Found some great info and some photos. Not a bad looking car. Too bad about the lack of interest. I wonder what tracks they were planning to run at?
David.
"USAC was trying to put together a one-make normally aspirated single seater series in the late 1980’s, as a next step for Sprint & Midget drivers and Teams. Roman Slobodynskyj designed 2 prototypes known as “Sabre Cars” to start, Alan Turner (former Team Manager of Graham Hill’s Embassy F1 Program) was in charge of building the prototypes at Jim Chapman Developments in Southern California. The cars had a normally aspirated V6 Buick, the chassis had an Aluminum Honeycomb lower with a composite upper which was made by Swift Race Cars. (Swift was in a unit in the same building as JCD at the time) The car had a Weismann gearbox, used Champ Car tires & wheels with 6 lug nuts on each wheel! Lug nuts were used since USAC sprint and midget teams all used lug nuts therefore they would not need expensive new wheel nut guns, etc. The car was tested and demonstrated at a few short Ovals as USAC was trying to see if there was enough interest in trying to do a series. The car even ran at Indy turning laps around 190mph, George Snider drove. However there was little interest at the time and the project stopped at 2 cars, until a gentleman named Tomonori Tsurumaki decided he wanted a race series to go with his new track Autopolis in southern Japan. Remember Autopolis sponsored the Benetton cars of the late 80’s. Tomonori Tsurumaki ordered 30 cars as complete runners, the cars were assembled at Roman’s shop in Anaheim, CA, which was called USA Race Cars, Swift again supplied the composite upper chassis and JCD assembled the chassis and made the suspension parts. 30 complete running cars were delivered for the Grand Opening of Autopolis in November 1990. The original plan was to have numerous CART drivers do a demonstration race, however because of the conflict at the time between CART and the FIA (remember Autopolis was trying to secure the Japanese Grand Prix and did not want to upset the FIA) numerous USAC regulars were selected instead, along with local Japanese drivers. Stan Fox, Johnny Rutherford, Dick Simon, Gary and Tony Betenhausen, were a few who came over and did a demonstration race. After the grand opening Mr. Tsurumaki hope was to have a series of races with the cars now know as FC-45 “Formula Crane” however just a few races were run in 1991, with just a hand full of cars. Not long after and having failed to secure the Japanese Grand Prix Autopolis filed for bankruptcy, all assets including the cars were sold at auction. The track is still used for numerous Japanese national events."
Stan Fox
Aerial view
Starting lineup
