He Built a Career at Indy : Louie Meyer, 88, Won Three 500s After Starting as Mechanic

SEARCHLIGHT, Nev. —  Racing’s first three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 lives here, just to the side of a county road winding toward Cottonwood Cove, down past the town cemetery to the softball field, where the sign reads: “Cross at your own risk.”

Cross the sandy wash, and more than likely you will find Louie Meyer--winner of the 1928, 1933 and 1936 Indy 500s--sitting on his porch, soaking up the dry warmth of a 100-plus-degree desert day.

Meyer, who turned 88 on July 21, is the only living winner of a pre-World War II Indy 500. The day after his birthday, he was inducted into the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame in Birmingham, Ala.

Although he has been retired for nearly 15 years, Meyer maintains an active interest in auto racing through his son, Louis (Sonny) Meyer Jr., a racing engine builder, and his son-in-law, George Bignotti, one of racing’s master mechanics who has been crew chief on a record 85 Indy car race winners. Ten were Indianapolis 500s.

The senior Meyer has missed only one Indianapolis race since going there first as a mechanic in 1926, giving him an unusual perspective on the direction automobile racing has taken in the last six decades. Some of his views:

--On today’s drivers: “They have to be so much better than us old-timers because they drive so many more miles. In my day, if we ran 1,500 miles in a year--including the Indy 500--we were driving a lot. Today, the top drivers do that many in a week testing. They’re in the car all the time, testing or racing, and most of them started racing before they could barely walk. By the time they get to Indianapolis for the first time, they’ve probably driven between 10,000 and 20,000 miles in race cars--karts, midgets, sprint cars, stock cars, all kinds of equipment.”

Meyer never drove in a race of any kind until he was 21. In 1933, the year he won his first AAA driving championship, there were only three races on the schedule--Indianapolis and 100-milers at Detroit and Syracuse. This year, there are 16.

--On racing speeds of more than 230 m.p.h.: “I think they have to slow the cars down--at least on the big tracks like Indy and Michigan--for the spectators’ sake as well as the drivers’. At Indy, if they hadn’t had that little race at the end with Little Al (Unser Jr.) and (Scott) Goodyear, it would have been called a terrible race. How many cars finished, about 10? (12, to be exact, but only seven within two laps of the winner). And Michigan was worse. (Only nine finished).”

When Meyer qualified for the 1939 Indy race--his last--he set a four-lap record of 130.067 m.p.h. Last May, Roberto Guerrero raised the record to 232.482.

--On safety improvements: “The changes in safety may be the most significant of all. When I drove, I wore light duck pants, a T-shirt and a black sweater, and a white cloth helmet that my wife sewed for me. Peter DePaolo used to say that we wore white headgear so that when we got hit, the crews would know because the helmet would start turning red. And we didn’t have any rollbars on the cars, either. Today, drivers get their feet banged up. In my day, they got killed.”

Meyer drove 13 years at Indianapolis, from 1927 to ’39. During that period, five drivers were killed in the race, seven others during practice. Eight riding mechanics were also killed. An Associated Press report of the 1929 race said: “Experts consider it miraculous that only one driver was killed.”

In the past 13 years, none have been killed during the race; two lost their life in practice--Gordon Smiley in 1982 and Jovy Marcelo this year.

--On money: “I was born 50 years too soon. For what I got for winning three races, it doesn’t compare with what a guy gets today just to make the field--even if he doesn’t take the green flag. When I was racing, you had to start the race to get a check. Not anymore.”

Meyer earned $77,550 for his three victories--$28,250 in 1928, $18,000 in 1933 and $31,300 in 1936. Pole-sitter Guerrero collected $286,378 this year although an accident on the parade lap prevented him from starting the race. The smallest amount any of the starters received was $136,003, by Gordon Johncock, who dropped out after 60 laps.

--On today’s engine war between Ford and Chevrolet: “I don’t know if it’s good or not. I’m afraid they’ve about eliminated the mechanic at the race track. A team can’t put a wrench on the engine, all the work’s done at the factory. Teams don’t buy engines, they lease them, and they have to send them back. They can’t make any changes on their own. When something goes wrong, they just change them. I think that’s entirely wrong. It takes something out of the sport, I’m afraid.”

After retiring as a driver in 1939, Meyer had a second career building engines, first for Ford passenger cars, then for Indy cars as a partner with Dale Drake in developing the famed Offenhauser engine that dominated Indy car racing from 1947 into the mid-1960s. After World War II, Meyer and Drake bought out Fred Offenhauser, who with Leo Goosen and Art Sparks developed the engine from Henry Miller’s blueprints, and opened a shop at Gramercy Place and Gage Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles, where they turned out Offys for 20 years.

--And then there is the question Louie Meyer is most often asked: Why did he settle in Searchlight, a tiny town on the desert in the southern tip of Nevada?

“We started coming here in the early ‘50s, me and my wife and the kids,” Meyer said. “The (racing) season would end in October and we’d come up here and camp at Cottonwood Cove and go hunting and fishing.”

Meyer’s home, filled with mementos of his illustrious racing career that also included three national driving championships, is about 12 miles from Lake Mohave--one of a string of lakes formed by the Colorado River.

“We moved here permanently after I retired,” Meyer said. “Mrs. (June) Meyer had arthritis of the lungs, and this was one place where she felt good. It’s about 3,000 feet high, and the air is so clear. She couldn’t stand it back in Los Angeles in the smog.”

June Meyer, his wife of 65 years, died two years ago, but Louie decided to remain. He lives quietly with a companion, Fran Parson, a friend of the Meyers since the 1930s.

“I love it here,” Meyer said. “I’m not about to go to a rest home, or live in an apartment. I’ve always been out in the open. I’ve got everything I need right here--jet skis, two boats and a nice home--and if Fran and I want to go someplace, it’s easy to get to L.A. or Phoenix or Las Vegas or Laughlin. That’s about as far as I want to go nowadays, except for every May when I go back to Indianapolis.”

Meyer grew up in a racing-oriented family. His father, Eddie, was a champion bicycle racer around the turn of the century, and his brother, Eddie Jr.--11 years his senior--was a mechanic and part-time race driver. When Louie Meyer was in the eighth grade, his family moved to Redlands, and during a flu epidemic that caused schools to close for nearly a month, he went to work in his brother’s garage.

“That was the end of school for me,” Meyer recalled. “When we moved back to Los Angeles, I kept working for Eddie, learning to be a mechanic. Eddie used to race at the old Legion Ascot Speedway, out on Valley Boulevard next to Lincoln Park, and I always went along with him. He raced against Ralph DePalma and Leon Duray and Frank Lockhart and guys like that.”

Drivers had to be 21 to enter an AAA race in those days, and Louie Meyer was chafing to drive as he approached that milestone. He said: “Eddie came to me one day and asked, ‘How’d you like to drive my car?’ He put me in his Model T Special in an Australian pursuit race at Ascot, where the slow cars start in front and when a guy gets passed, he drops out. I started in front and led for four laps, and when no one passed me, I got so excited, I lost it and spun out. That was my first taste of racing.”

Louie Meyer went to work for Frank Elliott, an old-time board racing driver, in 1926, and learned about the Miller engine, the forerunner of the Offenhauser. His job was to overhaul Elliott’s racing engines.

“One of the things he let me do was warm up his car for a few laps before each race to see if there were any oil leaks,” Meyer said.

The season ended that year with some 25- and 50-mile sprint races on the board track in Charlotte, N.C. Elliott had three new cars and told Meyer he could drive one.

“Pop Wagner, the starter, knew I didn’t have any experience,” Meyer said, “so he said I had to start last and if I passed anyone, he was going to call me in. Well, it wasn’t long before I caught up with the guy in front of me, but I was so afraid of Pop that I just about shut off to keep from passing him.”

At Indianapolis in 1927, Meyer was still with Elliott, working as a mechanic on the Jynx Special to be driven by Wilbur Shaw, a rookie who would go on to win three Indy 500s. As usual, one of Meyer’s duties was to warm up the car, looking for oil leaks, but at Indianapolis he had to get a temporary driver’s permit to get on the track.

“I was handling the pit board for Wilbur (during the race),” Meyer said, “when he came in and said he was too sick to go back out. Somebody yelled at me, ‘You get in it,’ so I grabbed Wilbur’s helmet and goggles and got in the car. I drove 41 laps and passed a couple of guys, but when I came in for a pit stop, Wilbur said he was feeling good enough to get back in.”

The car finished fourth behind George Souders’ Duesenberg and two Millers driven by Earl Devore and Tony Gulotta. Shaw was not the only driver needing relief on a hot and muggy day. Only 12 of the 33 starters finished, and all but Souders used relief drivers.

Elliott retired, but Meyer followed the AAA circuit until it reached Salem, N.H., at the end of the season, where he got another break hooking on as a pit worker with Augie Duesenberg’s team.

“Eddie Hearne was driving for Augie and he got sick, just like Wilbur had at Indy,” Meyer said, “and Augie told me to get in the car and finish. I got it up to ninth and collected $1,000. That was enough to get us all back home (to Indianapolis). I never saw Augie so happy. He was stone broke before we got that $1,000. I didn’t know how lucky I was, either, until later.

“I went back to L.A. and started my own garage. In February, I got a wire from Augie. It said, ‘Like to have you drive our car at Indy.’ It didn’t say anything about money, or anything about expenses, but I took off on my own and left June to run the garage. When I got there, I went to his garage but didn’t see any car.

“I said, ‘Where’s the car?’ and Augie said, ‘It’s all here, hanging in the shed.’ It was all in pieces, and I wasn’t sure if all the pieces were there. I worked my tail off putting it together and finally got to where I could run 10 laps or so without it falling apart. Before I knew what was going on, the car was sold to another guy who had his own driver, Ira Hall.

“Augie apologized to me, saying he thought the car and I were a package deal, but I couldn’t blame him. He was just about bankrupt and needed the money. I was sitting on the wall after qualifying started when an old friend of mine, Alden Sampson II, came along. I said, ‘What am I going to do?’ and he said, ‘I hear the old DePaolo car is for sale, maybe we can buy it.’ It’s funny how things work out. Wilbur Shaw was going to drive that car, and when Sampson bought it from Red Fraser, Wilbur was out of a ride, just like me with the Duesey.”

Meyer qualified 13th with a 111.362-m.p.h. average. Shaw also made the race when he took over DePaolo’s regular car the morning of the race, after DePaolo was injured in a crash during practice.

In the 500, Meyer drove conservatively, off the pace, as Duray, Jimmy Gleason and Babe Stapp took turns in front. After the 400-mile mark, Meyer and fellow Angeleno Lou Moore began to move up. Duray dropped out in mid-race, Stapp slowed and after Gleason’s Duesenberg developed magneto problems while leading, Meyer took over and held off Moore for his first Indy 500 victory.

“Nothing that ever happened to me after that matched winning my first 500,” Meyer said. “It was really my first race anywhere, and I didn’t even have a ride when qualifying started.”

Sampson was so elated at having the winning car at Indy that he bought one of Henry Miller’s cars that had been built for Frank Lockhart to drive on the AAA circuit. Lockhart, the 1926 Indy winner, had been killed in a land-speed record attempt in April, 1928, on the beach at Daytona Beach, Fla.

“Sam bought that car, and we won everything,” Meyer said. “We won the AAA championship in 1928 and 1929. We would have won Indy again in ’29 except for spending seven minutes in the pits while the crew tried to get my engine started after it stalled on my last stop. I had it in the bag, I was nearly two laps ahead.”

Meyer nearly won what turned out to be his last race, the 1939 Indy 500.

Meyer was driving a new straight-eight Bowes Special, and from the start it was a three-way race among Meyer, Shaw in a Maserati and pole-sitter Jimmy Snyder in an Art Sparks six. With 17 laps remaining, Meyer and Shaw were side-by-side, but Meyer’s right front tire was shredding, forcing him to pit. Shaw came in for fuel at the same time and beat Meyer out of the pits.

“It had been nip-and-tuck between me and Wilbur all day long,” Meyer said. “I made my last move after I got the new tire and was going into the second turn when I hit a big oil slick left when Floyd Roberts did a cartwheel and we lost him. I hit the inside wall so hard that I got dumped out on the track--without my shoes. They found the shoes still in the car. I’d heard about guys getting knocked out of their shoes. It really happened to me.”

While Meyer was undergoing treatment in the track hospital, Henry Ford stopped to check on his condition.

“I’m getting too old for this business,” Meyer said to Ford. “It’s time for me to find a safer way to make a living.”

Ford offered him a job rebuilding passenger car motors, providing he would quit racing. Meyer retired on the spot. He was 35.

After World War II, Meyer and Drake built Offenhauser engines together for 20 years in Los Angeles until Meyer got another call from Ford. This time he wanted him to move to Indianapolis and help develop the Ford V-8 racing engine that would eventually supplant the Offy as Indy car racing’s dominant power plant.

“Sonny and I built Ford engines until I got tired of it and sold my share to George (Bignotti) and got out of racing,” Meyer said. “I worked a 100-acre farm in Indiana for a few years before we moved to Searchlight.”

Meyer came out of retirement as a racer in a manner of speaking last April when he drove a battery-powered Ford Tempo in an electric car race--the Phoenix Solar and Electric 100--at Phoenix International Raceway. The event, sponsored by the Dept. of Energy and Argonne National Laboratories, featured cars modified by students from Phoenix-area high schools.

“I drove for the kids at Paradise Valley High and won my class,” Meyer said. “I drove about 40 laps and was running flat-out at about 65 m.p.h. It was a great way to make my comeback.”

He was only 87 then.