1929 Miller Schofield Special Racer

In early 1929, Harry Miller sold his company and all of its assets to Schofield of America, a Los Angeles manufacturing firm. Among those assets were drawings and patterns for two cylinder heads of Leo Goosen's design that would fit a four-cylinder Ford engine: one was an overhead valve (OHV), and the other was a dual overhead cam (DOHC).

Schofield began building both heads. The DOHC went to the serious race-engine builders. The OHV, marketed as the 'Miller Hi-Speed,' went to those who wanted more power out of their road cars. When the organizers at Legion Ascot Speedway set up a separate class for cars with engines having the camshaft in the block, racers began using the OHV Miller Hi-Speed head. When Schofield went broke, Crane Gartz and Harlan Fengler bought the patterns, and CRAGAR (a contraction of Crane Gartz) heads were made by various manufacturers, including Bell Auto Parts (later Bell Engineering), for years.

The early history of this race car is unknown. It was built in 1929. In the 1980s, Craig Lillywhite found the wreckage of the car in a garage in Rosemead. The property owner had no knowledge of the history, and the car had no traceable numbers. The race car probably toiled at tracks such as Legion, Ascot, Gilmore, Mines Field, etc, during the thirties and up into the forties.

It took Lillywhite three and a half years to complete the reconstruction. Craig showed the car and ran it in exhibition vintage car races throughout the west since the early nineties. After being in storage for several years, it was acquired by John Kerr in 2003. Under John's ownership, it has raced up and down the California Coast, including the Monterey Historics.