In 1965 Bob McKee built his third complete race car to be driven in the USSRC series for driver Bob Johnson. The car was said to have been ordered to be able to be fitted with a small block Ford, big block Ford, or a Ford 4-cam Indy car engine. Since McKee's first two cars were called the Chevettes and loaded with back-door Chevrolet racing parts, people began to wonder if it was a similar "Chevrolet effort" to the Chaparrals. This car was told to be ordered by Ford racing legend Carol Shelby himself. After the first year of racing the original nose of the car was wrecked and the team ws given a lotus 18 nose as replacement by Dan Gurney. As with many outdated race cars of the time, it was modified to be made more useful and was essentially forgotten after it was fitted with the closed cockpit body of a 1969 Lola T70 Mk3b in the very early 1970's.

Oddly enough, many people with racing history knowledge have seen the car over the years, but didn't give the dirty old race car enough credit to see what it was all about and likely felt the odd hybrid was not worth their time. Casey Putsch enjoys restoring his cars and was glad to be able to acquire a car with the intention to race it in vintage Can-Am events, regardless of its history. Being inquisitive, it didn't take long by sifting through books and old magazines to have a hunch that the car was special. Fortunately the original builder of the car, Bob McKee, still has his shop outside of Chicago and was able to identify his third car!

The restoration of the Mk3 McKee was completed to the configuration that it last ran in with the Lola body. The chassis was finished correctly for the original McKee so that it would be relatively easy to build and install an original style body in the future. The quality of craft used by Bob McKee when building this car was evident by the crack testing results. After 44 years, there were NO cracks found in the suspension and the chassis had only two small cracks at the most stressed part of the frame. Another very fine piece of work by Mr. McKee.


Photos
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Historical Photos



Restoration