Marty Harty

Car Owner, Car Builder
CLASS OF 2010
Veterans Committee Selection

If one character best symbolizes race car construction in New England in the 1950’s and 1960’s, it may well be Marty Harty. The Barrington, NH native was to the early Ford chassis what Bill Welch was to the Ford flathead.

Harty first began building coupes with his brothers for hired gun driver Leo Richards. His approach was not hammer & torch; instead, he relied on textbooks & tape measures. It worked. He was soon on the road, garage to garage, piecing together cars for other owners. An early Fred Rosner.

In the 1960s, Harty hooked up with one sharp youngster named Vic Kangas. It was a killer combo. The two produced straight axle and A-framed rocket ships for the likes of Tinker Progin, Clayton Thompson, and Reino Tulonen. Perhaps their most notable – and accelerated – achievement was building a modified for Ernie Gahan in literally just a couple of days, and Gahan wheeled it to the NASCAR National Modified Championship in 1966.

He was extraordinarily intelligent, active, and well-informed about the history of short track racing in the northeast. He lived to the ripe old age of 98, passing away on August 12, 2017 in Dover, NH.