Steadfast Wings

A company called Harvey Aluminum sponsored racing legend Mickey Thompson’s Indy cars in 1962 and 1963. For ’62, Thompson and British designer John Crosthwaite built three of the lightweight Harvey Aluminum Specials, all powered by Buick V-8 engines.

One of these, driven by Dan Gurney, qualified for eighth position at 147.886 mph. Gurney averaged 146 mph for nearly half the race before being forced out by a popped 35-cent oil seal in the rear end. That finish was still good enough for 20th place and $5,161 in prize money and, perhaps more importantly, Thompson also received the D-A Lubricant Mechanical Achievement Award.

For ’63, Thompson went to Indy with two of the ’62 cars plus three new cars that were built lower and wider. Thompson’s cars now had aluminum block Chevrolet engines mounted behind the driver, and two qualified. One of them blew an engine, and the other was driven to ninth place by Al Miller.

At this point in history, Harvey Aluminum was, of course, a big company. It was acquired a few years later by Martin Marietta, but the end of the Harvey Aluminum story is not near as interesting as the beginning. We uncovered a couple of relics from that beginning in a box of old parts purchased at auction:

Before the company was Harvey Aluminum, it was the Harvey Machine Company. Harvey Machine was started by Leo M. Harvey, a young man who had been born Leo Mayer Horowitz in Lithuania in 1887. He arrived in the United States in 1907 and changed his name to Harvey by randomly selecting it from a phone book during the immigration process. A few years later, he moved to California and started the machine shop on the main street of Los Angeles. Harvey was a go-getter and an inventor that owned the patent rights to something like two hundred items. The machine shop evolved to become the world’s largest independent producer of aluminum extrusion products for the automobile, airplane and building trades industries, and Harvey’s businesses made airplane parts during both World Wars. Originally a subsidiary of Harvey Machine, Harvey Aluminum became the corporate name in 1958.

We initially thought these parts were early windshield parts. They had some helpful markings, however, which indicated they were “Steadfast Wings,” made in Los Angeles by Harvey Machine Co.

Those markings led to a 1925 patent and the discovery that these parts are actually the brackets for an accessory wind deflector that would have held a pane of glass between them. They were mounted on the doors of closed cars as seen in these drawings from the patent:

The name “Steadfast Wings” is wonderful, but in advertising they were called by the generic, but less poetic, name of wind wings.

There were actually many manufacturers of wind wings of diverse designs, and they were a wildly popular accessory. This 1925 Chevy is sporting a different version:

They were valued for their looks as much as their utilitarian worth, and they even made a handy place to attach a couple of mirrors as seen on this 1927 Dodge Brothers Roadster:

As my husband frequently reminds me, I can’t keep ALL the old car parts, but I am keeping these, at least for now, because I like their name, their look, and the true American success story behind them.