I know for a fact that there’s a dusty magazine somewhere in the deep recesses of my family’s cabin that has a full feature article on Old Yeller II, but I’d wager there’s more than just one. That’s because the story of Old Yeller II is irresistible.

Designed in the late ’50s by some guy (Max Balchowsky) in L.A. who just knew how to put a race car together, it took on the world’s best factory teams including Jaguar and Ferrari. It looked crude and some of the panels didn’t fit, but when Dr. Ernie Nagamatsu (the car’s current owner and caretaker) got it, it came with too many trophies to fit in a cabinet.

It was powered by a Buick Nailhead V8 because Balchowsky knew that torque was more important than horsepower. He put it way back in the chassis for better weight distribution and fitted it to a Muncie 4-speed transmission, the same kind that would find a place in the Corvette. It might as well be an electric motor, according to Leno, though, because there’s enough torque to get you off the line no matter what gear you’re in.

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The radiator is the shape that it is because Nailheads are hard to cool. Tired of overheating, Balchowsky installed a huge radiator out of a truck to keep the engine running for a whole race. That hints at Balchowsky’s savvy as a race car engineer.

Not satisfied with speed, he worked on reliability and even safety. The front suspension is made up of Jaguar upper A-arms and Studebaker lower A-arms that he drilled, not for lightness, but for crushability. Cognisant of the fact that if you crashed into a wall, you might never walk again, Balchowsky designed in some crumple zones.

That combination made it a winner and that attracted winning drivers, including Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby, fresh off his victory at Le Mans. Leno, after taking the wheel understands immediately why some of the era’s best drivers would want to drive it.

“That is one of the best cars I’ve ever driven,” says Leno as soon as he takes his helmet off. “It’s nimble, it’s fast, it shifts like butter just clicking through the gears, it runs at 160º. You know it’s funny. It looks crude, so you’d think it’d be crude. But it’s not.”