BOOK REVIEW: MALLOY

First things first: this is a big, beautiful, heavy, horizontal format, hardbound, coffee table book** that really catches the eye with a whole passel of wonderful photography of classic vintage race cars being put through their paces in fine style by a guy who didn’t start racing until he was in his early fifties.  His name is Tom Malloy, and his roots go deep in local racing here.

As the under title on the cover of his book notes, Tom Malloy is “Emmett’s Son”.  That would be Emmett Malloy, a general engineering contractor who specialized in huge excavation and earthwork projects that helped to build a huge swath of Los Angeles’ great manufacturing and commerce centers in the years before World War 2 and well beyond. 

As it happened, Emmett was something of a motor racing fan and, with his earth moving experience and skills he was able to convert some swampy Gardena lowlands into one-half-mile dirt oval track that was first called the “Gardena Bowl” and later was better known as “Carrell Speedway” in honor of the local Justice of the Peace Judge Frank Carrell who owned the property.  

At about that time another indelible name came on the scene. J.C. Agajanian.  He wanted to be a racing driver, his father forbade it and (happily) motorsports was gifted with one of the most colorful, and successful car owners and racing promoters who ever put on a racing event.  The track that eventually superseded Carrell, Ascot Speedway was just down the road. 

Emmett’s interest (make that passion) for racing cars lead him to become a very successful car owner with a litany of great drivers piloting his cars at races across the country and on to the biggest prizefight of them all, the Indy 500. 

Son Tom, who, like J.C. Agajanian, was forbidden to race cars, never lost the passion as we see a few chapters in.  Malloy built his father’s business into a world-class company that worked with the heavy construction industry to provide safe environments for excavations and other services, but the blue smoke and tire-shredding hook was set.

This story takes readers on a remarkable journey of burgeoning business and Tom Malloy’s own late in life challenge to actually race some of the many classic racing cars that he had collected.  So, he, (as noted above) at age 52, a successful business and family man, decided to become something that he so aspired to as a youngster, a bona fide racing driver.  At the same time, just as his father before him, Malloy began sponsoring racing drivers at West Coast events going on to a return to the Indianapolis 500 in 1988 with Rocky Moran piloting the Trench Shoring/Foyt/Skoal March86C.

The middle chapters of Malloy’s race log are filled with his adventures driving many of the famous cars in his collection in vintage racing events across the country and event on to Europe, where he took part in a number of re-stagings of classic motorsports events in some of the very cars that were raced there in the days of their glory. 

As is quite evident throughout this very personal book, Malloy had great fun in racing many of the classic race cars that he owned at tracks across the country.  But racing, even at the vintage car level is still a very dangerous endeavor, and one episode at the high speed, challenging, four-mile-long Road America race track in upstate Wisconsin almost put a final exclamation point on the man’s competition driving...  

Racing a Formula 5000 Lola 300 Malloy was knocked off the course by another driver who (at about 160 miles per hour) made a very bonehead move choosing the wrong time and place to try to get by.  

His car was a ball of junk and Malloy, who literally had to be cut out of the car, spent a long time in hospital and ended up with a 20-inch long titanium rod in his leg as a reminder of just how serious vintage car racing can be.

This story of Tom Malloy’s adventures on the racetrack is a good one, and his collection of significant racing cars is another. There’s an entire catalog of classic racing cars that Malloy has not only amassed and driven, but used as a tool for good, hosting many charity events taking place among his very special collection.

One of the highlights of this beautifully-mounted book, there are at least 100 pages of information (and wonderful color photography) of the indelible racing cars and rich racing memorabilia that Malloy has collected and had restored in his fully-equipped onsite workshop over the years.  

Acting as something of a guided tour, there is page after page of photos and information on the classic helmets, trophies, sculptures, photos, paintings, signs, models, posters, clothing***, parts and pieces of racing cars all that evoke a sense of great love of the sport and a pride in being part of it.

On a very unique note, his collection boasts BOTH cars that “won” the 1981 Indianapolis 500!  Bobby Unser was declared the winner on the track but Mario Andretti’s car owner protested and Andretti was hailed as the winner the day after the race. Unser’s owner counter-protested and, five long months after the checkered flag flew, Unser was reinstated as the winner. 

The two cars sit quietly now, but the sense of their unique history continues to vibrate in them.

Chapter 22 starts out: “Driving at full clip on the Auto Club Speedway, Tom Malloy felt a knife-like pain in his chest.” and follows up with him saying, “...I figured that once the race was over I’d get a drink of water back at the garage and the pain would go away.” It didn’t.  He had suffered a heart attack that would take him out of the driver’s seat but not out of the paddock. 

Like his father Emmett before him, Malloy got busy sponsoring and fielding race cars in both Vintage and professional United States Auto Club events, winning the 80th running of the legendary “Turkey Night Grand Prix” in 2021.  

Oh yeah, he also planned to build a world-class, multi-million-dollar motorsports racing facility up in the high desert just Northwest of Los Angeles, that saga is here told in great detail here (spoiler alert: sadly it did not end well at all).

Malloy was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2024. 

Along the way here, there’s some very warm-hearted family information that’s an integral part of this amazingly colorful personal story of passion and purpose. – Doug Stokes

Reviewer's Notes

Most know that I’m a fan**** of good indexes for books that relate history, facts, figures, people, and places.  They can be a very useful guide to the book itself.  Tom Malloy’s book has a very good one.  Malloy also has two and two-thirds full pages of his acknowledgments which are something of a great story of people and places in themselves.

Footnotes:

* The quote at the beginning of this review is from the Publisher, but it’s pretty spot on. 

** Regarding the coffee table book reference: It’s best to have a structural engineer take a look-see at your proposed place of honor for this one … this six-pound book, spread out to its full two page (28.5 inches across) reading configuration really begs for an old fashion book stand or pretty much the entire top half of a desk or the kitchen table. 

*** Regarding the page after page of photos and information on the classic helmets, trophies, sculptures, photos, paintings, signs, models, posters, clothing: Under “clothing” visitors might spy a shredded “Trench Shoring” driver’s suit hanging limply in tatters. Right, its Tom’s from his “big one” at Road America,

**** Regarding the reference to being a fan of good indexes for books, LACar readers never saw a review of two new publications that I received both of which dealt with the Long Beach Grand Prix event. That’s because I did not write one … sorry, but neither book had any sort of index.