Will the Real ‘Big Al III’
Please Identify Itself?
11/8/06
Jim Lytle finished building Big Al II in Dec. 1963, then restored the body in Dec. 1988 for permanent display at the Garlits Museum alongside some of the plastic fantastics that followed. According to Lytle, during a 1989 meeting at FoMoCo HQ with Fran Hernandez, the former Mercury racing chief admitted that seeing this body at a 1964 car show influenced his decision to order one-piece Comet bodies for Mercury's 1966 Funny Cars.
(HotRodNostalgia.com photo by Dave Wallace, ©1992)
If ever something qualified as a motorsports miracle, it’s gotta be the survival of the first fiberglass body to lift off of its chassis as a single unit. Consider that this historic artifact was pulled from a set of molds made 43 years ago by a young guy with little money and no
laminating experience, in his home garage. For the next three seasons, Jim Lytle’s homemade replica of a ’34 Tudor was buffeted by countless passes into rough shutdown areas in the hands of three owner-drivers, plus guest shoe K.S. Pittman, who made a single 160-mile-an-hour at San Fernando Raceway for then-owner Tex Collins that far exceeded the best effort by the late stuntman.The only standards that Collins ever set were dubious distinctions of overrevving and blowing up aircraft engines while getting seriously sideways. That Big Al’s body survived Tex’s heavy foot is a miracle in itself. Luckily for builder Lytle, he was able to buy it back in 1968 from Collins, who had already chopped up the car’s original Ford frame for another project — and would be murdered shortly thereafter. 
Here's the Lytle-built clone that appeared at Indy, Bowling Green and Bakersfield in 2005. Nearly ready to roar, its fresh Allison V-12 lacks only finishing touches to the fuel and ignition systems.
(Photo courtesy Jim Lytle)