Just Cool Cars: Fan builds his own Indy racer
COSTA MESA, Calif. -- Larry Urey was so taken with the 1935 Indianapolis roadster that he saw in a magazine that he built one -- from scratch.
He didn't stop there. He just kept building. Now he has turned out four of them.
"I'd like to have built 100 of them," he says.
Urey, a Costa Mesa man with a knack for building things, says he was motivated by an appreciation for open-wheel racers. No plans. "I just built the car," he explains.
Most people who happened to have a 1935 Indy car replica might keep it in the garage, show it to friends, and drive it a few miles on weekends. Not Urey. He has 80,000 on the one he was showing at weekly Cars and Coffee show here last week.
He once drove it 1,000 miles up the Pacific coast to Oregon -- 16- to 18-hours of seat time. He also had it repeatedly to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
Urey says he's clocked 145 miles per hour in the racer, but he hasn't raced itt. "It would do excellent in a race. It's really fast," he says.