Frank Kurtis was one of the biggest names in the history of US auto racing.

His cars dominated the Indianapolis 500 race in the early 1950s, winning every year but one from 1950 to 1956, and continued to feature prominently until the end of the decade.

Of Slovenian extraction, Frank Kurtis was born in Crested Butte, Colorado in 1908.

He later worked on the Don Lee Racing Team's midget cars and in the late 1930s built his own midget car chassis, calling it the 'Kurtis-Kraft'.

Kurtis is credited with making an estimated 550-plus midget cars and some 600 kits at his Glendale, California factory, and he also built quarter-midgets, sports cars, sprint cars and championship (Indianapolis) cars.

The latter were powered by the ubiquitous Offenhauser engine while the midgets used a smaller version of the classic four-cylinder 'Offy'.

In 1986 Kurtis became the first non-driver inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame, which describes the combination of a Kurtis-Kraft chas...