. During the war we went to El Mirage, even though we weren't supposed to be racing. Of course there were Harper and Rosamond. We even went to a place called Bicycle Lake (35 miles northeast of Barstow), but El Mirage was the best of the bunch and they're still using it." (The last sanctioned meet took place at Harper Dry Lake July 19, 1942. All racing was stopped in the United States during World War II.)