George Kudasch at the drafting table in his home workshop in 2005, looking over blueprints of the Ardun heads
Services were held on Monday, March 24, 2008 for George Kudasch, 91, who passed away after being hospitalized following a stroke the previous week. In July of 1947, George immigrated to New York City and took an engineering job with Ardun Mechanical Corporation which was run by Zora Arkus-Duntov and his brother, Yura, both of whom George had known for several years prior to WWII in Berlin.
George was put to work designing and drafting a set of cylinder heads that Zora had conceived to convert the venerable Ford flathead V8 into an overhead valve configuration with hemispherical combustion chambers. Three engines were fitted with the prototype heads by fall of that year. In 1948, George was assigned to design another conversion cylinder head set for the smaller Ford V8-60 horsepower engine used in midget racecars, which were then popular across the country.
Early in 1949, Ardun Mechanical went bankrupt and Zora, Yura and George went their separate ways. George eventually took a job with Sikorsky Helicopter in Connecticut, where he stayed for more than thirty years, until retirement in 1981. Meanwhile, Zora sent some time in England, working with Sydney Allard, the maker of the Allard sports car. During this time, a quantity of the Ardun cylinder head sets for the standard Ford engine were produced, some of which ended up in the famous J-2 Allard racing sports car. In 1953, Zora went to work at Chevrolet, where he spent the rest of his career as chief engineer for Corvette.
The Ardun heads gained a mystic reputation as the ultimate evolution in speed equipment for the Ford flathead engine, which had enormous popularity in various forms of auto racing in the United States, before being made obsolete by larger and more efficient engines produced after 1950. Ardun equipped racers set many records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, in sprint cars and on early drag strips.
Until only a few years ago, George had been completely unaware of the impact his early design work had made. Ironically, Ron San Giovanni, who has driven an Ardun equipped '32 Ford street rod roadster for nearly 25 years lives merely 12 miles away. Ron and his wife, Laura became very close to George and Araidna (Rita) as soon as they discovered this remarkable fact. Ron visited George in the hospital on the night of his death and delivered a eulogy at the services.
Fewer than 300 of the regular Ardun sets had been made and possibly not even two-dozen of the V8-60 version, yet their legend loomed so large that, beginning nearly ten years ago, reproductions of the original conversion kit have been produced for sale at a price of $13,950. Original sets have traded for twice that amount.