1931 Gee Bee Model Z
The powerful, short fuselage race plane set a World Speed Record in 1931
09/23/2018
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One of the most iconic race planes built in the 1930s, the Gee Bee Z, was manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts, by the Granville Brothers for the newly-formed Springfield Air Racing Association, and was designed for air pylon racing, specifically the Thompson Trophy Races. The plane, dubbed the City of Springfield, was built around a Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior nine-cylinder radial engine that was on loan from the engine manufacturer and was a hopped-up version of the stock 375-hp engine.
The modified R-985s used higher-compression pistons and ran on special fuel, which raised their output to 535 hp. One of these same engines was installed in the Laird Super Solution plane that won the Thompson Trophy Race in 1930 and set several distance speed records with pilot Jimmy Doolittle.
The Thompson Trophy Race was established in 1929 and raced until 1961. It was started by the Thompson Company (later known as TRW) and was a 100-mile pylon race for airplanes, with racing in several engine displacement classes. Host cities of the races changed many times, but the 1931 running was staged in Cleveland, Ohio. The Shell Speed Dash was for unlimited entries where any size engine was allowed; however, all entrants had to reach a minimum of 175 MPH in the preliminary time trials to qualify for the race.
The Gee Bee Z won the 1931 Shell Speed Dash, with Lowell Bayles at the controls, setting a speed record of 267.342 MPH. This was the fastest speed on record for a land plane in 1931. The plane also won the Goodyear Trophy Race, averaging a mere 206 MPH, again with Lowell Bayles at the controls. The plane also won the free-for-all portion of the races with Robert Hall in the cockpit. The Gee Bee Z was a resounding success and won over $12,000 for the Granville Brothers that week.
Later that month, in an attempt to break the 300 MPH barrier, the Gee Bee Z was fitted with a Pratt & Whitney R-1340 engine and achieved a speed of 281.75 MPH. During an attempt at the speed barrier, pilot Lowell Bayles had made several practice passes at over 300. Confident he could surpass the barrier, he began his record attempt from over 5 miles away at an altitude of 1,000 feet, building up momentum and dropping down for the start of the closed course at only 165 feet. The record attempt was measured at over 300 MPH; however, the plane crashed at the end of the pass and Bayles was killed. Because only one official pass was completed, the record did not count.
Although the exact cause of the crash was not known, speculation was that the main spar that the wing was built around was weakened by earlier turns at high speeds or that the ailerons vibrated heavily, causing the right wing to collapse. The plane was not rebuilt, although the company continued its air racing prowess with production of the Gee Bee R-2, the following year.
The Granville Brothers built only 24 planes between 1925 and 1933 before declaring bankruptcy, and only two of the planes are still in existence. The rest, although some of the fastest planes of their time, were all crashed, resulting in death or major injuries for the pilots.
The Gee Bee Z was also reproduced by Bill Turner in 1978. It wasn't an exact reproduction; the wings and fuselage were made longer than the original to make it more stable in flight. It was flown during the filming of the Disney movie The Rocketeer, and is now on display in The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.
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Photography by David Conwill
Photo by David Conwill
“It’s a base car, with factory paint, an NOS interior and headliner, and the bottom end of a 200 engine,” said Jeff Cannon, who now preens the Falcon from his home in Granite Quarry, North Carolina. “We bought it in June 1965, and it was our daily driver until 1970, when my father got a Ford Crown Victoria. It was my first car in 1983 when I got my driver’s license.”
We can learn two things from this quote: The Cannon family is strongly pro-Ford, except for the fact that Jeff briefly owned a Chevrolet in a dispute with his father over the proper care and use of the Falcon. And that when it comes to Falcons, it’s Jeff’s father, Wayne Cannon, who has the final say, very much befitting a car guy who just turned 84. Make no mistake: The Falcon’s at Jeff’s house but Wayne, from Kannapolis, North Carolina, is the reason it’s there in the first place.
“In 1965, I was driving a 1951 Chevrolet and a 1950 four-door Plymouth, and I decided to get rid of the Plymouth and get another vehicle,” recalls Wayne. “I was living in Charlotte, and I found this wagon sitting on a used car lot. I purchased it and sold the Plymouth at a Ford dealer. The car had belonged to a guy who was a truck driver and it had 30,000 miles on it, so it was a local car.
Photo by David Conwill
Aside from the aftermarket chrome rocker cover, there are few clues that the Falcon's original 170-cu.in. short block has been swapped for a 200-cu.in. version.
“We were a family then, so I needed a family vehicle, plus the Falcon was a nice-looking car that caught my eye,” continues Wayne. “I bought it for $950 with $300 down. I still have the documents for that. I had never owned a station wagon before. Other than the wife taking the kids to the beach, that’s about as far as we drove it once we moved to Kannapolis. We’d make a big pallet in the back with blankets, put the kids back there, lower the back window and it wasn’t a problem until you stopped, and exhaust fumes started coming in through the back window.”
Today, the car’s a star–it’s been featured in the catalog of Falcon components from Dennis Carpenter Ford Restoration Parts, located just down U.S. 29 from Kannapolis. But it didn’t start out that way. In 1962, Ford produced 396,129 copies of the first-generation Falcon in the third year of the model’s production, with no breakout available as to trim and body styles. In 1962, the Falcon was offered with two sizes of Ford’s third-generation OHV inline six-cylinder engine, displacing 144 and 170 cubic inches, respectively, with a maximum of 101 horsepower.
“I’m not mechanically inclined, and I started having some kind of trouble with the engine,” Wayne says. “So, I took it to a mechanic, and he said that whatever was wrong with it, he’d have to rebuild the bottom part. That was in 1970. He said I could get a 200, and he put that in there and used the top part of the 170 that was in there at first. I have no idea where he got the 200, and I have a copy of the work order, but now, there’s a lot of difference in the horsepower.”
How much? The 200 was first introduced in 1963, in time to be installed in the first-generation Ford Mustang, with slightly bigger bore and stroke measurements than its 170-inch sibling. An impressively robust engine, its cast crankshaft ran in seven main bearings beginning in 1965. The Cannons’ engine has never been on a dyno, but as produced by Dearborn, was rated at 120 horsepower when new. Today, the bigger six has no trouble motivating the Falcon through its Ford-O-Matic automatic transmission.
Photo by David Conwill
“I’m pretty happy with it,” Wayne says.
Over the years, Wayne gradually became a Falcon fan, and passed the wagon on to Jeff to drive. As Jeff reminisced, “I got my license and drove the car for maybe six months. A 21-year-old station wagon was not a cool car for a teenager at that time, plus parents didn’t like a guy picking up their daughter in a station wagon. One day, after about six months, a hubcap fell off and I didn’t know it. And Dad said, you’re not driving that car anymore because of that hubcap, so I went out and bought a 1969 Camaro.”
The disagreement emerged because at that time, the Falcon was still decidedly Mom and Dad’s car at their home. Wayne unfailingly washed the Falcon every week, waxed it on schedule, and generally kept it spiffy even as the base interior materials started to deteriorate. In 1996, Jeff and Wayne obtained a supply of NOS vinyl materials and fully restored the interior, adding a new headliner at the same time, with Jeff saying that the interior’s condition remains “perfect” today. The work was done at George’s Trim Shop in Kannapolis. The interior door panels remain original, the knobs were replaced with Dennis Carpenter pieces about two years ago, and a set of engine gauges now reside beneath the dashboard. Under the hood, the 200 boasts a chrome rocker cover, also from Dennis Carpenter.
Wayne still has the original Falcon hubcaps from 1962, which he replaced with units from a 1962 Falcon Futura that he grabbed once he became a Falcon enthusiast in earnest. “The pinstripes are actually tape,” Wayne explained. “I found the skirts from a person in Winston-Salem who messed in Falcon parts, and I bought them from him. I was trying to find accessories that would fit on the car. I put the little chrome half-moons, we call them, on the headlamps.”
Photo by David Conwill
“Dad was in the Navy, and he’s always been very particular about the cleanliness of things, so there wasn’t a lot for me to do with the car,” Jeff said. “Later on, Dad had a big building constructed out back, and he stored the Falcon in there for a number of years. Then he brought it out, had it on the road a few more years, and then it went back into storage for another 10 or 12 years. It still has original paint thanks to Dad’s great care.”
Cars like this get noticed, especially once the owner turns into something of an authority of the marque. Time passed, and Wayne kept acquiring early Falcons. One of them was a 1962 Ford Ranchero that, according to Wayne, “went to pot.” Next came a 1961 Falcon that went to Wayne’s brother-in-law, who crammed in a 289-cu.in. V-8 much more than the little bird had stock. Wayne bought that car back, but it eventually experienced an engine failure. Undaunted, Wayne then got a 1963 Falcon Futura hardtop, which he personally restored, and which has been a show winner in North Carolina for years. So, it’s no surprise that Wayne headed to the huge AACA AutoFair show at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“The wagon was just a car that I liked to start with, but in 1999, I took the car to AutoFair and accumulated some old car parts,” Wayne said. “When I came back, there was a little sticker on the windshield. Someone who represented the Falcon club put it there, so I joined the club. It’s the Carolina Chapter of the Falcon Club of America, which is now based in Lincolnton. I was the chapter president for seven years.”
Photo by David Conwill
Fast forward a couple of decades, and the Falcon, still riding on impossible-to-find 13-inch whitewalls, was back at the speedway, where Jeff and Wayne had taken to showing the Falcons together. “The AutoFair officials came by and started looking at Dad’s ’63, which was in contention for Best Restoration by Owner. Then they started talking about the wagon. So, they ended up giving the wagon the Most Original Unrestored for the meet, because they couldn’t award two cars from the same club.
“The wagon is excellent to drive,” Jeff beamed. “We had the carburetor rebuilt last year and it starts right up, runs like a top. It has manual steering, which is why there’s a knob on the wheel.”
“When I get in the wagon and mash the gas, the 200 is faster than my ’63,” Wayne said. “Plus, it’s bulletproof.”
Owner's View
Photo by David Conwill
“My Mom drove us back and forth to school, and I think of her hands on the steering wheel. And Dad drove us around for several years, using the knob on the wheel. Sitting in the carport, there’s a couple of little dings on it from things hitting it when my brother and I were playing outside. We used it for going to the beach; going to ball practice; diving into the back through the tailgate. It has an ahooga horn that the guys thought was nerdy, but the girls liked it. It just has a lot of memories for me. The thing Dad’s most proud of is the exhaust tips that came off a 1940s Cadillac. It doesn’t have dual exhausts. We keep the other tip painted inside.” - Jeff Cannon
Photo by David Conwill
Earth shaking. Ground pounding. Those are a couple of choice adjectives that describe Steve Kaiser’s 1970 'Cuda as it crackled by us during Hemmings Musclepalooza at Maple Grove Raceway on the way to the staging lanes. Kaiser then took it up a notch by doing a rowdy burnout and hanging the hoops on an 8.80 pass at 151 mph. After our ears stopped ringing, we tracked him down to get the details.
If you noticed the name Kaiser in gold leaf on the door, you might be wondering who that is. Steve Kaiser’s uncle Bob Kaiser started the Twin Hills Oldsmobile dealership in 1977 in Muncy, Pennsylvania, right around the time Olds was getting into drag racing with the glorious G-body Oldsmobile Cutlass. To promote the sport, Oldsmobile gave Uncle Kaiser five Cutlasses to race in the Stock and Super Stock classes. As a young man, Steve Kaiser would vacation at drag strips and attend drag racing events with the family until the age of 16 when he pursued other interests.
During that time, Steve’s father also got into the automotive business and helped create the Kaiser Brothers dealership that expanded into a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram dealership with a larger facility, also in Muncy.
In 2008, Steve got back into cars. He began by installing superchargers on late-model Challengers and Chargers under a license by Mr. Norm out of the Kaiser Brothers dealership. By 2011, he had started looking for a race car. He soon found a 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda that was well known around the Kentucky area and raced by its second owner, Johnny Dotson, a Dodge dealer from Paris, Kentucky. The ‘Cuda was painted in the classic black-and-white Direct Connection colors with a 513-inch 440 under the hood, a 727 transmission, and Dana 60 rear. That combo ran 10.80s in Super Pro and had been a track car since 1978.
Steve bought the car and immediately pulled the drivetrain and sent the car out to get painted to match his uncle’s racing livery. He started running 10.80s-90s in the Pro series with a steep learning curve. “I saw red (lights) a lot,” Steve says, “it was frustrating.” To make matters worse, he broke the block and had to rebuild the engine using a Mopar Performance block and a new rotator. The combo was mostly the same with a 0.60-over block, Indy heads and intake, and a 1050 Dominator.
The second year looked a little bit better, and he started winning rounds, but not races. “I got to the finals, but didn’t win,” Steve says. “I bought back in a lot, I can tell you that, I’m not a professional.” Regardless, Steve had fun racing a serious ‘Cuda for five years. As he got more experienced, he wanted to go faster.
By 2021 he had pulled the 440 and had Brian Tilburg build a 572-inch Hemi to go in its place. The Hemi had Stage V heads and a Keith Black block, a pair of Holley 950s, and an MSD Grid system that uses a crank trigger. The new engine made 1,017 hp on 114-octane VP and the car immediately went from running 10.80s to 9.60s in the quarter mile.
Today, Steve races the ‘Cuda in Nostalgia Super Stock and Hemi Super Stock races near his home in Muncy, Pennsylvania. We found him racing at Hemmings Musclepalooza in Maple Grove.
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