Welcome to Martin’s Musings! This is the place where you can find articles or stories or musings that have helped to bring the people, places and things that shaped the world of hot rodding to life. Written over the years by Dick Martin, Richard Parks and others, these have been published in a number of popular rodding magazines over the years. Here they are recreated for you to read and take a peek at automotive history.
The Ak Miller Story: One of Hot Rodding’s Oldest Legends
Written by Dick Martin for Rod & Custom magazine, October 1999
Furnished to Landracing.com by Richard Parks
In 1935, Ak Miller’s brother Zeke towed a 1928 Chevy roadster from Whittier, California, to Muroc Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force Base). The journey took all night with Zeke driving the truck and Ak being towed in the Chevy approximately 130 miles. There were no traffic and stoplights in those days. “I was thrilled to be able to sit in the car,” tells Ak. “I had to keep the line taut and be very observant. I didn’t dare let the chain jerk much. I remember when we got up the next morning, it was cold, close to freezing, but when you’re young and strong, that didn’t matter much.”
“Zeke had a nervous condition,” Ak recalled, “and when it came time to pull the car up to the line, he was shaking and said, ‘I don’t feel good. Do you want to drive?’ I said, ‘Hell yes!’ They ran six abreast in those days. I ran 98 mph and beat all those Fords, but then it just quit! I had to let those guys all pass me. I left a screw off the condenser, and it fell off. I veered off to the left toward the crowd and stopped. We had good brakes in those days; two wheels,” Ak laughed.
Unfortunately, it was time to park the race cars because WWII was calling. The government had other plans for Muroc, and racing wasn’t one of them. As soon as Ak finished basic training, he was shipped to Belgium, attached to the 41st Armored Infantry, 2nd Armored Division. He was thrust right into the middle of the Battle of the Bulge during the dead of winter, on the front line. A lieutenant cried out to his group, “Which one of you bastards is big?” Ak replied, “I ain’t big, but I’m strong.” He said, “Do you know anything about radios?” Ak answered, “A for Able, B for Baker, C for Charlie.” He said, “Good, that makes you a sergeant.” So, Ak carried a 60-pound radio on his back through the snow in the Ardenne Forest. The Americans were completely surrounded by the Germans. It was during this time when asked to surrender by German General Luttwitz, that Brigadier General McAuliff replied, “Surrender? Nuts!”
As his unit pushed forward through the forest, Ak was instructed to stay with the scout, since he had the radio. He had to call in artillery fire, but because of heavy fog, no planes could fly. It took a week of sleeping on the snow-covered ground and walking through frozen water before they reached a village, which the Americans had taken over. Ak went to one of the houses, kicked a guy out of bed, and fell fast asleep. Around midnight, he was awakened to go on guard duty. As he went to stand up, he fell back to the bed in pain. His feet, which had been frozen, had developed “trench foot” (gangrene). That essentially ended Ak’s tour of duty. He was hospitalized in England and remained there until the war ended.
After the war, the returning veterans had a lot of catching up to do; families to start, educations to finish, and business to begin. They had a lot of time to think about cars while overseas, too. Ak and his brothers Larry and Zeke started their business. Says Ak, “That’s how I started, right after the war, Miller Brothers Automotive, the three of us. I’ve been in business ever since, and the garage is still going. Larry was the best Ford mechanic around. He’s dead now. Zeke’s still alive. He’s 83 years old.
“After the war, I built a car called the ‘Miller Missile.’ In those days, I was studying a lot about chassis development, so I decided to build my own independent-rear-suspended car. Of course, I had no money to build it with. When it came to the universal joints, they were real expensive. We used to throw away all the early Ford U-joints, they were loose, and the standard Ford joint had bearings on both sides of it. So, I took that joint, took it apart, and made some shims so I could tighten it up, then I covered it with a piece of cloth, put some grease in it, and made my rear suspension. After the war we had a lot of surplus aircraft parts. I made my leading trailing arms out of landing gear arms. I made a plate to hook to my Ford hubs, and welded it up, and that was my rearend. I had the engine hooked directly to the Halibrand rearend. No transmission. It only had a 100-inch wheelbase, so there really wasn’t room back there to install one. For the front, I had an old tube axle.
“I knew Frank Kurtis and went over to talk to him, and he gave me some Midget race car torsion bars, so I had torsion bar suspension all the way around. A guy named Marvin Faw built the body. I knew what I wanted and handed him a sketch. He wanted $300 to fabricate it. In those days, that was equivalent to a good week’s work. I thought, well, I could never build that,’ so I told him to go ahead. He hammered it all up. It was beautiful. I had my buddy in the Roadrunners Club paint it.
“One day I was working in my garage, and the T was sitting there, and a fellow wandered in. ‘What are you building there, young man?’ he asked. ‘You don’t mind if I hang around and bother you?’ I didn’t mind, hell no, he was an aerodynamicist on the P-51 Mustang. Art Ford was his name. He said, ‘Can I make some suggestions?’ I said, ‘I’ve got broad shoulders, and I don’t know a thing about aerodynamics.’ He started out with many little things such as the bearings. On the front end, he suggested using generator bearings. Before you put them all together, he had some special lubricant to apply to them. Apparently, the central bearings on the first jet engines were failing because of lubrication, so they designed a lubiam-type lubricant to solve the problem. He grabbed a handful of it from work, and we lubed all the bearings. You could lean on that car, and it would do 20 mph.
“I remember working eight hours in the shop on customer cars, and then I’d work into the night on the T till I just dropped. Not only that, everything was done on limited funds. I knew I wanted a tube frame for the chassis. About 3 miles from the garage, there was a big oil field which had a lot of tubing in a stack. I asked a guy working there about it. He said, ‘that’s pump rod, it’s all plated inside.’ It was beautiful stuff. It was heavy, but I didn’t care about that. I asked the workman, ‘What would a few pieces cost?’ He said, ‘I’ll give them to you. You’re going to make a frame with it? I’ll tell you son, you’ll never break that stuff. It’s chrome moly. You’ll never cut it, either.’ But I figured how to work with it. Unlike aircraft tubing, I didn’t have to run a bunch of cross braces with it because of its strength.
“Before fitting the T body on the frame, I had to make a decision: Do I want the car to sit high or low? Everyone’s car sat low, 2 inches from the ground. Art, my friend the aircraft engineer, suggested going high. ‘You want to keep the air out of the bottom of the belly pan when you run low, because it wants to push the car up. Go high enough, 10 to 11 inches, and the air will just pass through and won’t affect the car.’ So that’s what we did. We were the only car at Bonneville sitting high, and it worked.
“For cooling, we used German Jerry Cans, no radiator, which was Art’s idea. No pumping losses through the car, we would just fill the cans with ice water. The color of the ‘Missile’ was black, which was also Art’s idea.
“Art was working on the Air Cobra project at the time. It had to attain a speed of 300 mph to win the government contract. It missed the speed by 30 mph. They had done all they could think of to pick up the speed needed. Finally, Art said, ‘Change the color and paint the thing black. It picked up the 30 mph. The black color heats the body up and gives it cleaner air. So, the ‘Miller Missile’ was painted black. We set three records in three hours at Bonneville, one with the V-8 60 flathead that held for eight years, 136 ci doing 142 mph.”
Ak says, “In 1952, the local Whittier Olds dealer, Clint Harris, wanted to sponsor me a brand-new Oldsmobile sedan to run in the Mexican Road Race. However, the stipulation was that Mr. Harris wanted a Mexican driver, Salvador Barrigan to be the co-driver/navigator. He apparently knew the 2000-mile course quite well.” Ak decided before he was going to trust his life to a stranger, he was going to see what this guy was made of. He put him in the Olds and headed to his favorite track, Turnbull Canyon Road, in Whittier. This stretch of twisting mountain road connected Whittier to Hacienda Heights.
“I went around a corner, oh, about 90 to 95 mph, and I thought the guy was going to climb out of the car. He got up on the dashboard and called me every name in the book. I said, ‘Hell, you’re no race driver, that wasn’t fast.’ I then went back to the dealership and said, ‘no way am I taking that guy to Mexico with me. I want Doug Harrison.’”
Doug Harrison, Ak’s friend of 50 years, took the time out to reminisce about their many experiences together. “I knew of Ak before the war. He was known in racing circles,” states Doug. “The first time I met Ak was at his garage right after I got out of the Navy. In 1946 my dad owned a small ranch in Whittier and needed service on some of his vehicles. When we met, we both had identical ’32 roadsters, mine was maroon and Ak’s was black, except mine was faster,” laughed Doug.
Ak’s former wife Marilyn recounted how they all got together. “I worked as a carhop at a drive-in called ‘The Hula Hut’ in Whittier. That was in 1946. Ak and Doug would come in and only have enough money to buy a Coke, so I’d end up giving them a free burger. The owner didn’t want guys hanging around that didn’t order food.”
Ak learned a lot that first year in the Olds sedan. Starting out in 26th place they moved up to 17th before losing the trans. “Driving back to Whittier, Doug and I began to put together a plan to build our own race car for next year’s race.” Miller continued, “I had a ’27-T body given to me. The frame was a ’50 Ford shortened to a 100-inch wheelbase, an overdrive out of a ’35 Nash, and a ’51 Olds V-8. We created the Caballo 1, kind of like Frankenstein, except it was uglier,” Ak roared.
The following year, Ak and Doug headed for Mexico in their new race car. “Unfortunately, in the process, we went through a sandstorm and got sand in the engine. We had to call home and order new pistons and rings. We did the work at a local Chevy dealer’s garage. Everyone was amazed when we had the engine out of the car in 35 minutes, but we never completely solved the problem of using oil, once we got everything back together,” said Doug.
“I had a half case of oil on my laps, a hose to the pan, with a funnel clamped to the hose. We got on an 80-mile stretch of straight-away with a lot of dips in it. The oil would crest and go up and down in the pan. Ak yelled, ‘Doug, we need another quart!’ I had to get the funnel above the windshield so gravity would work for me, and just about that time, we crested a hill and I saw a big glob of oil heading right for me.” Ak chimed in laughing, “It went right in Doug’s face!”
Bill Stropp’s factory Lincoln team helped out the two struggling hot rodders. At the end of every race day, Bill gave Ak his used tires. Stropp had the might of Ford Motor Company behind him and could afford fresh tires and wheels each of the five days. Fresh brakes and drums also found their way to Ak because of Stropp. “In addition, he gave us a roller-type of map that advised of danger areas, blind corners and bridges were all outlined. Doug handled the map. It was on a big roll. One day he lost it when it blew out of the car and rolled down the road like a roll of toilet paper, gone forever,” Ak roared with laughter.
“The Italian team had been down there a month, practicing. They used a system of painted rocks and signs posted with arrows, XX’s, and zeros. I figured when we saw a painted rock, it meant something. We couldn’t decipher any of it, though.
“Coming out of the mountains and jungles near the Guatemalan border, there were plank bridges you had to cross. We spent about three days on these bridges practicing. We’d go from Tuxtla Gutierrez to Oaxaca, a distance of 330 miles, practicing. We were down there two months ahead of time, so when the time came to cross that bridge, we blew through it at about 115 mph! The Italians were stunned.”
During the time the Caballo was down waiting for parts, Doug met a young Mexican girl named Ney. He fell in love. She was 15 at the time. Returning to Whittier after the race, Doug couldn’t get her out of his mind. He went to Ak and said, “I want to marry that girl.” Doug returned to Mexico, courted her, and asked for her father’s permission to get married.
Ney’s father wanted proof that Doug was a Catholic (which he wasn’t). Returning to Whittier by Greyhound bus, Doug convinced a priest to sign some documents stating that he was a Catholic. They were married on January 25, 1953, and still are to this day. Ak’s friend and navigator spent 22 years in Mexico.
These two up-starts from California shook up the international racing community with ‘backyard’ Yank ingenuity, seat-of-the-pants’ racing, and wrenching. Hard work and pride earned these guys a place in history.
As Jack Lufkin (Ak’s longtime associate) puts it, “That race put Ak on Broadway.” Lufkin has been with Ak since 1957. According to Ak, “Lufkin came walking in one day. He’s just gotten out of the service. He said, Mr. Miller, I’ve read a lot about you, and I want to work for you. You don’t have to pay me any money until you feel I’m doing a good job.’ He’s been with me ever since. We do everything together, go on vacations together, used to race together.”
The boys would return one more time in 1954 to finish fifth overall. It took 20 hours and 31 minutes to cover the 1900 miles. Factory Ferrari driver Umberto Maglioli finished first. Phil Hill was second, also in a Ferrari. In all, 12 countries competed.
The amazing fact is that Ak and Doug drove from Whittier to Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico (a distance of 3300 miles) drove the 1900-mile course in 20 hours and 31 minutes, then drove back home in the Caballo. Nobody, but nobody, does things like that today. Forget “Iron Horse!” How about iron men? Years later those efforts would help launch an association with Ford that would last for years.
Ak and Doug then decided to build an entirely new car for the Mille Miglia called the Caballo II, and road race across the face of Italy. It was 10 to 12 hours of continuous, hard driving. They corresponded with the organizers in Italy, and the Italians were very interested in having Ak compete over there. As Ak related, “We had run the Mexican Road Race three years, then they discontinued it, so we decided we were going to race in Italy. To us, it was just another Mexican Road Race, so Doug and I whipped the car together.
Chrysler got interested and had a new 392 Hemi which they offered us to run in the car. Naturally we put the Hilborn Injector on it, four-speed Jag transmission (there were no other four-speeds available at the time). Frank Kurtis sponsored a chassis, and Jack ‘Willie’ Sutton built the body.”
As Doug tells it, “Just after we finished building the Caballo II, Ak wanted to try it out. ‘Let’s get a burger.’ We headed for Vegas, got there, looked around, had a burger, and headed back home to Whittier.”
“When we got to the fruit inspection station, a CHP officer there said, ‘Hold on, someone wants to talk to you. It seems you almost blew one of our units off the road.’ We were probably doing about 180. We didn’t have license plates on the car, except for Mille Miglia painted on the side. Ak explained to the cops the car was going to be raced in Italy, and they said, ‘OK, but if you get stopped again, we never saw you two.’
“It was getting dark, and our lights weren’t working too well, but we made it back to the garage on Whittier Boulevard. We pulled into the garage, and the car had a leak in the belly pan. Ak said, ‘It’s leaking gas from the tank!’ He jacked up the back end and crawled under it with a creeper. He said, ‘Doug, hand me the drop cord.’ I handed it to him and he dropped it. The bulb broke in the puddle of gas and caught it on fire. I literally grabbed Ak by the heels and flung him in the street. The fire destroyed a customer’s expensive speed boat and the roof of the building as well.”
“We had the car back together in three months,” said Ak. “It burned down in December, and it had to be on the boat to Italy in March! The body was all but completely destroyed. Doug looked at the car and said to me, ‘It’s just a slab piece of aluminum. I’ve got an idea. We’ll take a form, get a piece of aluminum, and get a guy with a big roller and have that thing rolled, just one roll, and put it up and get the wheel wells cut out, and you have a race car. What was left of the original fenders, they cut in a straight line. ‘Let’s just cut what’s left of the fenders and graft them to the aluminum we just fabricated.’ We made it to New York just in the nick of time,” laughed Ak.
“We towed the Caballo using my ’49 Olds from Le Havre, France, where we docked, to Brescia, Italy. You should have seen the looks we got when we pulled into a gas station. Mobil Oil had sponsored us and gave us a credit card. We’d fill the car up. It would take 20-some gallons. You know, the average Frenchman wouldn’t use that much gas in a year. Gas was real expensive in those days; over there, two or three dollars a gallon. We toured all over Europe in the Olds, and pre-ran the course with it, two times.”
“Most of our disasters could be attributed to Mr. Miller,” Doug said, looking across to Ak. “Ak has always wanted to drive over the Alps. He decided he knew the way. We get up on a road that kept getting narrower and narrower. We began picking up snow on the bushes. Pretty soon it dead-ended. There was no place to turn around. We didn’t dare unhook the trailer, so we backed all the way down. We went to Innsbruck, Austria, and back around. We only had so much time to check in.
“Jerry Unser was the guy that got me up to Pike’s Peak. Jerry had won Pike’s Peak and was kidding me one day about being a chicken straight-away driver. The next thing I know, I said, ‘There’s nothing to driving that hill.’ Jerry said, ‘Why don’t you bring your new car?’ I had just built that car. It had a Devin body and a good 400ci Chevy engine, and didn’t weigh anything, about 2000 pounds.
“When I got up there, I did terrible. The car wouldn’t handle, but Ray Brock (former technical editor of Hot Rod) and I kept working on it. Finally, I said, ‘It’s me. I’m just not a good driver.’ Hell, I’d never driven in the dirt. Finally, I asked Bobby Unser to drive it. I said, ‘Give me your true evaluation.” What do you think?’ After Bobby drove it, he said, “If you drive that car, you’re crazy. It’s squirrely. It’s got a lot of power, but that ass-end just ain’t sticking!’”
Today’s race car builders spend hours asking their computers for permission just to move a shock tower. What Ak and Ray Brock did next to solve their problem would cause Roger Penske to have a stroke! Ray concluded that there was just not enough weight on the rear of the Devin, so they went into town and bought a flywheel off of a tractor. It weighed 400 pounds. “It took both of us to carry it.” They made a bracket and welded it to the cross-member.
“The next day was the race, and I had no chance to try it. I thought, All I can do is drive it and stay on the road, the hell with it.’ The first two corners (I had everything memorized well), I punched it, the thing held. I punched it, it held again. I thought, ‘Hell, I have a race car!’ Then I drove it as hard as I could drive it, got up to the top, and won! That was 1964.”
Ak had just finished his new garage and relocated to Pico Rivera (its current location) when he took the first phone call. “It was Mr. Jack Passano from Ford. ‘Would you be interested in working for us in Detroit?’ I said, “I think so, but I just started my new business, and I don’t want to walk away from it.” “We just want you for one year,’ he explained. “Whatever money you want, we’ll pay it.” I didn’t want to live in Detroit, so I flew back and forth every week. I got involved in Ford’s Custom Car Caravan. We were running five trucks all over the country. It got to the point where I was working for Iacocca on the Mustang.”
Harrison also spent a couple of years with Ford, and goes on to say, “We went back to Detroit. They gave us the first Ford Falcon to test. Nobody had seen it, the car was a prototype which was masked off and painted gray. We were told to take it anywhere we wanted, so we headed to Florida. When we got to South Carolina, the fan blade went through the radiator. We stopped at a local Ford garage and called our office in Dearborn. They told us to close down the garage, run all the mechanics out, and don’t let the public in, they would talk to the owner. Ford management did, and air-freighted us a brand-new engine which we put in that evening and were off again the next day. We did that for a couple of years testing the Falcon and Mustang. All we had to do is drive a certain amount of miles a day.”
“A lot of guys got rich working for Ford in those days, but I wasn’t one of them,” said Miller. “At one time, a Ford official offered me (on the q.t.) 200 Ford Overhead cam engines. They were in a warehouse, and he wanted them out of there. ‘You take them, you don’t need to pay for them. When you sell them, then you pay for them.’ I got to thinking, that’s how good guys become bad guys. I didn’t want to touch them. I’m glad I didn’t , because he had three or four warehouses by the airport just full of cars and engines. Eventually he and other Ford officials wound up losing their jobs and titles. I was with Ford for 10 years.”
When Ak was 71, he joined the 200 Mile Club at Bonneville. What started out to be a fun run for publicity shots ended up with Ak turning 230 mph. “I was an old geek. I could hardly get into the car. I was too fat to bend far. I had to laugh. All those young kids watching, they probably thought, ‘Who’s that old guy kidding?’” Ak laughed, recalling the moment. “But hell, the car felt good, and I just nailed it. I ran 230 mph on a 221 mph record.”
Ak Miller and his generation are treasures. They dropped everything and went off to fight for freedom. The lucky ones who made it back had a passion for living. These were the kids of the ‘40’s, with a work ethic, a sense of duty, honor, country, and pride. The “gangs” they formed were car clubs. “Drive-by” meant cruising by your girlfriend’s house. “Banging” meant helping a friend straighten a fender. A “gun” was something you painted a car with.
They were heroes to their country, to their children, and to their sport. We look up to them and are proud to call them “hot rodders.” Baseball has DiMaggio, we have Miller. Ak Miller’s garage is still going strong. Jack Lufkin runs the day-to-day business, but Ak can still be found there most any day. His time is filled with going out to lunch with his “old racing buddies” and telling tales. Naturally, a trip to El Mirage or Bonneville is always in order and deciding what speaking invitations to attend when they cross his desk.
Jerry Kugel of Kugel Komponents fame put it best: “I worked for Ak for 10 years and never heard the same story twice. I believe every one of them.”