Much of midget car racing’s enduring popularity can be attributed to its accessibility. The formula offers would-be champions with big dreams a relatively approachable means of getting onto the track and—with a little luck—onto the podium. And if things went just right, success while racing midgets could lead to a career in a higher-profile series.

The midget racer offered here is an authentic period-built piece. While documentation of its past is apparently somewhat scarce, previous owner Elmer Duellman has recounted that Larry Bumpus of Charleston, West Virginia, built “Steed” and drove it on local dirt tracks until 1941. After World War II, Bumpus partnered with “Smokey” Stover and continued racing the car from 1947 to 1955 at tracks in the Mountain State, as well as in Indiana and Ohio. Afterward it returned to storage and remained there until Earl Summers restored and brought it to California in August 1971. Later, Duellman acquired the car from Dean Francis and kept it on display in his Auto & Toy Museum in Fountain City, Wisconsin, for many years. The current owner acquired the midget racer from the Duellman family in 2022.

Inspection shows that the car is presently powered by what appears to be a Simca-built Ford flathead V-8 of larger displacement, featuring Edelbrock aluminum heads, side exhaust, and an Eddie Meyer aluminum intake with dual downdraft carburetors. The chassis was built similarly to the famous Kurtis Kraft racers and equipped with a Ross steering gear and chromed suspension components. Wearing an older restoration done in the late 1960s or early 1970s, it has a very attractive patina appropriate to an old racer and likely looks very much as it did when running hard on West Virginia tracks back in its glory days.

This is a wonderfully evocative piece of racing engineering.