Dave MacDonald’s ‘00’ Corvette
March 2025 • by Tony Thacker
Presented by MicksPaint.com and USAutomotive.co.uk“Ernie, explain that again, please,” I asked for the third time. “The original Max Balchowsky-Dave MacDonald-Jim Simpson Corvette was essentially Old Yeller #5 and the new tribute “00” car has the bones of what would have been OY10.” “Okay, I think I’ve got it. Phew.”
Dr. Ernie Nagamatsu under power in his tribute the original Dave MacDonald ‘00’ Corvette. Photo courtesy of Dr. Ernie.
Max Balchowsky at work at Hollywood Motors.
Max Balchowsky, and his wife Ina, working out of the glamorous sounding Hollywood Motors at 4905 Hollywood Boulevard about which designer Pete Brock said, “Hollywood Motors was concealed in a medium-sized, unmarked garage behind a Texaco gas station on a weed filled, partially vacant lot.” It was a scant two miles east of Hollywood and Vine but close enough to attract the movie set.
Max’s ‘Bu-Ford’ did well in the road races but not with Ted driving.
Max got his racing start in Bill Harrah’s XK-120 but it was a Deuce Roadster built by famed metal shaper Jimmy Summers in 1941 that put Max on the grid. Unusual for a west coast car, the body was channeled three inches over the ’32 frame and power came from a 368 ci flathead LaSalle V-8 (according to Honk magazine, August 1953). Max eventually swapped the almost 900 lbs tank engine for a lightweight Nailhead Buick weighing half as much. The swap made all the difference and the “Bu-Ford,” as it was nick-named, held its own against the European sports cars in SCCA road racing.
In 1954, in the wake of the “Bu-Ford,” Max purchased the DeSoto-six-powered Dick Morgensen Special that was stored following a fateful racing accident at Torrey Pines. Using another Nailhead, Max rebuilt the ratty pile of wrecking yard parts into a piss-yellow pile of parts called “Old Yeller I” (OYI). Despite its junkyard dog demeanor, it proved agile on the track and was driven by Ina and Max to and from the races.
Owner/driver Dr. Ernie Nagamatsu puts the hammer down in Max Balchowsky’s Old Yeller II.
OYI was quickly followed by OY2 using a new Chromoly tube frame initially chalked on Max’s garage floor—it would become the “chalk print” for subsequent Yellers. The simple frame design may well have been influenced by Max’s friend Hy Joseph an engineer at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Now owned and campaigned by Dr. Ernie and Elaine Nagamatsu, OY2 is probably the most famous and winningest of all the Yellers. OY3 and OY4 were financed by Oscar winning cinemaphotographer Haskell Wexler.
Max Balchowsky (left) works with the late Dave MacDonald on his ‘00’ Corvette. Note the simple frame laid out on the shop floor. Photo courtesy Dr. Ernie Nagamatsu.
OY5, however, was a different story. According to Ernie, Max was approached by Dave MacDonald who had been pressed by Carroll Shelby to have Max build a lightweight, fiberglass Corvette road racer. The project was funded by Jim “Thanks a million” Simpson of Bob Sorenson Chevrolet in Whittier, CA., who said to Sports Car Graphic magazine in 1962, “I was all set to build a house, but instead I decided to go racing and build a car. There goes my house.”
While Max fabricated the Chromoly tube chassis that apparently cost $4,600, Dave and Jim—tall, slim and crew cut similar—worked on downsizing the body they had ‘splashed’ from Simpson’s new ’62 Vette. By cutting and shutting, dicing and splicing they shortened the body almost 17 inches, and cut the wheelbase by 10 inches to just 92. The 85-pound body, with a removable nose section, was built by Nat “The Glass man” Reeder’s Fiberglass Auto Body at 5807 Hollywood Boulevard.
The car was assembled over the summer of 1961 in just 2-1/2 months with the F.I. Corvette engine arriving JIT from Zora Arkus-Duntov in September ’61. The car weighed in at approximately 1,750 lbs compared to the stocker at 2,985 lbs. Second time out, after testing at Riverside during the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, and a minor shunt at Laguna Seca, on Nov. 11, 1961, at Cotati, CA., the MacDonald-Simpson Special, in white gel coat with the numbers “00” and the name Bob SORENSON Chevy on the fender Dave placed first and came within one second of the course record of 1 minute 25 seconds—despite drum brakes all round.
On March 4, 1962, after more fine tuning, the “00” Vette took its second win at Riverside. MacDonald, meanwhile, was driving and winning in numerous other Vettes, often for Don Steves Chevrolet. Indeed, he was doing so well that he and Simpson decided to park the “00” car and return to production racing
According to Dave’s brother Doug, sometime during this period Zora Arkus-Duntov met with Dave and inspected his car and it’s possible Zora incorporated some of its attributes into GM’s successful lightweight Grand Sport program—they certainly had thin fiberglass bodies.
After the May Santa Barbara regional SCCA event, MacDonald did not race “00” again until Sept 23 at Reno. In fact, Simpson had sold the car to Pat Mathis, of Holiday Motors in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mathis painted the car purple-ish and raced it locally before shipping it back to the mainland for Dave to Race at Reno and then finally at Kent, Washington, on September 30—it was a DNF at both races. After Kent, the car returned to Honolulu and eventually disappeared but was reportedly seen in a wrecking yard.
In February of ’63, MacDonald switched camps and began driving Cobras with great success for Shelby American winning the first of many races at Riverside. Unfortunately, he was killed, along with fellow driver Eddie Sachs, at the ’64 Indy 500 in a tragic accident.
Ernie had stashed these rare ’58 Pontiac police car brake drums.
Fast forward to 2016 and a birthday party for Pete Brock at Galpin Ford. Ernie and Elaine were seated with MacDonald’s wife Sherry and son Rich. Inevitably, the talk turned to Dave MacDonald and Ernie declared that he had the OY10 chassis that was just about identical to the MacDonald car though it might have been destined to be mid-engined. He also had some other parts, the all-important photographs, suspension blueprints and some of those rare, finned aluminum ’58 Pontiac police car front drums with drilled backing plates. “Why, don’t we recreate the “00” car,” asked Ernie, “as a tribute to Dave MacDonald?”
The ball was soon rolling and the very basic, unfinished tube frame and other parts Ernie had in storage were hauled down to Jimmy Shine’s Speed Shop in Orange, CA. Jimmy is a skilled fabricator well known in hot rod circles but this build would be a testing task.
Jimmy Shine digs into Ernie’s stash for those hard-to-find, rare parts.
“Immediately the search was on for a car load of “era-correct, date matched” parts,” said Shine. “Everything from Max’s signature Morris Minor torsion bar suspension that utilized Jaguar XK120 upper A-arms and shortened Buick lowers. The steering rack is also Morris Minor while the front brakes are 11-inch Poncho drums with similar 12-inch Buick AlFins out back.”
The original car had first a Studebaker and then a lighter, stronger Chevy II rear end located by leading arms with more Morris torsion bars mounted transversely. However, the tribute is fitted with a narrowed Chevy II 10-bolt rear end with a Corvette Posi and a two-inch pinion offset to align with the similarly offset engine affording more footwell room. Most of this “heavy” machine work was handled by Jim McCaslin and Paul Thompson at Cooks Machine in Los Angeles where Max had a lot of his machine work done back in the day.
For the engine and other Corvette parts Shine turned to “Vettespert” Jeff Reade of American Motoring Memories, Culver City, CA. Jeff located the correct ’62 F.I. 327 #FO825RF as well as genuine NOS heads still in their GM cardboard boxes and the correct Rochester fuel injection unit that is actually; #34. Even the front engine mount was a Hurst mount, “the original was probably from a boat.” Said Jimmy.
Because of that tight footwell, Max originally chose a ’60 Chevy truck bellhousing with the hydraulic clutch mechanism on the right. Second time around, ’60 Chevy swinging truck pedals were used but adjusted by Shine’s lead fabricator Paulo Dosdoglirian to match the original assembly. The trans is a Borg-Warner T10 with an original Vette Hurst shifter and a white knob. “Even the radiator is a genuine Harrison Corvette unit.” Said Jimmy.
Shine’s lead fabricator Paulo Dosdoglirian worked long and hard to replicate the Tri-Y headers.
One of Paulo’s trickiest tasks was replicating the original heat-bent, tri-Y headers. “We spent hours magnifying photographs and magazine articles to understand exactly how they were built,” said Paulo. “Eventually, going back and forth, I was happy the result matched the gas welded originals.” “The cones were made by Cone Engineering in Los Alamitos, CA., but we made the tips,” said Jimmy, “as we did the simple roll cage to match the original chrome hoop.”
“While all this was going on,” said Branden Johnson, shop foreman, “we simultaneously started on the body which turned out to be a monumental task. The first body we had just wasn’t right as it had been narrowed according to the old magazine articles but we discovered the magazines were wrong and the body had never been narrowed or sectioned—it was merely shortened. So, we cut the first body up into little pieces and like Dave and Jim, spliced and diced it until it was dimensionally correct complete with a ’55 T-Bird hood scoop. Designer Jeff Allison played a huge part in this process.”
Hitoshi Umekage (left) at Cambra Speed Shop, Orange, CA meets with Ernie to discuss color. Photo courtesy of Dr. Ernie.
“Once we had something we were happy with, where all the lines aligned, with the head and taillights molded in, we took the buck to Trailer Products in Hemet, CA, who are well known for their off-road fiberglass.” Said Jimmy. “They made a five-piece, bolt-together mold from which they made the four-layer body that weighs about 150 lbs. Once Paulo had made the ½-inch steel tube body mounting frame that faithfully reflects the Dzus-fastened original, and cut the fold-down driver’s door, we took it to Hitoshi Umekage at Cambra Speed Shop, Orange, CA., for a faithful color match to an era correct ’61 Corvette Omaha orange. The striping and lettering were then added by our good friend Johnny “Harpoon” Haprov.
The project was far from over though and a myriad of details needed to be finalized and finished; everything from the ½-inch aluminum honeycomb floor and firewall as Max had used to the American VDO Mercedes SL-190 instruments that were eventually identified by Allison using a magnifying glass. The steering column was built from scratch but the steering wheel is an era correct Montoya from San Diego. The wheels are genuine 1960 five-spoke, five-on-five, 8 x 15 magnesium American’s.
