Phyllis  comes home
By Robin Wayne
 
Dick Briggs, Ken Brenn's longtime crew chief, bought and lovingly restored
one of  Brenn's offys.  She raced in Connecticut, California, Indiana, Arizona,  NJ and Ohio and did well at all of them.  She won with many
legendary drivers. Len Duncan, Larry Dickson, Bobby Unser, Don Branson,
and many others.

 He found Phyllis in Dicksberry NJ in October  98.  A friend of Briggs
introduced him to the widow of the owner and he bought Phyllis from her.  Her
husband was going to restore her but passed away before he could get started

Dick worked on it non stop for 18 months 6 days a week. He finished the
restoration in May 2000.  He rebuilt the linkage, engine, brakes until they
looked like new and changed the exhaust back to its original configuration. 
He had to get new sheet metal because the skin  was filled with assorted
drill holes due to the many changes it had gone through.  He said ' The
Frame, seat and  steering wheel are still original. but I had to remake the
body, I knew the car in my head and since everything was hand made
anyhow, I refabricated the whole car back to the way she was in 66';  He put
some favorite chassis setups in her when he rebuilt her.  Relieved the
memories of former races while he was restoring her and it took him back in
time "when I was redoing the car , my mind went back to the 1960's" it felt
like I was doing it only yesterday when you get  into it. It also brought back
memories of other things that were going on at that time. "She's like part of
my family" Says Briggs.

She is fully functional. He  drove her around the track for a couple of 
parade laps during vintage car show at  Hershey  Penn where Phyllis won the
senior award  and was nominated for national award. A few months later he
received notification that he won the  2000 Antique Automotive Club of
America National Award.

" The reason she was named Phyllis because she was so ugly". Stated 
Briggs. She is a Trevis craft midget and Only 4 cars like her were ever made.
Midget drivers didn't like her because she 'felt' more like a sprint car than a
midget. That was because her suspension was designed to be more like a
sprint but with midget car proportions. She was the first car with cross torsion
bars, ( the other cars torsion bars went parallel.) The  bars going across
nose in effect, gave it a Longer wheel base and smoothed the ride out so it
tracked much better, but it makes itlean in corners. Thus, Sprint drivers loved
her more than midget drivers did. The car wore the number one because
Duncan was champion last year. " Len Duncan didn't like car  because of the
way  it drove, he couldn't get used to the feeling." Said Briggs " He only drove
it for 6 months then he left to drive for someone else."

Larry Dickson took over at that point. He drove six races for Brenn  that
year in Phyllis and won all six of them. Since he was a sprint car driver, he
was used to it leaning. The next year,  Don Branson won the Hot Hundred in
Terre Haute Indiana. He was suppose to drive her in the Turkey Night race a
few weeks later, but he was killed the week before the race was scheduled .
Someone else drove her that race and Phyllis lead the race for 80 laps of the
100 lap race until the shock bracket broke off.

When Brenn sold her, Phyllis raced  for  eight more years before she was
parked in the  back of the garage and forgotten about.  When Briggs found
her, she had been stored in someone's garage for about 20 years.

Briggs bought the car and brought her back home. The first photo was taken
just after she was loaded onto the trailer.  The after photo of the
refinished Phyllis, which looks like a spitting image of the car in vintage
photos of 1966, was taken at the 2001 Pennzoil Motorsports show in
Pennsylvania.