Starting in the days of pre-war auto racing and hot-rodding, the name Cragar, and much of today’s speed-parts industry in general, began with one modest storefront in Los Angeles, California.

American motor sports was booming in the late 1920s. The fabled firms of Duesenberg and Harry A. Miller were creating exotic Link titlemachinery the equal of anything built in Europe both in terms of mechanical sophistication and craftsmanship. Miller's Los Angeles factory on Long Beach Avenue was turning out powerful 91-cubic-inch supercharged machines that were lapping the board tracks at more than 140 mph, while the grandly schemed George Miller-Schofield Company was intended to revolutionize the motor sport industry, but a combination of financial chicanery and the Great Depression crushed the organization by 1930. Among the few salvageable items were the patterns for three-cylinder heads created by Miller's brilliant designer, Leo Goossen. They were intended as conversions for the Ford Model A four-cylinder engine, which was quickly replacing the Model T as the power plant of choice on American dirt tracks.

Goossen's cylinder heads included a low-priced high-compression flathead, an overhead-valve pushrod type, and an exotic double-overhead-camshaft four valve-per-cylinder version (only three of the latter were built, and they proved to be as powerful-and expensive-as their Miller and Offenhauser rivals).

At the same time, Crane Gartz, an heir to the Los Angeles-based Crane Publishing fortune and an automobile enthusiast, had teamed up with former racing star Harlan Fengler (the "boy wonder of the speedways" who would later become chief steward of the Indianapolis 500) to form Cragar Corporation, Ltd., (first three letters of Gartz’s first and last name, i.e., Cra Gar) located at 940 North Orange Drive in Hollywood.

Fengler, using Gartz's funds, purchased at auction the tooling, machinery, and patterns for the Miller-Goossen heads for $40,000 and began manufacturing the OHV version under the Cragar name. It was an instant hit. For the aspiring racer starting with a stock Model A producing 41 hp at 2400 rpm, the $100 expended for a Cragar head and a Winfield racing carburetor gave a quick boost to 86 hp at 3200 rpm.

During this same period, a man named George Wight, had grown a modest Los Angeles area salvage yard into the first performance aftermarket parts store in America -- Bell Auto Parts (originally located at 3633 Gage Avenue in the L.A. suburb of Bell, California). This store served as the high-performance mecca for the every hot rodder, sports-car nut, dry lakes competitor, street racer, round tracker, and performance oriented backyard mechanic in the western, if not the entire, US. Bell Auto Parts had begun to manufacture a small inventory of racing pieces: Model A intake and exhaust manifolds, valve covers, side plates, and magneto drives.

Despite the success of the Cragar cylinder head, Gartz and Fengler could not stave off the numbing impact of the Depression, and the business collapsed in 1932. But George Wight, whose Bell Auto Parts was making a modest profit, recognized the potential of the Cragar unit and borrowed heavily to buy the patterns and fixtures from Gartz's concern. The Cragar head was to become the capstone of the line.

A youth from the nearby town of Maywood named Roy Richter was showing a talent for pattern making and fabrication at the tiny operation. He was also a talented race driver, running a modified Model T in the increasingly popular speed events being organized at Muroc, Rosamond, and El Mirage dry lakes in the California high desert and in various dirt-track contests around Los Angeles. Working out of a small corner of Bell Auto Parts, Richter built a Saxon powered (sleeved-down Model A) midget and began serious competition at tracks like Atlantic and Gilmore stadiums. In 1936 he moved east, basing his operation in Detroit, where he built a number of flawlessly crafted and very fast dirt-track cars. After a racing tour to New Zealand in the winter of 1938, he moved back to California for good.

It was Richter's masterful touch with aluminum that separated him from the crowd that now hung out at Bell Auto Parts, both as workers and as curious fans on hand to witness the comings and goings of the famous drivers and mechanics who used the place as a kind of forum for purchases and deal-making. They could also watch Richter hand-forming aluminum into graceful, sweeping compound curves. His sprint cars and midgets were as beautiful as they were fast. Sam Hanks-who was to retire after winning the 1957 Indianapolis 500, purchased a Richter-built, Offenhauser-powered midget in 1939 and drove it to literally hundreds of feature victories from coast to coast, making it the single-winningest racing car in the history of the sport.

Richter's reputation as a fabricator brought him to Northrup Aircraft in Hawthorne in 1942, where he worked as a senior welder for the duration of the war. George Wight, the former junk dealer who had started Bell Auto Parts, died in 1943 at his modest bungalow behind the shop, leaving the meager inventory, a few machine tools, and the store on Gage Avenue to his widow. Two years later, Richter sold his customized 1939 Ford roadster and all available assets to lease Bell Auto Parts and its inventory, which according to Richter's biographer, Art Bagnall, consisted of little more than a "few used race car parts, a few cases of Sta-Lube racing oil, and numerous boxes of old junk parts that had been piling up for years."

The end of World War II unleashed a flood of pent-up enthusiasm for racing and high-performance cars. Veterans returned with new found enthusiasm for machinery discovered while working on sophisticated military equipment. They plunged into competition on speedways, the dry lakes, and road courses-and in illegal street contests with hot rods (a term believed to have originated as a contraction of "hot roadster"), known from the beginning as drag races. One example of this enthusiasm: on August 17, 1946, a crowd of 65,128 fans crunched into the Los Angeles Coliseum to witness Hanks win the 250 lap "Gold Cup" in his Richter-built Offy.

Interest in "speed" or "hop up" equipment soared, and cottage industries grew up across Southern California to meet the demand. Men like Vic Edelbrock Sr. and rival Phil Weiand began manufacturing intake manifolds for the then engine of choice, the Ford flathead V-8, while Ed Iskenderian triggered a boom in high-performance camshafts. Talents like fuel injection genius Stu Hillborn and master technician Phil Remington (who was later to become a mainstay of Shelby-American) also rose out of these ranks. Bell Auto Parts became a major outlet for all manner of speed equipment, and in 1946 Bell began to publish the first-ever mail-order catalog in the speed industry. By 1948, the catalog contained more than 10,000 items, ranging from $300 quick-change rear ends to $1.50 war-surplus plexiglass goggles.

The West Coast racing scene was booming by 1950. The Southern California Timing Association had a major event at the Bonneville Salt Flats, while the California Sports Car Club was running a full calendar of road races from San Francisco to San Diego. The National Hot Rod Association was established by Wally Parks, the former editor of Hot Rod magazine (which had been started as a glorified newsletter two years earlier). Weekly drag races, the first in the nation, were promoted at Santa Ana. Richter and Bell Auto Parts were in the forefront.

With the business to unsurpassed levels, which included the new and innovative Bell helmet, Bell Auto Parts was forced to expand well beyond the boundaries of its tiny Gage Avenue property. A larger manufacturing facility was created in Long Beach, while Richter took two more bold steps in the booming speed equipment industry.

The famous Cragar supercharger. According to the magazine Hot Rod, "Cragar's supercharger kit is considered one of the "Twenty speed parts that changed the world of hot rodding." Originally developed for industrial diesels in the '30s, the 71-series GMC Roots-style blowers were adopted by hot rodders in the late '40s. Although Barney Navarro is widely credited as the first to adapt a GMC blower to a flathead Ford V-8, and pioneers like Tom Beatty and Chuck Potvin eventually developed race-oriented manifold and drive kits to bolt 3-71 and 4-71 huffers to a variety of V-8 engines, it was the 1959 introduction of the first complete and widely marketed street-oriented blower kit for the then-relatively new small-block Chevy V-8 by Cragar that made Roots blowers practical for the average hot rodder.

The famous Cragar S/S wheel. For years, the custom wheel business had been dominated by the "deep dish" chrome wheel, nothing more than a stock steel wheel reversed to provide greater offsets for appearance purposes. Ted Halibrand, another veteran Southern California racer and hot rodder, had in the late 1940s developed a lightweight sand-casted magnesium wheel for racing applications, and by 1960 a number of small companies were producing "mag" wheels for the street. They were nothing more than polished, cast-aluminum centers riveted to chromed steel rims.

In response to what he called a "strength and style deficiency" in the current custom-wheel offerings, Richter decided to manufacture an affordable high-quality wheel of his own. He would sell it under the old Cragar name, which he had acquired from the Wight estate. In addition to his native instinct for proper engineering, Richter possessed a sense of aesthetics. Seeking both rigidity and good looks, he spent two years designing and testing what was to become the Cragar S/S. This wheel became, in the words of famed auto journalist Brock Yates, “The most popular, most imitated, and most successful custom wheel in history.”

Bagnall says the S/S "featured a major breakthrough in materials and manufacturing techniques." Richter patented a process whereby the steel rim was attached to the aluminum alloy center by pressure casting. Although no rivets or screws were employed, the design resisted a force of 42,000 pounds before the center separated from the rim-a figure more than 50 percent higher than that of the competition.

Ray Brock, who was publisher of Hot Rod and a close friend of Richter's, received the first production set of Cragars for his new 1964 Mustang. "They were beautiful, and I was crazy about them," he recalls. "But Roy wasn't happy. He spotted nearly invisible flaws in the fabrication and insisted on taking them back to make them right. He was like that, a perfectionist-and truly one of the finest guys I ever met. I know it sounds corny, but everyone who knew Roy liked and respected him."

The Cragar S/S, a classic five-spoke design, was an instant success. Although intended for street use, Richter's wheel was quickly employed on various racing cars -- sometimes with the creator's objections. Steve Evans, the well-known Nashville Network television commentator, recalls working as a counter man and fledgling promotion assistant for Richter at Bell Auto Parts. "I was running a rocket car in exhibition drag races and stuck on a set of S/Ss. Roy was furious. He said the wheels weren't designed for such high-speed applications. One night the car crashed at well over 150 mph. It was a wreck, but the wheels were perfect. Roy still wasn't happy, but I could tell he was pleased that the wheels had such enormous reserve strength. Roy would not compromise on quality or his reputation. It was that simple."

Within months after the S/S's introduction, Richter had to open new plants in nearby Bell Gardens, then a larger facility in South Gate, and finally to an even more elaborate factory in Compton. He was soon selling thousands of Cragars to the likes of J.C. Penny, BFGoodrich, and Goodyear. By 1971, Richter's little speed shop on Gage Avenue had increased to a point where it was employing nearly 500 people at its three plants and generating $31 million in annual sales. His Cragar wheels -- and the copies they would engender -- would be sold in the tens of millions.

Cragar was a founding member of SEMA. In 1963, (originally the Speed Equipment Manufacturer's Association) had a goal to govern quality and business ethics in the nascent speed-equipment business. Richter and Cragar remained very active with SEMA until his health started to fail. In 1971, this poor health prompted Richter to sell his holdings in Bell Helmets and Cragar Industries to the Wynn Oil Company.

Roy Richter died in July 1983. He was 69-year-old. He was perhaps the most liked and respected man ever to rise from the world of California motor sports.

Today the CRAGAR® brand is a registered trademark of Cragar Industries, Phoenix, Arizona. Cragar Industries still sells the Cragar S/S wheel design, also in modern sizes, along with other aftermarket performance parts such as low restriction exhaust, big brakes, performance suspension, etc. and its own Cragar Special Edition vehicles sold through new car dealers.

Note: A recreation of the famed Bell Auto Parts store can be seen at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California.

<gallery>
Image:Cragarracer-600.jpg|Early midget racer in shop
Image:Bellautoparts-600.jpg|Bell Auto Parts outside
Image:Bellautoparts2-600.jpg|Bell Auto Parts inside
Image:Earlycragarss-600.jpg|Early Cragar S/S wheel
Image:Cragarsupercharger-600.jpg|Early Cragar supercharger
Image:Cragar-ss-family-600.jpg|Original & modern Cragar S/S wheels
</gallery>

External links

Cragar Industries' website

SEMA's website

Bell Helmets' website