Jud Phillips

I want to start this post by saying that I knew nothing about the Allied bodies until a few years ago when my wife got me The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-1976. In addition to the normal brands and models, there was a whole section on small production vehicles (ie. Tucker, Crosley, King Midget) which also included quite a few one off prototypes. Amongst those was a listing for a Multiplex car which was made in my hometown of Berwick PA. I knew of the Multiplex company since they produced valves, but never heard of them making a car. I called my Dad and he said, yes, they made a few in the early 1900s, and then tried to make a couple after WWII. It didn't come to anything though. Intrigued I found a picture of that prototype car on the Net, but didn't really look any further.

A couple of years later, when I was browsing about, looking at pictures of old Italian eceterini cars, I accidentally found a man who had one of these Allied body cars for sale. Knowing what they looked like, I called him about it, and he mentioned that the car he had was thought to have been built by a racecar builder named Jud Phillips, but he had no actual proof. I was infatuated enough with the body, that I probably wouldn't have cared, but I got curious since I'd never heard of Jud Phillips. After reading everything I could find about him on the Net, I contacted a man, Paul Daitlovich in Indianapolis who had gotten his start working for Jud years ago. I sent him a picture of my car, and called him. He'd never actually seen the car, but he'd seen the picture on evening when after a long day in the shop, he'd asked Jud why he had an Offenhauser 220 engine sitting on a stand in the corner. According to Paul, Jud intended to build a sportscar to drive around, but abandoned the project after he got busy with too many other things. That's how I started to research what I'd bought.

Jud Phillips was born and raised in Southern California, had gone to war in Europe as a member of the US Army, and had been a mechanic over there. Upon returning home, he got a job with one of the newer Lincoln Mercury dealerships in the LA area: Estes Lincoln Mercury. There's probably a whole other post I could do regarding Bob Estes, since he was a huge promoter of everything from sprint cars, to the Panamerican races, to economy runs, and eventually funded efforts in foreign car dealerships, and foreign car distribution. Jud, along with AJ Watson were assigned to build racecars mostly for oval track purposes. Jud helped prepare Estes' cars for the Panmerican road races of the early '50s as well. Since the dealership promoted Lincoln Mercury products (which as you'll see later helped me make a decision restoring this car), Jud worked extremely hard to make the Flathead Ford engine competitive against the monopoly that Offenhauser had in oval track racing.

In those days, the oval world was sanctioned by AAA (yep, the same folks who will tow your car if you break down). The Indianapolis 500 was just one of the league of races that existed all over the country in places like Langhorne, Altoona, and so forth. Board tracks still existed, though most were started to deteriorate, and dirt tracks were very popular. Midget racing had sprung up in the postwar years, and had a huge following. Jud built the cars, and followed the team around the country winning some, losing others. It wasn't a high dollar situation, and the best reading on the era I've found is in Chris Economaki's book "Let Em All Run". At one point, Jud's car almost won the Indy 500 against the Offy dominated field, only to have gearbox failure in the last few laps. Jud at the time was single, but had gotten interested in a young widow, Sally Rigsby whose former husband was a racecar driver and had died in a race some years previously.

By the later part of the decade AJ Watson had gone on to Wendell Wilkie's Leader Card team, and started having enormous success throughout what is known as the Roadster Period of Indy cars. Jud left Estes a year or so after that, also joining Leader Card. He continued on building race cars into the 1980s, most famously being the chief mechanic for Bobby Unser's winning Indy 500 car in 1968. He was an all around great team manager, and phenomenal mechanic, but best known for his engine building. He passed away in 1989, and kept that Offy 220 for the rest of his life.