On August 18th, the Petersen Automotive Museum’s Director, Dick Messer, announced that the famed Troutman & Barnes Special had been donated to the Petersen Museum’s permanent collection, by its owner Michael Sheehan. The Troutman & Barnes Special is significant in the annals of American road racing in that it was the first complete racecar to be designed and built by Troutman & Barnes, who went on to build such legendary machines as the Scarab and the Chaparral Mk1.
Dick Troutman & Tom Barnes met in 1949 while working for Indy car constructor Frank Kurtis. Their first independent project together, the Troutman & Barnes Special, was built in the garage of Troutman’s Los Angeles area home and was constructed utilizing a spaceframe made up of 2-in diameter tubing, independent front suspension and a live axle with an elaborate floating radius rod arrangement. In its early days, the T&B Special started life with a Ford flathead V-8 but was later switched to a 347-ci Ford V-8 sourced from a Thunderbird. Raced by the likes of Ken Miles and Chuck Daigh, the T&B Special ran in the top three at many West Coast races like Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Paramount Ranch from 1954–1957. The car’s competitiveness caught the eye of a young Lance Reventlow who was interested in building his own car, which resulted in the pair going on to work with Reventlow in 1957 on the Scarab. This successful relationship later opened the door for Troutman and Barnes to work with Jim Hall on the creation of the Chaparral Mk1, as well.
