The Shelby American (Summer 2022)

24/7, who turned out 93 Liberty ships, fleet oilers and tankers. It’s record build was 33 days from keel-laying to the fitting out of a tanker. The ship- yard was closed and sold off in the fall of 1945 when the need for ships dimin- ished. As the Grant story unfolds, Wilbur Grant made his way back to Min- nesota to collect his wife and two boys. With wartime shortages in force, the sale of the farm’s equipment and household goods was well attended and resulted in enough proceeds to buy a new 1942 Pontiac Streamliner Torpedo, which the family used to tow a home-made trailer back to Califor- nia with their remaining belongings. After buying a home in San Rafael for $3,500, dad went to work at Marinship and mom went about rais- ing her family, which expanded in 1943 when Betty Jean Grant was born. Several times a year the family drove over to Modesto where mom had relatives and they were struck by the comparison to Minnesota; in the valley it was always sunny, it was warm, and the fruit and almond trees were in blossom in the spring. It was beautiful. The decision was made on one of those trips to move to Modesto after the war, and in 1946 the Grant family did just that. The house they bought in Modesto was small and dad went about adding an extra bedroom for Betty Jean, and a garage. Dad bought the lot behind theirs to build a bigger house for the family and quickly began to buy other lots and build spec houses for the wave of families flocking to the valley. When single lots became too expensive by the late ‘40s, dad bought and subdi- vided ten acres and that was the be- ginning for W.E. Grant, General Contractor. Dad was a practical businessman and mom was teacher, so the kids were expected to go to college. Allen’s older brother was a scholar; he couldn’t change a tire, but he sailed through high school on his way, eventually, to a PhD. at Stanford. Allen took a differ- ent approach; he did what he needed to pass the college prep curriculum, but his real interest was in anything mechanical. His buddies had cars and that was their primary focus, although Allen didn’t get involved in auto shop at school. The deal in the Grant family was at 16 you got a car that was to last you through high school and college, so 16-year old Allen was soon the proud owner of a 1950 Pontiac Catalina coupe. About a week after he got the car, dad came home to find Allen in- stalling lowering blocks. Dad’s com- ment was, “ That’s going ride like a buckboard .” Allen’s response: “ Oh but Dad, it’s going to look good .” Allen and his crew would work on their cars and then go down to 10th Street in Modesto (a two-way street in those days) to cruise the ten blocks between G Street and O Street, where they could check their reflection in the store windows while working the tim- ing just right to end up next to a car load of girls, or another hot rod, at each of the ten stop lights. After get- ting bored dragging 10th Street, the boys would meet at the Burgess Drive- In, get cherry cokes and a bag of fries and decide who was going to play “ditch” that night. One car would be given a head start and the ditchees would race around town trying to catch the ditcher. Allen learned to broad-slide the big Catalina through the turns in the residential neighbor- hoods of Modesto. Some of Allen’s buddies had sports cars – an MGA, a Porsche, a TR3, and so forth. One of those kids asked Allen to ride along up into the foothills and flipped him the keys to the MGA on the way back. Allen remembers vividly to this day, “ I went into a turn, tapped the brakes, turned the wheel and the car did not lean, the tires did not squeal, it went around that turn like it was glued to the road. I was hooked .” The Catalina was soon off to its next owner, along with everything else that Allen could sell quickly, and he accumulated about half the money needed as a downpayment on a new, bright-red 1959 Austin Healey 3000. His Dad co-signed the note for the bal- ance of the cost but made Allen go to the bank to sign the note as well, on the promise that he would make all the payments. After a couple of modifications to the car, Allen started to enter gymkhana and auto-cross events, with immediate success. About this time he fell in with a group known as “Ecurie AWOL,” most of whom worked on their sports cars at The Foreign Car Service on Scenic Drive in Modesto. One of the younger kids who was often at the shop was modifying his Auto- bianchi (basically an Italian version of a Mini-Cooper, without the horse- power). George Lucas was four years behind Allen Grant at high school and, like Allen, had little interest in aca- demics but a great interest in racing cars. Young Lucas rolled that car, de- spite a lack of horsepower, so the Ecurie AWOL guys helped him cut off the roof, install a windscreen and a roll bar. Later Lucas was T-boned in The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer 2022 57