Launched by Greg Weld in 1967, Weld Wheels, the legendary performance wheel company showed up at this year’s PRI show with one of the most controversial, unusual, and most significant racecars ever built. The Kenny Weld built, Gary Balough driven “Batmobile” was on display in the PRI Show’s new and featured product section. Representatives from Weld directed us to the Batmobile car, and the 410 Sprint car of Jarett Andretti, that was prominently displayed in their booth.

Jarett Andretti is the son of John Andretti and the great nephew of Mario Andretti, currently running in the USAC sprint car divisions. In addition to Weld Wheels, Andretti carries Hoosier, Impact Racing, Stoops GMC, Window World, and Schaeffer’s Oil as sponsors. The younger Andretti has won track championships in Indiana and travels across the country under the USAC banner.

The Batmobile

As for the Weld/Balough Batmobile car, it was shown in all of it’s glory in the Halman Friesen Racing Team booth. Bamboozled. That is the only word that truly describes what Kenny Weld and Gary Balough did to the field in 1980 when they showed up at the Syracuse mile forSuper Dirt Week.

The buzz words were ground-effects body and it was entered as a Lincoln Continental Town Car Mark X/1. Telling anyone that would listen, the team explained they had found a loophole in the body rules that took advantage of downforce with side tunnels and a roof that worked like a sprint car wing due to it’s raked profile in the airstream. Painted black with gold lettering, the car even looked sinister. The Batmobile moniker appropriately fit the car like no other label could.

Any doubts about the ground-effects was removed when Balough set the fast time and put the car on the pole with two and a half seconds to spare before the second place car. The Batmobile broke the track record by more than two seconds! All others tried to copy the ground-effects as quickly as possible, just to see who could finish the race in second place for the Schaefer 200 at the end of the week.

Too Late To Do Anything

Because the car had passed tech and found to be legal, there was nothing anyone could do. A few teams attempted to copy Weld’s creation as quickly as they could, many were only able to feebly attempt to change their own cars by using street signs or other sheet metal they could find. All this was to no avail.

The Batmobile dominated the race so soundly that the rules were quickly re-written to legislate the car out of racing, and the car never raced in this configuration again. It wasn’t until much later that the real secret to this car was exposed. Weld admitted that the ground-effects did very little as far as performance. The radiator was relocated to the to the side pods and the louvers on each pod were to cool the radiator not to improve the the aerodynamics of the car. Moving the radiator to the side pod allowed Weld to use a Lincoln grille as part of a sealed forced-air induction system.

Orgasmatron

This ram-air system was judged to be almost 70-percent as effective as a turbocharger at top speed. Weld’s engineering of the air intake worked so well, he was proud of it and gave his system a name. “Orgasmatron” was painted on the hood to celebrate the ingenious system. For those that have not seen the movie, Orgasmatron was the machine that was the substitute for sex in Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper.

This photo was lightened up so the that “Orgasmatron” name is visible on the hood, just inside the Lincoln grille.

At the press conference the team was accused of using exotic metals and expensive parts. Balough set things right by explaining they were using the same engine and parts that other teams were using. They had just taken advantage of aerodynamics. “Air is free,” he famously said. Bamboozled is what we say.