05/30/2026
One day in 1951, A.J. Watson put down his tools at the Lockheed aircraft assembly line in Glendale, California. He walked past his coworkers. Past the time clock. He didn't punch out. He just left. And he never came back.
He had a race to build for.
Watson had tried the responsible route. After seeing his first race at Bonelli Stadium in Saugus in 1947, he built a track roadster and arrived at Indianapolis in 1948 as a mechanic. By 1950, at 26 years old, he'd built his own car for the Indy 500 — but the cost of running it for driver Dick Rathmann drove him back to Lockheed. Back to the assembly line. Back to the steady paycheck.
For one year. Then the 1951 race approached. And Watson walked away from Lockheed. Without a word. Without punching out. Because Indianapolis was calling, and a time clock was not going to answer.
What followed was the most dominant chassis-building career in the history of the Indy 500.
Watson's innovation was elegant. For the 1956 race, he designed his own roadster with the engine and driveline offset 12 inches to the left. The reasoning was pure physics — at Indianapolis, all four turns go left. An offset drivetrain shifted weight to the inside of the corners, improving balance and allowing faster cornering speeds. Simple. Brilliant. The kind of idea that seems obvious after someone else thinks of it.
Pat Flaherty put that first Watson-designed roadster on the pole at a record 145.596 mph — and won the race. The offset roadster concept changed Indianapolis immediately. Everyone else had to adapt or lose.
The previous year, Watson had modified a Frank Kurtis roadster for the John Zink Jr. team, and Bob Sweikert won the 1955 Indy 500 with it. That was Watson's first 500 victory as a builder — before he'd even designed his own car. He won Indy by improving someone else's car. Then he won it again by building his own.
The Watson roadster became the car to have at Indianapolis. By 1958, Watson roadsters monopolized the front row. He built some 23 roadsters over his career. His cars won the Indy 500 in 1959 and 1960 with Rodger Ward driving for Bob Wilke's Leader Card team, in 1962, and in 1963.
And in 1964, when A.J. Foyt won the last Indy 500 ever won by a front-engine car, he was driving a Watson roadster. The final chapter of the front-engine era at Indianapolis was written in a Watson chassis. The last roadster to win the 500 was a Watson. The era ended with his name on the car.
Watson built his cars in a small shop at 421 West Palmer Avenue in Glendale, California. He enticed his old friends from Lockheed to moonlight at cut-rate prices — former aircraft workers building race cars after their day jobs, with plenty of beer in the refrigerator. Aircraft precision applied to racing machinery. The skills that built bombers during the war now built roadsters for the Brickyard.
The partnership with Rodger Ward and Bob Wilke became the dominant combination at Indy and on the USAC championship trail. Watson built the cars. Wilke's Leader Card team funded them. Ward drove them. Together, they owned Indianapolis.
Watson was born May 8, 1924, in Mansfield, Ohio. He came to Los Angeles during World War II as a navigator in the Eighth Army Air Force. After the war, he used the G.I. Bill for Glendale College and worked at Lockheed. A military navigator who became an aircraft assembler who became the greatest racing car builder of his era.
The Fifties were a golden age at Indianapolis. Sleek front-engine roadsters dominated. Ninety percent of them were built by five men who worked within a few miles of each other in Los Angeles. A.J. Watson was the most successful of all — an intuitive, gifted craftsman in the American tradition.
He died May 12, 2014. Four days after his 90th birthday. Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, Class of 1996. Category: At Large. Because A.J. Watson didn't drive. He built. And what he built won the Indy 500 seven times.
The man who walked off the Lockheed assembly line without punching the clock. Because Indianapolis was more important than any time card.
