Paramount Ranch 6 -- Chuck Porter

Bob Norton sent me these two photos of one of my favorite cars, Chuck Porter's Mercedes Special.  The car eventually was powered by a full-race Corvette V8.
 
Wild tail-out slide!

The class "B" marking tells me that its displacement here was at least 5001 cc.  This was during the brief period when the car was Buick powered.

Porter found the car's original 3-liter 6 cyl. 300-SL engine heavy and down on power for modified class racing.  He tried supercharging, but that wasn't enough.  Then came the Buick, and after that various hot-rodded Corvette V8s.

 
Here'a front-on view of the beast.  Porter has just devoured a badly overmatched and thoroughly intimidated Triumph TR-2.  The highly banked corner still exists at Paramount Ranch, the building does not.
 
 
Debby Porter's Tribute site to her father -- Chuck Porter!

(10-18-04)  From Debby Porter: 

"While doing a Google search on my name, I found your site.  I wish I had known about it sooner!  You have some photos which I haven't seen of my  Dad's car, which was cool to see, and it was great to read William Culkin's story about his dad's ownership of the car.

The car was originally silver, and when I was about 3 or 4, we were at  my dad's bodyshop, and he asked me: "Should we paint the car silver, or yellow?" And I picked yellow.  Not that he wouldn't have painted it that color anyway, because everything in his fleet was Goldenrod Yellow!  Anyway, thanks for a great tribute, and for the reference to my site.  I will link people to your site from mine, as well."

(3-26-06)  

Marco Kaffenberger, nephew of Dr. Klaus Lehr, created this new website dedicated to this interesting car!

 
Next:  Paramount Ranch -- 7

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All photographs and text are the property of Bob Norton and Tam McPartland and are protected under United States and international copyright laws.  All rights are reserved and the images and/or text may not be digitized, reproduced, stored, manipulated, and/or incorporated into other works without the written permission of the photographer, Bob Norton, or the writer, Tam McPartland.