Pre War Pierce Racer.

Taken from a Hot Rod site.

Johnny Junkins Pierce-Arrow

A little more than a year ago, I posted about the Johnny Junkins lakes modified, noting that I’d love to clone that car some day. I also noted that Junkins sold that modified before the 1938 racing season so he could step up to a Pierce-Arrow, a very unusual choice for a pre-war hot rodder, despite Pierce-Arrow’s history of record-setting Bonneville runs.

While checking out the American Hot Rod Federation‘s site today, I came across a post by Jim Miller, the AHRF’s curator and historian, that included a photo and some more information about the Junkins Pierce-Arrow. The photo, above, came from the Tommy Davis Collection and appears to depict the Pierce-Arrow on one of its first outings on May 15, 1938, at Muroc Dry Lake. Jim also ran a scan of the program from that event, in which somebody noted that the Pierce-Arrow ran 92.4 mph.

Miller writes that the car is familiar and that it ran on the dry lakes in the late 1940s, but I’m left wondering what year, make and model the Pierce-Arrow started out as, what size engine it ran (and whether it was modified in any way) and whether Junkins or some other racer built it.