The thrill is back
Ron Turner simply wanted a little project where he could tinker with some of the few idle hours he has.
When all was said and done, what he got was much more. His Jim Tipke sprint car, identical to the one he drove in the 1970s, has history written all over it.
As a 23-year-old rookie racer in the famed Canadian American Modified Racing Association (CAMRA), Turner made his debut in a similar car at the 1971 Mid-Season Championship race at the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds Speedway. It was CAMRA that help vault Spokane’s Indy 500 champ Tom Sneva into prominence.
In an ironic twist, Turner finished second in the race to Bud Gorder, the man from whom he’d later buy the car he once raced against.
Turner’s desire was to inject some fun into his passion for motorsports. “I wanted a nostalgia car for a long time,” explained the Pasadena Park resident and owner of Spokane Ditch and Cable.
Turner wondered where some of the old CAMRA cars had gone. “I told Bud Gorder I wanted to find one of these rear-engine Tipke cars.
“I have one,” Gorder said.
“No way,” was Turner’s response.
“You buy the car or I’m going to cut it up,” said Gorder, who at the time was suffering from terminal cancer. That was about five years ago, Turner recalled. “I wanted to finish it before Bud passed away, but it didn’t happen.”
When he got out of the seriousness of late-model racing following the 2005 season, he put the restoration project in high gear. His goal was not to just have a car for show, but one that would also go.
Rule changes in the winged sprint class allowed Turner’s historic car to actually compete against upright sprint cars, much like it did in the early ‘70s. He actually made his competition debut in June but needed a better set of gears to be competitive.
Turner said about all that he kept from the original car was the frame. He entrusted local hot rod-builder Rich Gortsema and his son Brad to re-create much of the bodywork. “They did a beautiful job,” Tunrer said.
The process to restore the car included taking the car apart and sand blasting it. “The first thing I did when I got it was to take it apart and put the parts on the shelf.”
Turner, a 1964 graduate of Rogers High, went to school and studied education, intent on becoming a teacher like his sister, Connie Stacy. At the time, however, mixed into his life was that desire to drive race cars. Turner began his racing career driving in the old open-wheel C-class at the fairgrounds in 1968.
He drove for about 10 years before deciding “to put my nose to the grindstone,” Just a few credits short of a degree, Turner instead went into business for himself starting Spokane Ditch and Cable in 1978. The company is a major contractor for phone and cable companies, among others.
Turner came out of retirement to race minisprints, where he won a championship in the early 1990s. Most recently he drove a late-model super stock, but after a couple of serious – and costly – wrecks, he got out of driving cars with fenders and returned to his racing roots with the Tipke restoration.
The 60 year-old avid runner – he regularly puts in five-miles – said “I feel a lot different” driving the car today. “I was 160 pounds then. I’m 200 now,” he said sheepishly.
Adding 40 pounds of body weight is easily counteracted by the fact that the car is now almost 200 pounds lighter that it was in 1971. Aluminum headers have helped shave the weight in the wedgelike rear-engine machine.
“I’m thrilled to get the car,” Turner said.