The Watson-Offy roadster known as Ol’ Calhoun enjoyed an illustrious career even before it won the 1963 Indianapolis 500 with driver Parnelli Jones.
The saga of Ol’ Calhoun actually starts here in 1960, when J.C. Agajanian, a wealthy Southern California hog rancher and refuse collector with a passion for racing, purchased a new Watson roadster. The chassis is regarded as number 10 of the 23 Indy roadster chassis officially constructed by A.J. Watson himself.
For its debut at Indianapolis that year, the car carried Agajanian’s familiar number 98, but the bodywork was painted deep red and Texan Lloyd Ruby was behind the wheel (above). The USAC star from Wichita Falls started 12th and finished 7th at Indy driving for Agajanian, and also competed at both Milwaukee USAC Championship races that year with the Watson.
When the Agajanian team returned to the Speedway in May of 1961, the Watson was sporting a new red, white, and blue paint scheme (above) and a new pilot, Parnelli Jones, a young sprint car ace from Torrence, California. As Jones tells the story, it was he who gave the car its name Calhoun, after an old football joke with the tagline, “Give the ball to Calhoun.” (More formally, the car was known as the Willard Battery Special.) Jones started fifth and finished 12th in his first appearance at Indy, leading 27 laps and sharing Rookie of the Year honors with Bobby Marshman. Parnelli also drove Calhoun at Milwaukee that year, where he qualified second and finished 23rd.
For 1962 the Agajanian crew had the Watson-Offy combination honed to a razor’s edge for Indy, as Jones qualified Calhoun on the pole with a speed of 150.370 mph, becoming the first to officially eclipse the 150 mph mark on the 2.5-mile oval. Agajanian, above, in his trademark cowboy hat, holds the pit board marking the achievement. Jones and Calhoun dominated the first 300 miles of the race, leading 120 laps with ease, but brake problems crippled his pit stops and he slipped to 7th at the finish.
For 1963, Calhoun was sporting a handful of subtle improvements, above: a longer exhaust collector for the four-cylinder Meyer-Drake “Offy” engine, a pair of smooth aerodynamic fairings on the nose to shroud the front suspension, and a longer, lower outboard oil tank mounted just behind the left front wheel.
The oil tank became a famous piece of Speedway lore in the 1963 race. Jones again qualified on the pole, and with 50 laps to go enjoyed a 43-second lead over the Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark in second. But streaks of oil could be seen on Calhoun’s tail, and observers reported that the oil tank, apparently cracked at its mounting lug, was leaking oil onto the track, an extreme hazard. Agajanian somehow managed to convince race officials not to throw the black flag, that the leak had stopped once the oil level dropped below the crack. Clark held his position in second place over the closing laps, and Parnelli earned the Borg-Warner Trophy that year.
Parnelli and Calhoun returned to the Speedway in 1964 as defending champions, and with a few more improvements (above) including another revised exhaust pipe, a giant air intake to feed the hungry methanol-burning Offy, and for qualifying, a set of sleek Bonneville-style wheel covers. For ’64, the Agajanian car carried the white, red, and black livery of Bowes Seal-Fast, a familiar name at Indy, replacing Williard Batteries as chief sponsor.
Jones and Calhoun got off to a promising start at Indy that May, starting on the inside of the second row, and managed to avoid the tragic first lap accident and fire that took the lives of Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs. But Parnelli would suffer a fire of his own on lap 55, forcing him to bail out of the car in dramatic fashion as it rolled down pit lane, enveloped in invisible methanol flames. The 1964 Indy 500 was Calhoun’s final start.
At some point after the 1964 race, Ol’ Calhoun was acquired by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, and you can see it there on display, carrying its winning 1963 paint scheme. The photo below was snapped during a 2018 visit to the museum, where the car was parked next the Indy-winning Watson-Offys of Jim Rathman (number 4, 1960) and Rodger Ward (number 3, 1962). All told, Watson roadsters won the Indy 500 six times, and ‘Ol Calhoun might be the most famous of the bunch. Above photos by Indianapolis Motor Speedway
I love the old roadsters as well as the 1st generation of the rear engine cars too. There is a sameness to today’s spec cars I cannot get interested in. Just think, there were years there were you had both gasoline and ethanol powered cars with Offys, OHC V8’s and stock block v8’s all on the track at the same time! And who could forget the sound of the NOVI V8!
Edward, you would enjoy the book Black Noon, the Day They Stopped the Indy 500. I bought it a few years ago and couldn’t put it down. It’s all about the era that you described.
Agreed, amazing book. A day by day account of of the Month of May. One thing though, as I seem to remember in the book, that Eddie Sachs finished 2nd in ’63, and would have announced his retirement in Victory Lane had he won. Which would have kept him from that wreck in ’64. I’ve known Eddie’s son for years. I ended up lettering his stock cars. And if Eddie was the Clown Prince, his wife Mary was definitely the Princess. She was every bit as funny as Eddie was said to be.
Cool story. I never knew the car was originally red or that it ran the 500 five times. Gonna miss the race this year.