“It’s an odd ball. Everybody else has Mustangs and Camaros, and I have this Cougar with a 460 motor,” he says. “I just run for time nowadays. I can’t race like I did in the old days when I was down there every weekend. I’m retired, and there’s always more obligations somewhere or something going on. But I built quite a few cars over the years. In those days, in the 1970s, I did a lot of street stuff, boats and things. I wanted a super-car clinic. I had a lot of performance stuff, but general repair took over.”
Wurtz started racing in 1954, in the ’32 Ford, with a full-race flathead, a set of Lincoln gears and a ’40 Ford rear end. His first race was at Linden Airport near home, and he got beat by a flathead Cadillac in a ’32 Ford. In those days, there was no difference between a flathead and anything else. No handicap, no nothing, and a flag start to boot.
“You ran heads-up with everything that was there. I came home and I built another engine for the ’32, and in 1955, we ran that for awhile, and that’s when I ran Don Garlits. The NHRA Safety Safari (a group of traveling, volunteer officials who promoted NHRA drag racing) went around to all the drag strips to run a national event, and our club, the
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The next week, the Road Rods went to Florida and the old WW2 airport, and Frank won class with the Mercury and had to race Garlits in the ’32 for Top Eliminator. “Money? They didn’t give money in those days, just trophies and a little brass plaque that said you participated in the Safari. I got a drawer full of them. That was the big thing, that I towed my car down there with one race car and raced both of them, and my other went to the finals of Top Eliminator. I did that a few more times after that,” Frank says.
Like Garlits, he nearly didn’t make the whole race, much less the finals. Here’s Garlits’ take on it: “I remember that they sent me back to work on the car three different times. That was on Saturday because I didn’t go on Friday. I had to work. I got there Saturday morning really early, and Chick Cannon was the inspector, and he turned my car down on three different occasions, and I kept going over to an airport hangar, and there was a guy there who was letting me use his welder, and I got the car fixed up to where it would finally pass inspection. So I got one time trial in on Saturday and then it was time to race on Sunday.
