![]() In 1951, the Cleveland Sport Car Club was chartered. As a result, sports car clubs started to form as well. Foreign car dealers started to sprout up, particularly in large cities like Cleveland. Returning from Europe, many servicemen had been taken by the roadsters and sports cars that they had seen or even driven. And with war-bond drives and the lack of consumer products being made during the war, there was plenty of money that had been saved up to spend. The end of World War II brought two things: A desire to have fun and a desire to spend money. “Everybody loved that place,” says Carl Goodwin, who attended the races as a student at Shaker Heights High School and later wrote a book on them. For eight years, the island was the site of an event that seems almost fantastic now: a road race on the city’s streets, with no serious injuries and a wonderful, collegial atmosphere that participants and spectators to this day try to re-create annually. (photo by Stu Kerr)īojalad’s racing career was a brief one, but Put-in-Bay holds a special place in his heart, and not just because he won. Participation was limited to sport racers with engines of 1.5 liters or smaller, or production sports cars with engines of 2 liters or smaller. It was his car, and he wanted to keep it, so he put the car into neutral - and coasted across the finish line to win the race. He also noticed his oil pressure was high. As he neared the course’s end, he noticed a Porsche coming up behind him. My brothers came with me to the races just so they could call my mother and tell her I was still alive.”īy Bojalad’s own estimation, he hit the hay bales put up at every turn on the 3.1-mile road race. “I was so pissed off, I drove like a madman. “It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he recalls. Bojalad was the 13th out of 14 cars in his race. Instead, drivers drew from a hat to learn their starting position. But what was the point of having a car like that if he couldn’t race it? He’d heard about a road race at Put-in-Bay, so in June 1955, “I put my suitcase in my trunk, went up to Put-in-Bay and painted a number on my car to race it,” Bojalad recalls.īecause it was on public roads, and shutting them down for even one day was a tall order, there was no qualifying race. He called the company in England from his home in Pittsburgh and ordered one. He spotted the AC Ace at a road race at Watkins Glen, New York, and was thrilled at the price, well within his range at around $3,000. In the fall of 1954, Joe Bojalad fell in love - with a British sports car.
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