Oerhli Brothers & McCulloch Info.

[Russ Smith]

Does anyone have any information about Art & John Oerhli who worked for McCulloch back in the "old days"? Art was the grandfather of a friend's wife.

[Tom Smith]

Art Oerhli worked on the Mcculloch/Paxton Supercharger program before McCulloch sold Paxton to Andy Granatelli. Later he built racing engines for Jim Hall's Chaparral Cars, BRE Datsuns, and Richie Ginther's Porsches. Paxton built the superchargers for the Novi Indianapolis race cars when Art worked there. There are some Google images of him from a book about Jim Hall's cars. One of the projects Art did at McCulloch was supercharge the 24th Corvette built.

[Russ Smith]

My friend's wife remembers seeing the Vette at Art's house in 1959. It was sold in order to help pay for a family member's healthcare costs. Art and John bought the car from the president of Standard Oil in Sept. of 1953. They were working for McCulloch and once they had the car they designed the supercharger for it...a difficult feat partly because of the size of the engine compartment vs the size of the SC. In 1955 GM had rejected their SC and replaced the "ole 6 banger" with a V-8. The car was eventually sold and it went to Dave Ferguson who had it restored (the SC had been removed after GM rejected it). With Art and John Oehrli's supervision, they reinstalled the SC and Dan Dempsey (aka The Glassman) fiberglassed it. The '53 Oehrli Corvette (VIN E53F 001 024) is now part of the Lingenfelter Collection which I believe is located in Brighton, MI. In 1988 it was sold to Lingenfelter, an insurance man from Chicago. And that's about the size of it. Art and John got into an argument because John gave his interest in it to his daughter so her fiance' could race it. When their marriage ended two years later, the car went back to John and Art.

OK, I know this is a getting away from go karts, but I thought it interesting.