Jim Lytle’s “Big Al I”
9/8/06
The "Big Al" handle by which Jim Lytle's two sedans came to be remembered dates back to this hand-painted valve cover and 1962, when the owner-builder lived in San Antonio. Originally named "Grinder Griper III", the steel '34 had consumed six months of work and about $1000 at this point (including its P38 powerplant!) (Robert Hegge photo courtesy of Jim Lytle)
Like other young, poor hot rodders of the 1950s, Jim Lytle knew that an engine swap was the quickest, cheapest route to improved performance. The idea was to stuff the biggest engine that one could beg,
borrow or steal into whatever chassis happened to be available.Unlike his peers, Lytle’s vision for transplants extended beyond the overhead-valve, mass-production V8s then showing up in American junkyards. From the day in 1951 that the 15-year-old watched his first Gold Cup hydroplane race on the Detroit River, Lytle had fantasized about installing a V12 Allison in a hot rod. Three years later, when Art Arfons brought his Green Monster dragster to Livonia, Mich., for NHRA’s first sanctioned local event, Lytle was there with his ’34 Ford Tudor sedan. The kid was hooked. He started searching for one of the 2000-hp, 1710-cubic-inch, water-cooled “Warbird” engines that the Allison division of GM had originally sold to the government for $16,500 each — in 1940 money!
When Lytle relocated from Texas to California in Dec. 1962, his Tudor had made just one pass under Allison power: a clutch-frying effort of 77 mph at AHRA's Nationals. His nifty '51 Vicky concealed a big-inch Buick V8. (Jim Lytle photo) |
