Jim Lytle, the creative genius behind the wild “Big Al” Allison powered 1934 Ford and the man who introduced drag racing to the one piece fiberglass body has died. Lytle passed in Hawaii, a place that he had been living for more than 20 years. His ’34 was the fastest bodied car in drag racing during the time it ran in the early 1960s. With a 3,000hp aircraft engine on board, that is no surprise. Lytle’s magnum opus was a four Allison powered competition coupe called the, “Quad Al” was nearly completed but never saw active time on the strip after it was bought by Tex Collins and Collins was killed. The chassis survives but the near $100,000 Allison engines are so expensive it will probably never see the light of day again.
Lytle was a draftsman by trade in his younger days and after spending time in the military, recognized the power and cool factor of the Allison engine. He also realized that for less than $200 you could have an engine designed to run for hundreds of hours at nearly full bore in a plane that made 3,000hp. His first “Big Al” actually used a steel body and after getting the package sorted out, that quickly became a problem. The car would lose the hood and doors because of the air pressure built up in the cabin at the speeds Lytle was going.
Those issues are what prompted him, a guy with absolutely no fiberglass experience at all, to build the one piece body with the one foot chop and mail slot windows for a second version of Big Al. That was the first one piece body in drag racing history and if you want to believe the stories, which we do, it prompted the guys at Mercury to put one piece bodies on the first psudeo-modern funny cars they rolled out to the public in 1966 after seeing the Big Al car in public.
Jim Lytle’s cars may have been on the freakish side, but his contributions to the sport are valuable and long lasting. Hell, today’s NASA-like carbon fiber bodies owe their existence to a wildly creative draftsman from California nearly 50 years ago. You really cannot make this stuff up.
Here’s hoping Jim is smoking all eight tires on Quad Al at the big strip in the sky. (Wally Parks is probably shaking his head in semi-disapproval and we’re more than OK with that!)
Soon all those who paved the way for us will be gone…………RIP
So sad to hear. I remember the first time I saw this car fire up coming down the strip at Long Beach from the other end with Jim’s head sticking out with the white helmet and the Bell ‘bubble shield” sticking out the roof. His cars were always that medium blue in color( but always nicely painted) which made the head look even bigger. If you ever run across video, you need to watch as this was the kind of things we saw at the “Beach” in the middle 60’s when “Pappy Hart ” was running the place and he liked all this kind of one off stuff.The sound was rally something to behold for that era. RIP, to a great innovator.
I remember these veehicles from magazines, They were all so awesome. He will be remembered for his ccontributions!!!!
One really creative guy.
One really incredible trophy room at his house.
A Gear Head for sure.
One really great memory – being with Jim and firing up one of his Allison engines at a major car show at the Long Beach Sports Area at the end of the show. Blowing fire out of 12 cylinders and a roar that I thought would blow out the windows. The place when nuts. It was Great.
He was a good friend and will miss him.