An enigma-what is this?
Hard to believe, but with the running of Speed Week next August (2013), it will have been ten years since I shot this wonder at Bonneville. The guy sitting behind the wheel couldn’t answer any questions about the car, but it was so stunning I had to shoot it. I never got to see what was under the hood or learned what the larger story about this car.
Only recently did I do a bit of research on the net based upon the lettering on the car. The owners of the car, Guy and his brother Joe owned a very successful oil drilling firm in Midland, Texas. They had this car built in 1953 and raced it at Bonneville that year. It ran an incredible 203.105 mph (328 kph).
Lovely Halibrand Kidney Beans
What made this thing so fast? The whole package. The wheels are the first tipoff-Haliband magnesium Indy-type wheels (and brakes) with pin drive knock-offs. Under the hood is a Ray Brown-built 353 cu in Chrysler hemi with Hilborn fuel injection. The chrome moly chassis was sprung with Kurtis torsion bars (another Indy trademark). The mechanicals were enveloped in a beautiful Victress fiberglass body.
But here’s the kicker. Guy Maybee originally built the car for a Texas chicken farmer named Carroll Shelby. Shelby’s growing acclaim led the Maybee brothers to realize that the Guy Maybee Drilling Co. Special wasn’t up to the talents of the chicken farmer, so they bought him an Aston Martin to race in Europe. In 1959, along with Ray Salvadori, Shelby won the 24 hrs of LeMans driving for the factory Aston Martin team.
The Maybee Spl was rescued and restored by Jim and Lea Ann Robinson and brought to Bonneville to be displayed on the 50th anniversary of its 1953 run.
I come here because I learn something new every day!
+1!
And had things been a little different, Mabee we’d have had the Mabee Cobra, and then the Mabee G.T.350, and so on.
Wow……. Shelby’s secret origin.
My first thought when I saw the picture was that it looked like a stretched-out Cobra. Interesting that it would have a Shelby connection.
And, as we all know, they cannot post anything on the internet that is not true.
Interesting
Going over 200 in an open car in 1953 impresses me. Notice the lack of a roll bar.
Here is some more information. image.hotrod.com/f/35281753/hotrod-1954-article-the-streetliner.pdf
Juniper,
Thanks for the link to the Hot Rod article. It would seem that the body was not aluminum, but rather Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP). Ray Brock knew his stuff so I’ll have to go with him. Thanks for the additional research. The push car in the Hot Rod article would appear to be a Muntz Jet which had Kurtis genes.
I assumed as much too, but didn’t have the time to look it up. The early fifties were the golden era of fiberglass, and that body looks familiar, or similar to others. There were quite a few floating around.
Folks generally went to Italy for aluminum bodies, where the technique was known and readily available. Not so much so in the US, except for simple Indy-car type bodies.
Au contraire, my friend Paul. Some of the most gorgeous full-bodied cars of the ’50s and ’60s were built by Troutman-Barnes in California. Reventlow’s Scarab (designed by my former boss Chuck Pelly) and the Cobra Daytona were both products of these panel beaters.
I said generally, not always. Maybe I should have said often. The Italians were much cheaper, given their long tradition and the exchange rate back then. Yes, there were exceptions.
The Mabee looked fiberglass to me. This is the go-to site on these early American fiberglass cars: http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com/
I searched for “Mabee” and instantly found it there. It used the Victress S1 body. Here’s the whole story on it: http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com/?p=22739
Lots of detailed original pictures of the engine, drive train, etc.
And here’s a whole number of posts there on the Victress: http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com/?cat=30
Great site!
Troutman Barnes’s original Special of 1951 was pretty simple, in terms of body complexity. In the early fifties, fiberglass was the way to go for the more complex, smooth, and svelte shapes and long flowing tails and such. The Scarab wasn’t built until the late fifties, and even then, it isn’t quite as complex as these fiberglass early fifties cars.
That’s a pretty impressive performance, a comparison might be the 1954 Jaguar D-Types which hit 172mph at Le Mans
Those are definite Cobra lines, but the AC version is much more refined, glad this did not end up as the Shelby Cobra
I am the person sitting in the Mabee Special, and the only reasons I would know that I couldn’t have answered questions about the car would be a touch of heatstroke that day, or I was never asked. My wife, Lea Ann, and I bought the car from Bruce Gross in El Paso, Texas who found it in Mexico. We have owned the car since the late ’90’s and restored it over a five year period. The body is a fiberglass body manufactured by Victress of Hollywood, California, and is an S1A roadster. The Mabees are oil folks from Midland, Texas, and were backing Shelby, before this car was assembled, with an Aston Martin in Europe. The Mabees wanted a home grown car and mechanicals to compete with the European breeds, but wanted to set a land speed record first. They did that in 1953 with a record run of over 203 mph. in a Ray Brown built Hilborn injected 331 cu.in. engine. It was the identical engine used in the Shadoff Special Streamliner that also set multiple records. In fact, this record set by the Mabee, really shook the streamliner boys up. Check out the differences in times. It returned again to Bonneville in 1954 with street cars allowed to run on gasoline only. It still did a yeomans job of 198 mph. plus that year. To be sure, another Californian, Denny Larson, was hired to build the car and those speeds are a testimony to his skills. As stated, the car was built for Shelby to race as he was being backed by the Mabees with an Aston Martin in Europe. After Bonneville, they ordered a new Aston Martin for him for the following season, but he went in another direction. Check out Carroll Shelby’s biographies as he states the same thing. It wasn’t a lack of potential from the car. In writing about the car in his biographies, he always stated that the Mabee was just a light sports car with a lot of horsepower……..well, what was the Cobra? In 1954, it raced its first SAC race at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It was a SAC race car, SCCA race car, Pikes Peak entrant, dragracer, etc. Quite a career for a homegrown. Look up some of its races. It raced against some of the best men and machinery of its era. Joe Mabee told us its limiting factor was its braking system. When it road raced, it was stopped by Halibrand double spot disc brakes. Its chassis was designed by Chuck Manning (look him up..aeronautical engineer) and employed a ladder bar construction of three inch chromemoly tubing. Having driven it at considerable speeds, I can attest to the quickness of acceleration, but the brakes are still lacking, after a point. The Mabee Special in several forms during its career, road raced from California through Louisiana, throughout the southwest, and ended its over a decade-long career racing in Mexico. For more information and stories about fiberglass sports cars of the ’50’s, go to http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com.
James, my grandfather Denny Larson passed away this morning. The man responsible for this car. I stumbled across this article viewing all of his work, and found my grandfather was not mentioned, and I would like to thank you for backing up his work. He was a very ingenious man.
He deserves all credit for the Mabee special, and the Lamborghini doors.
I just left the Mabee’s current office location in Midland yesterday and there are original pictures of this car at the salt flats on the wall signed by all who built it. The Mabee family is still huge car and performance fans and all around good people.