From the Prints: A Student’s Perspective on Racing History Education

Jeremy Porter, from Seneca Falls, NY, is a senior studying automotive restoration technology at McPherson College in Kansas. First bitten by the car bug at the age of five after attending the Vintage Festival at Watkins Glen, he is fascinated by the mechanical aspects of vehicles and other machinery. He was a part of the team that restored the school’s 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet that finished second in class at Pebble Beach. His interests include vintage Ferraris, pre-war Bugattis and Alfas, open-wheel race cars, and the development of technologies within the drivetrain.

[00:00:00] Brake Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argettsinger family. Teaching Motorsports History at Merfierson College, a three part episode featuring Ken Young, Christy Socia, and Jeremy Porter.

Part 3. From the Prince. A student’s perspective on racing history education by Jeremy Porter. Jeremy Porter is from Seneca Falls, New York, and he is a senior studying automotive restoration technology at McPherson College in Kansas. First bitten by the car bug at the age of five after attending the Vintage Festival at Watkins Glen, he is fascinated by the mechanical aspects of vehicles and other machinery.

He was part of the team that restored the school’s 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet that finished second in class at Pebble Beach. His interests include vintage Ferraris, pre war Bugattis and Alfa Romeos, open wheel [00:01:00] race cars, and the development of technologies within the drivetrain. As a student of the Automotive Restoration Program at McPherson College, a four year degree that centers the skills needed for the preservation and restoration of the vehicle itself and its associated history, a younger generation is given the chance to take the torch.

Hands on skills such as engine rebuilding and general mechanical work are supplemented by a dive into proper research methods, archiving, building, and handling, as well as general history of automobiles and their artistic and technological designs, along with literature courses that help create a unique, liberal arts education.

Using an example of his current project involving the digitization and creation of an archive of original Duesenberg road car racing car and marine engine blueprints that are housed within the school’s library, Jeremy’s presentation will show how the curriculum at McPherson College culminates in a comprehensive educational experience.

This is a student’s perspective of learning at McPherson College. I have a soft spot for a number of institutions. McPherson’s [00:02:00] one of them. Ken and I got to meet a number of times in Allentown. Dealt with his students for a number of years now. It’s great. We’ve got, of course, now Billman Abbey has joined the regime, I guess.

Of course, Alfred State. So we’re starting to develop something here. And what we’re going to get from Jeremy, who is local, is a different perspective than what us older people have about things. Hello all. My name is Jeremy Porter. So I’m a student at McPherson College. I’m here with I am from this area.

I’m from Seneca Falls. I was not born into a Carr family at all, but I did attend the Vintage Races down at Watkins Glen, and that’s sort of how I got started in this area. I love history first. A combination of vintage motorsports and going fast and stuff like that is kinda what I fell in love with.

McPherson College is a small liberal arts school in McPherson, Kansas. [00:03:00] We have roughly 800 students, 160 of which are in our Automotive Restoration Program. Our Automotive Restoration Program is a four year school. Where you learn basic maintenance skills and automotive skills on top of also taking your general liberal arts education.

So you take communication, writing, your maths, your sciences, your history, and with all of that, you get a very unique educational experience. We have a very small campus as you can expect from 800 students. The two major areas for automotive students on campus is number 20, Templeton. That is where all of our mechanical work is performed.

We have our own collection of cars, roughly 85. They range from 1876, 1877. We have a copy of the Mercedes Benz Patent Wagon, the first vehicle that was made. And we focus up until really 1973. Some vehicles that are part of our highlights is we have a Porsche 356, a couple Lincolns, a Mercedes Benz [00:04:00] 300S, Model Ts, Model As, along those likes.

And then the other major building is the Miller Library. That is where our archives and our automotive restoration library is located. Surprisingly, not really unsurprisingly, we have a third space. Within urban planning and whatnot, third spaces are places outside of your work and home, where socializing occurs, where you can meet new people.

The Sheds is a warehouse like building right across from Templeton that is not owned by the college, so it is not under college jurisdiction. Some shenanigans do get up. But, students are able to implement what they learn in class, and they work on their own vehicles. Practically everyone has a project car out there.

My own vehicle is a 1965 Pontiac GTO, but there’s all types of vehicles there. Because we’re all young and we want to go fast, there’s a very strong culture of hot rodding there. Kids will soup up their Model A’s and Model T’s just like they were from the 1950s using vintage speed parts, not using parts that were made new.

There’s a very strong focus on being [00:05:00] period correct, looking up to and using companies and people’s names like Moroso or. Edelbrock, using pure 1970s, 1950s instead of recalculated made new parts. We have a very strong financial backing, which we’re very lucky to have because of our very unique program.

There’s lots of school support within the automobile restoration program. Ken was lucky enough to take a group of students to Europe this past winter on a Cars and Castles trips where we visited collections such as the Schlumpf Museum, the Porsche Collection, the Mercedes Collection, and the Laumann Museum.

With our ties that we have all over the automotive industry, we were able to get back room access to the Porsche factory and Mercedes factories and see their own physical restoration departments where with their road cars. They’re also doing race car work. When we pulled into the Porsche museum right beside us was a Porsche 959 Dakar car.

that was being pulled into their workshop. So, it’s just stuff like that. Last year, I was fortunate enough with three other students and one of our professors, Luke Chenell, who is a part of the American Bugatti Club, [00:06:00] to attend the Bugatti Rally here at Watkins Glen. Every single year, students help create a rally manual, usually focused on the Bugatti Type 13 Bruscia.

This past year, on this trip, you just get to be around race cars and physically learn their technologies. When I am looking at vintage cars like this, I am focusing on the technologies. Within the automotive tract at school, there are five different emphases. Technology, where you are physically working on the cars.

History, communications, business and management, and automotive design. Just because you are in those five different tracts doesn’t mean you can’t do other things. I’m a technology major. I’m doing an independent study centered around Duesenberg blueprints, which I will touch on momentarily. And I just approached members at the school and said, Hey, I’m interested in about this history.

Can I do this project? And they were very supportive of it. But on these sort of school trips, you get to physically see the technologies as parts that you’re learning about in school while also talking to the owners and people who are more knowledgeable about it. So in this bottom photo there, the three students and a professor were looking at the front [00:07:00] axle arrangement on a Type 35 Bugatti.

Bugattis were very unique in their front axle arrangements, that their front suspension runs through the frame rails. And when you’re assembling them, you have to be very, very precise to make sure they’re located where they’re supposed to be. Bill Milliken, with chassis 4906, the first thing he did when he bought Type 35 was to Blanking the wheelbase by four inches and he was having problems locating that front springs where they were supposed to be and then that Top photo on a type 57 this car came out of France.

They went to California in the 1960s the owners the Cleary families The first thing he did was chop 18 inches out of the frame put a type 55 body onto it and go Racing and the family still races it like that way today, but the clutch mechanism went on it And they were not going to race for the rest of the weekend.

The student and I, I’m on the left in the white. Uh, the other student’s name is Matthew Croker. He now works at a shop in Colorado. He does rally work and preps for the Colorado Grand, which features race cars all across. Leading up to 1955, Ritter just said, Hey, we’d like to take a crack at it. We’ve read the manuals and [00:08:00] whatnot.

The guys have a very unique, Clutch mechanism. It acts as a lever from the top. The owner was like, sure, take a crack at it. And we were able to fix it in the hour and a half that we had before his next session. And it’s still running. As he said, I saw him at Pebble Beach this last summer. Speaking of Pebble Beach, I got to go to Pebble Beach this past year.

The school had restored a Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet. I was a part of that. There’s a later photo of the car that you will see, but as a part of that, I got to attend Laguna Seca and see, again, race cars in action, owners driving them, pushing them to the limits, see a 312P, which there’s three of in the world, chassis 0872, the only Berlinetta being driven at 100 percent by a professional racing driver.

It’s things like those, seeing the technologies in the cars in person, which I like. But as a part of that, things break, which is not good. And blueprints, specifically older blueprints, are very important to keeping those cars going. With that, I spent my last, my 2022 summer at an internship in [00:09:00] Wisconsin.

Our school is very good with internships. We have a career fair in February. We usually have around 50 people come looking for interns. And then outside of that, there’s always more people looking for interns. You can do mechanical work, museums, collections, auction houses. We had two former students.

Roughly six or seven years ago, who helped finish the Shelby registry, documenting all those cars and the histories of them for the Shelby owners. There’s alums that work in auction houses, writing auction houses descriptions, selling the cars, researching the cars, working with people like Marcel Massini, just documenting everything there is to be documented, finding photos that don’t exist, reaching out to archives like the IMRRC.

Working with them and whatnot, and it’s really, really good. But, I was at a shop in Wisconsin, Motion Products. I am a Ferrari fan, and I was able to be around race cars and learn about them. Some of the cars that I worked on, that top left there is a 121LM chassis 0484. It is a six cylinder Ferrari. It’s a 4.

4 liter straight six. That car was owned [00:10:00] by Tony Paravano out in California, and it’s the only one bodied like that. It has an increased radiator front opening, and a very interesting history. It was raced by Carroll Shelby and Phil Hill, and Tony Paravano disappeared in Mexico after being chased by the IRS.

The bottom left there, that is a 250 GTO, a chassis 4153 GT. It finished fourth at Le Mans in 1963, and then won the Tour de France Auto in 1964, driven by Lucien Bianchi. That is the former most expensive car in the world, recently broken. But here I am as a 20 year old, three weeks into my internship, working on a 250 GTO.

Learning about them, learning about the history of that specific car, learning about the history of the other 35 chassis, what sets them apart and whatnot. That 405 that’s splattered on that hood there, that is a Mille Miglia winning car, chassis 0082, that is a 1951 winner. That car finished second in class at Pebble Beach, not this past Pebble Beach 2023, but 2022.

Some parts I made for that was a steering [00:11:00] column lock to hold the steering wheel in place. I worked off two photos taken at the 1951 Mille Miglia, and that’s all I had, no dimensions, no anything. So I had to make that out on a lathe and follow the correct curvatures and whatnot. And then that bottom car there, probably the most unhappy looking person to ever sit in a Formula 1 car, is me, sitting in a Ferrari 641, which competed in the 1990 season.

Uh, that specific chassis is the chassis that Alain Prost drove in the 1990 Suzuka GP, where famously Senna may or may not have crashed into him on purpose. And it’s up to interpretation and depending on who you ask, but an engine was rebuilt for that. And it’s a 60 valve, five valve per head, 3. 5 liter V12.

And two weeks into my internship, I was shown how to disconnect the drivetrain, the engine and gearbox from the tub and perform a camshaft inspection. And I did that by myself, very much thrown into the depths of it. What I’m here mostly to talk about is an archival project that I’m partaking in. Roughly 20 years ago, Augie Duesenberg’s grandson [00:12:00] donated 106 blueprints to our school, and since then they’ve been sitting in two drawers.

These Duesenberg blueprints were taken by Augie when the Corps had bought Duesenberg from the two brothers. Augie wanted nothing to do with the road cars anymore. Fred stayed on and helped with the development of the Js, but Augie just wanted to do racing, as mostly everyone does. And it’s a mixture of Indianapolis motors, Duesenberg Model J and Model A motors, some rear axle assemblies, and then just over roughly half of them are to a W24, which was actually used in Marine Engine that was built for Horse Dodge.

They’re relevant to our program because you are able to practice and learn archival skills, research. If you want to, you can recreate parts using the blueprints, which is, uh, A little side project that I am doing at school. And they’re just cool. Who doesn’t want to see life size motors that are over 100 years old?

Just some pictures on the left here of that W24 motor. The engine roughly when it was rebuilt. I was lucky enough to see this motor three [00:13:00] weeks ago and hear it run. It sounds like an entire field of Miller Rafi midgets. 625 cubic inches with a supercharger. And it spins to 5, 000 rpm. It’s a lot of noise.

It had a whole development cycle over roughly 10 years with different methods and different construction, things that were added, things that were subtracted from it. What I’m doing is researching and creating a little story, a little book if I want to, of the story of that specific engine. Automotive wise, these are blueprints to a 1926 Duesenberg IndyCar motor, 91.

5 cubic inches, 1. 5 liters. It’s a straight eight, and it used Babbitt bearings, but it is not a four stroke, it is a two stroke. One motor was built, as far as I can tell, I was talking to Randy Ema, who is the premier Duesenberg expert in the country. And it was ran in one car and there’s three articles on the internet about this car and that’s it.

And it just mentions it’s a two stroke motor. It wasn’t allowed to go past 4, 600 RPM. This motor no longer exists anymore, but [00:14:00] we have the crankcase cylinder heads, the camshaft profile charts with flow rates that they were able to trying out to see how much power they could get out of it, they’re all in good condition.

And there’s nothing really written about this. And you can see the technical differences. from a four stroke motor. So like in our engines class, when you’re teaching about four strokes and two strokes, you could go and look at a physical blueprint that shows the different construction methods and help you envision in your brain what your professor is talking about.

And then marine wise, as I mentioned, I was able to see parts and the boat when the engine. And that is a timing cover chain for the motor. It’s all dual overhead cams, six camshafts. It’s a little bit of a pain to time. The owners of the boat still have some original parts, and they were kind enough to show me, so I grabbed some photos of those parts, and it was cool to see, because I have photos on my phone right now, just on my phone, we’ll be properly archiving them and creating a true archive with them, it’ll be scanned at 600 dpi, and we hope to [00:15:00] make them digitally available for people to learn about, but it was just cool for me to see that these physical parts Were made from those blueprints right there, and those blueprints exist in one other place, and that’s out in California in a private collection that isn’t shown.

I’m a firm believer that these things need to be shown and need to be shared for people to learn about. It’s the same thing with racing cars. I think that they should be driven. I don’t think that they should sit in a collection. Although there is discussion about that because when you have original cars, or cars that were extremely important, it gets, A little shady and I’m open to discussion about that with anyone.

It’s a cool project that I wanted to talk about because there is a younger generation that’s interested in this and McPherson is a great way to get into this world and whatnot. We have contacts all over and it’s not just physically working on the cars because it’s the story of the people that designed them, the people who worked on them, the people who drove them, the people who owned them later on in life.

The family that owns that boat now, he bought the engine in the early 90s and wanted to build a land speed car. And [00:16:00] once he found out it was for a boat, he was like, okay, we’re going to recreate that boat and recreate that hull because it’s something that is important to the marine racing world. He had never built a boat before, so him and his son just went and started building a boat using the original hull plans because they found the original family whose the two brothers built the boat in the mid 1930s.

It’s the story of people and them interacting with people, and I think just using those blueprints, using a car, it’s a medium to do that because it’s about the people that makes me love this industry, not the cars themselves, although they are great. Thank you. I’m free to answer any questions about the program, about the projects, about anything.

Absolutely fantastic. You hit it out of the ballpark. You had a question over here. So you mentioned that you are from up here in Seneca Falls area. How is the move going from up here down to Kansas and the completely different area opposite side of the Mississippi? Not very fun. I grew up on a lake. Not having any [00:17:00] bodies of water near me has been quite a change, no hills or anything like that.

But I’ve grown to appreciate it. It’s its own unique place, the own unique culture. Even though we’re a small school, there’s a very strong sense of commodity, and within the automobile industry, restorations, auctions, and stuff like that. You say you’re from McPherson College, And it opens up doors all over the world.

You can walk into the Mercedes Benz Classic Center in California and say, I’m from McPherson College. Could you show me around? And you’d be let in because the president of that is on our board at our school. And the vice president is an alumni of our college. So it just opens up an entire world. It’s great.

For someone who’s maybe looking into that program, can you expand on the advantages of a four year program, you know, coming from a liberal arts background, versus maybe what we might consider the more traditional sort of trade approach in this country? It’s very much geared more towards restoration [00:18:00] and not maintenance and stuff like that.

If you’re restoring a historically significant car, you want to get the details right. An example of this is, you know, a car that’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s 10 years ago, our school set a goal to compete at the d’Elegance with a car entirely restored by 20 year olds against people who have been doing this for 40 years and know every trick in the book.

That car is a 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S Cabriolet. 203 were made in that body style, 560 overall. It uses a triple Solex carb 3 liter straight six. It’s the same motor that’s used in the Gullwings, but it’s just not fuel injected and with a not as hot cam. But this car has 13, 000 individual parts. A Gullwing has 6, 500.

It has a chassis lubrication system. And our car was special order with a different kind of chassis lubrication system. So we had to find the original Bakelite piece from 1953. And roughly 80 of those cars were options, so there’s only 80 made. So they didn’t have ours anymore, by Argoose, and then show a photo documenting that our car had it.

These [00:19:00] cars have silver CAD electrical connectors. We had to go and find press photos from 1951 from the Mercedes factory showing, yes, these are supposed to be silver CAD, they’re not supposed to be like that. And then probably the most, Obvious one we were asked about at the show by the judges is radiator hoses because most people are used to seeing gull wings.

These are a steel braid woven radiator hose and water cooled hose. All the other ones they had seen were just black and they had to double check and ask if this is supposed to be correct and you just open the binder and there’s a photo right there. Being able to know how to find your photos in your research, very, very important.

And then being able to have the skills to implement that. That is very important as well, and that’s what sets us apart from other two year programs around. Because you don’t have to just go physically into the restoration world. For example, I’ve mentioned you can go into auction houses. You can go as just a general historian.

You can go and work in insurance. You can go and manage a shop. You don’t have to physically just work on the cars. And you’re not [00:20:00] just learning about the cars you’re interested in. I had no appreciation for pre war vehicles, or European vehicles before I went to school there. I was a muscle guy through and through, and now I’m into Ferraris, pre war Alfas, and pre war Bugattis, and just GP cars.

If I didn’t go to school, I would not be into those things. Jeremy, have you had any contact with the, uh, Auburn Court Duesenberg Museum? I guess you’ve talked with Brandon, uh, Anderson, I guess, at the, um, director at all? I have not yet, because there’s a story about those two, our Duesenberg blueprints. They were looking to get those, but they were donated to us.

I think that cooperation is needed between the two. Once they’re digitized, they’re going to be available for everyone to see. It’s important to the Duesenberg legacy. They already have an established museum around Auburn Corps Duesenbergs. And even with us still having the original Duesenberg blueprints, You can still print off one to one size copies of them once they’re digitized and they can have them on display, for example, and stuff [00:21:00] like that.

I think that cooperation is needed between people in this industry because there’s historians out there who just want to hoard information and not share it with people when I think that it’s just for everyone to know. Any more questions, please? After the first trial No idea.

Ferrari mechanicals have always come up along with obviously the history side. I’m a chassis number person. I’ve been able to tell I was able to visit a shop out in California, which is renowned, which my best friend now works at actually, she was able to work on a three 12 P when I visited, she was working on a two 46 Dino Daytona’s.

There’s an F50 GT in there, and then their shop owners also run a 750 Manza on the track and actually race it all over the world. So that would be a fun experience if I would get to do that, we’ll see, but I am just trying to figure out what’s going to be best for me. That is the future, ladies and [00:22:00] gentlemen.

We’re in good hands. Thank you.

This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motorsports spanning continents, eras, and race series. The center’s collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the Center, visit www. racingarchives.

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