A lost car found in a junkyard? Covered in snow? What’s the car? Where is the junkyard? How did it get there? I love those kinds of questions!
I’ve been on the hunt for a McCormack sports/custom car since first seeing one in 2006 in Texas. Rick D’Louhy and I didn’t pounce quickly enough, though, and we lost the car to a now good friend in Australia. Were there any McCormacks left in the USA? I was hopeful that there were, and I was bound and determined to find one.
Around 2010, I began receiving emails of a mysterious car in a junkyard somewhere in the northeast—the hunt was on. When I finally found the link to the car on the Internet, it turned out to be a video of a lost junkyard, and the video was even set to music. The video was artistic and featured beautiful cars in the snow. And there it was—another McCormack! I had to find out where the junkyard was and learn its history, too.
While researching the McCormack sports car, Geoff Hacker heard about a possible example in a Pennsylvania junkyard. He discovered and purchased this relic, which had been drag raced at one time. GEOFF HACKER
It took about a year, but I tracked down the source of the video—Marc Reed. Marc agreed to help me on my quest and provided information about the junkyard, but it appeared to be abandoned. With a bit more help from local sources, I tracked the car down to a small yard in New Hope, Pennsylvania, a town known for its quaint antique shops, not its fantastic junkyards. I was getting close!
Geoff Hacker often starts with a vintage magazine cover or story about a homebuilt special. This Motor Life cover shows a concept rendering of the McCormack sports car. GEOFF HACKER
I made a few more calls, and I was soon in touch with Bob Truitt and his mother, Doris—great folks in every way. Bob had acquired the car years earlier from his friend Graham Orton. A few more calls, and Graham and I were speaking. He shared that he had found the car in New Jersey many years before and that it had a great engine in it at one time. The owner he bought it from had bought the car for the engine and pushed the car out back, abandoning it for years.
During several conversations with current owner Bob Truitt, I put together a deal and made arrangements to save the car. At Christmas time in 2011, I hitched my trailer to my Suburban, filled it with gas, and headed north, and just days before Christmas, I had my new acquisition in hand—a 1955 (or so) McCormack.
I motored back home and began to research again too. So far, we’ve determined that the car raced at ATCO Dragway (New Jersey) in the ’60s or ’70s. It was painted green, just like how it appeared on the cover of Motor Life back in 1956, but it was clearly not the original cover car. This was a car built for speed. The entire frame was round tube and well built in every way. We’ve been working with drag racing historian and photographer Bob Wenzelburger to identify the original owner and builder, but the question still remains open at this time.
Our hope is to restore this car back to its original racing beauty. And if luck, time, and money allows, install a Dodge (long) cross ram engine underneath its extremely wide hood. The space is there, and it would be a remarkable way to show a car, its history, and potential to all interested. And perhaps by then we may have the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say.