1963 Huffaker Genie MKV Sportscar

The Huffaker Genie was the brainchild of Joe Huffaker Sr., head of British Motor Car Distributors' Competition Department under the ownership of Kjell Qvale during the early 1960s. BMC, as it was known, was essentially the West Coast equivalent of Max Hoffman's famous distributorship. Qvale brought Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, MG, Austin Healey, Lotus, Jensen, De Tomaso, Maserati, Lamborghini, Jaguar, Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and many other European marques to Americans living in the Western United States starting in the late 1940s. During the early 1960s, working for Qvale, Huffaker designed, engineered, and constructed some of the earliest mid-engine racecars under the name Huffaker Genie, which was particularly impressive given that neither McLaren nor Lola had introduced any mid-engine cars.

Consequently, for a period, Huffaker Genies were the car to have, and the company was at one point the largest dedicated racecar constructor in the United States. Huffaker Genie began initially with four cylinder cars displacing no more than two liters like this car, and eventually grew into producing the Mark 8, which featured a tubular space frame and a range of American V8s from Oldsmobile, Buick, Ford, or Chevrolet.