Kjell Qvale
courtesy of roadrunning.com

Kjell Qvale: An Automotive pioneer, Part 2

by Jon Rosner

continued from Part 1

In 1956 Qvale bought a Lister Jaguar to race and was beaten by a local fellow racing a car built by Joe Huffaker. Qvale’s attitude was that since he couldn’t beat him he needed to hire him - so he did. Huffaker and Qvale built a superb eight-year working relationship, challenging and winning a large number of races on the west coast. Then, as now, there was one big race in the U.S. that every car constructor wanted to win. Joe Huffaker and Kjell Qvale laid out a plan to win the Indianapolis 500.

Qvale recalls that Huffaker not only knew about design, but he was an expert in design. "Huffaker was an expert in metallurgy, and suspension, and had a great grasp of what would work and how to build a car that was not only fast, but could finish a race and win." In 1964 Qvale, Huffaker and a crew of five went to Indianapolis with a small rear-engine car similar to the one Jimmy Clark had run in 1963. It was very different very different from the rear-engine Cooper/Aston Martin they took to Indy in 1963 when they failed to qualify.

The 1964 car was the MG "Liquid Suspension" Special. Drivers testing the car included Bob Vithe, Walt Hansgen, Pedro Rodriguez and A.J. Foyt. It was a modern rear-engine car. A.J. Foyt tested the car and came back with lap times that were at least as fast as those he pulled in his technically out-of-date front-engine roadster. Foyt said that the car was "too new," and chose to run the roadster.

At 300 miles into the race the two Qvale/Huffaker cars were running second and fourth and could pass the other cars with little difficulty. "We were the best cars there in 1964," said Qvale. Both cars failed to finish the race however, due to contamination in the fuel.

The rest of the story

What Joe Huffaker didn’t tell Qvale until a few years ago was that the contamination was caused by magnesium chips in the fuel, destroying the fuel bladder. The chips that had probably been put in the fuel cans the night before. The padlock on their paddock had been cut and the compound broken into, but nothing was missing or seemed to be broken.

The roadster boys did not like anyone testing and running so fast on their turf and had done a little insurance work. Foyt won the race. Qvale and Huffaker came back in 1965 with a monocoque bodied race car, but the suspension, built in England, simply did not work and at the last minute hard rubber was substituted for the "Liquid Suspension" design. The cars were fast in the straits, but weak in the corners and proved uncompetitive.

Qvale and Huffaker did make one more effort at Indy and built a car that Bobby Unser took to eighth place in 1966. But for them that was the end of their Indy effort.

The Import Car Show is born In 1958 Qvale was snubbed by the American car dealers and the people running the San Francisco Auto Show. With no place to go, Qvale started the Import Auto Show. The show kept growing to the point that the few were attending what was now considered the "domestic" show. Qvale was asked to let the American cars in, and that annual show is now called the San Francisco International Auto Show, second largest on the West Coast after the L.A. show.

Team Player

In the mid-1960s Qvale built and ran a very successful team of racing Jaguars. In 1970 Qvale purchased the Jensen Factory in England and built the Jensen Healy with Donald Healy. In 1971 he worked with Billie Jean King and financed the first Women’s Professional Tennis Tournament-which became part of the Virginia Slims Tour.

He financed a film in 1975-something he feels is best forgotten. In 1983 he bought Britannia Jeans and sold it three years later to Levi Strauss. In 1991 he bought and developed the First National Bank of Marin, something he feels was the best investment he ever made. He also brought the rights to manufacture the DeTomaso Mangusta and sold several hundred over a 10 year period.

At his peak he owned 100 dealerships and has held the West Coast rights to 36 major automobile makes, the latter probably being a national record. At 85 he still bounds up the stairs two steps at a time without taking a breather, and tries to play golf twice a week. And he still has the subtle smile of a man who enjoys life to the fullest. He’s now working with race historian and freelance writer Gary Horstkorta to finish the book he’s been working on for a while. It’s going to be one heck of a story.