Dick Kalivoda has a favorite old photo. It's on page 75 in the Jan. '61 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. Sporting a then-fashionable brush-cut, 22-year-old Kalivoda sits proudly in his DeSoto Hemi-powered '25 T B/Modified roadster. Edged out by California's Jess Van Deventer, after prevailing over all but one competitor at the Detroit NHRA Nationals, Kalivoda returned with a vengeance, setting a new record at the October 1960 Northwest Regionals at McMinnville, Oregon with a quick, 11.31-second e.t. He looks at the picture today and jokes, "Look at that kid in the roadster. That's Dick Studley behind the wheel." And then he pauses. "Where has the time gone?"
Take a close look at the Kalivoda-Hamlin roadster now. It's changed very little from its 1961 guise, and we'll tell you why those few modifications were made in a minute. Actually, to really understand the remarkable story of this rodding milestone, it's necessary to go back a little further in your Hot Rod Magazine file. . .to the Nov. '58 issue. Yep, there's that same roadster, on pages 58-59, then owned by Ed Norton and Armie Marion in a feature called "Top Time T." HRM headlined that, running on fuel, the car held the Shelton, Washington (near Seattle) B/MR strip record with a blistering 11.08 e.t. and a trap speed of 128 mph.
Although legend had it that this quick T began its rodding life as a "roundy-round" track roadster in the Pacific Northwest, Kalivoda, who hails from Renton, Washington, says that's not true. To his knowledge, his car, then flathead-powered, was owned and campaigned in the early '50s by Buck Stieber of Olympia, Washington. It's believed Buck was assisted by two popular racing brothers, George and Clarence Duffy. Steiber sold the roadster to Ed Norton and Armie Marion around 1956. They replaced the underhead valver with a fuel-burning, 296-cid '55 DeSoto Hemi. (HRM captions state the engine's displacement as 290 cid, but Kalivoda insists it was .030 over the stock Hemi's 291-cid displacement).
In its 1957 fuel-burning guise, the hot Hemi packed an octette of 10.5:1 Forgedtrue pistons, oversized exhaust valves, a Harman and Collins 8R101 magneto driven directly off the front of the cam on an Offenhauser lead plate that was mated to a Howard adapter, a Potvin Eliminator camshaft, and the piece de resistance induction setup of that era, Hilborn fuel injection with flared stacks.
Power transfer proceeded via a 10-inch Albro clutch through a '39 Ford gearbox (mated to the DeSoto with a Cragar adapter--and not a '34 as stated in HRM) and the obligatory 25-tooth high-winding Zephyr cluster. Although it wasn't required, Norton and Marion fitted a transmission shield. Evans center steering with a Bell Auto Parts four-spoke wheel were again the best that money could buy. A Bell fuel pressure pump alongside the wheel, a trio of Stewart Warner gauges, a tin surplus aircraft seat and a webbed belt--that was all you needed, plus a skilled driver, to run with the best.
The neatly-turned out Royal Maroon roadster, really a short wheelbase dragster in that era, sported authentic '25 Ford steel roadster bodywork, channeled 3.5 inches, a neatly crafted 2.5-inch chrome-moly tube frame and a handsome plated curved rollbar that barely framed the driver's helmet. Wheelbase was 98 inches with the engine set back about 33 percent. (Altereds were 25 percent). Leroy Sellers handcrafted the handsome track nose and blistered hood. Kalivoda says the side blisters--needed to clear the hemi's valve covers--are made from '37-39 Chevy headlamps with hand-formed extensions. "Take a look at the hood scoop," he insists, "it's really an aluminum mailbox, faired in to fit. That's the way they did things in those days."
Seattle "Clutchers" hot rod club plaques front and rear are typical of the car club allegiances that helped field many a comp car. The T's suicide front axle--a stock Ford beam unit--was tied to the frame with V'd split wishbones. Friction shocks anchored the front; at the rear, a Halibrand quick-change with '40 Ford bells (not '34 as stated in HRM) ensured the entrants could flirt with various gear ratios. Brakes are pre-war Ford hydraulics, just on the rear. When the photos were taken, a 4:11 ratio was fitted. Rubber was typical for the period--ribbed racing Firestones in front, sticky Bruce slicks in the rear. Sanitary and quick, that's how Dick Kalivoda remembered the car. "When Ed Norton announced he was going to use the DeSoto engine as the basis for a dragster, I bought the roadster from him. I had been doing a lot of racing on the street. We used to run in the Lake Washington Tunnel, from Ranier Avenue to the Bridge. I got in a lot of trouble."
Kalivoda wisely decided running on dragstrips would be a safer bet. "I wanted Ed to build a gas-burning DeSoto so I could run NHRA after the rules changed (Wally & Co. had a fuel ban for a few years, remember?), but the project was delayed while Ed finished his Army basic training. It sat on the trailer in my garage for a while," Dick remembers. "I used to go in there and just look at it." And dream, we suspect.
Working on a tight budget, Kalivoda gathered up the appropriate speed equipment while Ed Norton was in boot camp. "I wanted to be ready for the Pacific Raceway (now Seattle International Raceway) grand opening on July 4, 1960. When I bought the car, I didn't know jack about DeSotos," Kalivoda admits. "And Ed hated gas. I really had to convince him to build a gas motor." The roadster's "new" high-octane DeSoto was another 296-incher, this time running Jahns pistons, Grant rings, an Isky cam, and a polished but stock DeSoto crankshaft with the oil holes enlarged. A Schiefer "Velvetouch" clutch delivered the goods through the same '39 Ford box with Zephyrs that Norton and Marion used.
"Ed was a great guy to learn from. I'd start in second," Kalivoda recalls. "We never ran a tach. He used to say, 'just shift when it sounds good. When you shift 'er into high you'll know when it's right.' I started with a 4:11, but ran a 4:56 most of the time. Little Eliminator was 11.50-12.50 seconds. I ran the heck out of the car, right from the first weekend, and always had consistent times.
"After I got it going, John Hamlin worked with me at the Seattle Times. He'd watched the roadster when it ran on fuel and at first, he didn't know I'd bought it. While it was coming together I ran short of cash. 'What do you need?' he asked. I told him I needed a Vertex mag and a new clutch and they'd cost about $175. He said the Halibrand was probably worth that much. 'I'll buy it for $175. Leave it in the car.' That made him a partner.
"While we were putting the car together, I ran out of money again. I was a member of the Di-Gammas car club. They asked what I needed. When I said 'the fuel injectors would cost about $125,' they hit the club treasury. The trade-off was that I had to put the club name on the side of the car. It was painted '57 Pontiac Lime Fire Green--a color the club voted on. Later, I paid the club for their help," Dick laughs, "and after that, we could paint it any damn color we wanted.
"Not long afterward, I won $500 with an award from the King County Youth Auto Council. It was for the most outstanding performance--setting a new national record--at the opening meet," Kalivoda continued. "That was a lot of money in 1960. They also gave me a Bulova watch which I still have. . . and it still runs. Ed Norton tuned the engine; I guess (he says modestly) I was a driver. We ran pretty well at local strips. With that money, we had enough to go to Detroit where we got beaten in the final round. I was hooked!
"After that happened, John said, 'we gotta make it lighter. We need less rotating weight.'" The roadster's front steel wheels were replaced with 2.75 Avon motorcycle tires on wire rims; a pair of 8-inch Halibrand mags in the rear ran 8:00 x 15 M&H slicks. New headers were made. And the car was repainted '54 Cadillac Bahama Blue. "I'm partially colorblind," Kalivoda admits. "But I can see blue real well." His racing successes confirm he obviously knows the difference between red and green lights, too.
"That's also when we punched louvers in the turtledeck to let trapped air escape," Dick chuckles. "[We did] all the state-of-the-art trick stuff. We made up a new tonneau cover. And then we really stepped up; we repainted everything that was already flat white in fresh refrigerator white and zolotoned the interior."
Keen readers who look at older pictures of this car will notice the rollbar is higher in the later photographs. "That happened in Detroit," says Kalivoda. "Darrell Zimmerman OK'd the car at the tech inspection, but Ed Eaton insisted 'you can't let that pass; I'm not buying it.'
"So we butt-welded extensions on the tubes where the rollbar was mounted to make it higher. After all, the bar was chromed, so we didn't want to wreck that. A flat gusset was welded to the supporting bar. The little support elbow tubes stayed the way they were. And we passed."
The massive bracket that supports the spring and axle in the front was drilled for height adjustments. "We thought it would be really trick to be able to raise or lower the front end," Kalivoda says, "but when we did, it looked goofy and didn't make any difference, so we left it level."
The Kalivoda & Hamlin team ran fast and hard. But the DeSoto was a rugged unit. "We'd tear the motor down for a rebuild in the middle of each season," Kalivoda says. "We'd run 20-25 races a year, seven to ten times each race. Pieces would come off the Velvetouch clutch discs, so we'd replace that, and maybe a ring or two." They were never a high budget operation. "Often we could even reuse the bearings.
"We ran our last race in the car in October 1961 at Pacific Raceway. With a 5:08, we ran 11.03 on gas, almost as quick as the car had been on fuel when it ran in the high 10s. Too bad we didn't have a tach to see what that DeSoto was turning," he says today, "it was really singing." Kalivoda & Hamlin retired the roadster because it ceased to be competitive. Afterwards, they were involved with a series of junior fuel and top fuel dragsters, racing with such luminaries as Gary Beck and Jerry Ruth.
"I stored it in my ex-father-in-law's chicken barn in Falls City from '62 to '87. It just sat there, gathering rust and dust. Then I was watching TV one night, a show called Cruising NorthWest, and I saw Dick Page and Tony Seaholm talking about Nostalgia Racing. They said they expected to see Dick Kalivoda and John Hamlin's old roadster at an ADRA event coming up in six weeks in the summer. Trouble was, nobody had told John and me. The roadster was still sitting in the chicken shed. It hadn't run in 25 years."
Challenged by the opportunity to compete in his old car, an energized Dick Kalivoda ". . .called every guy I knew. Ken Riggs' name is on the car. Really there should be about 50 names. I called Ken on May 30th for an event that was scheduled for July 11th. When I told him the timing, he said 'You've got to be kidding.'"
Hot rodders are capable of miracles, especially when they face a deadline. "Can you do it?" Kalivoda asked. "We'll give it a helluva shot," was Riggs' reply. "Ken owns Street Machines Unlimited in Stanwood, Washington. He does great work," Dick says. "Harold Gunderson rebuilt the engine. We used the same '55 block I originally started with. Dick Jacowicz (who'd worked with Gary Beck) did the tranny and the rearend. My son and half a dozen other friends all did what they could. I wanted it just like it was, with all the original stuff. But we did substitute Nylok nuts for washers in a few places," he admits. "We didn't fire the car until the Saturday before the races. The timing was screwed up and it was a while before we figured it out. Then we did half a pass in 12 seconds." Fired up, Dick Kalivoda didn't hesitate when the organizers asked him if he'd do an exhibition run against Ed Cortopassi's "Glass Slipper." "I knew we didn't have a chance," he said. "That's a 9-second car. But I really got on it." Ever the competitor, Kalivoda gave it his best. "I didn't want to bog it. I figured if we smoked the tires at least we'd look good. Then I almost lost the car in second," he remembers. "I'd forgotten how to do it after all those years. The rear end started to sashay and I thought, this is what it used to be like. So I short-shifted into third. . .you know the old rule, 'better shift than lift.'"
After its reappearance at the drags, Kalivoda entered the car in an ISCA show where the old warhorse won a trophy for Best Competition Car. Kalivoda ran the roadster a few more times in nostalgia events. It competed for the last time at Seattle International Raceway in 1989. "That last time," he notes proudly, "we ran an 11:28 and tuned 128 mph. Presently, "Ol' Blue" is on display at the NHRA Museum in Pomona, California.
"That's the perfect place for it," Dick Kalivoda says. But he's not quite ready to give his old car away yet. "It's a tough deal to step up when you've had something so long," he muses. He's obviously given it some thought. "But they did say if I donated the car, they'd let me take it out and run it whenever I wanted."