Bob Allinger

Bob Allinger was a midget race car builder in the 1930s and the 1940s. The building was paused during WWII, but he continued again after the war. After the war, Bob also built the chassis for The Lee Chapel Tornado Special at his ranch is Saratoga, California.

In 1947 Bob went to Detroit to build the Gold Cup Boat Miss Peps V, driven by Danny Foster, who won the Gold Cup, and all but the Silver Cup that year. He came home from Detroit about 3 months later, finished up The Lee Chapel Tornado Special, and went to El Mirage Dry Lakes for its first running. A Mechanic's Illustrated photographer came to Bob's ranch to take pictures of the car.

In 1955 Bob became the first Volkswagen dealer in San Jose. He sold out in 1956, and started a Sports Car Dealership in Palo Alto, beginning with Mercedes, Alpha Romeo, and Maserati. Later on he added several other foreign cars. The showroom was in Town and Country Village across from Stanford University. Bob's daugther Mariella Allinger Fugua ran the showroom, and Bob ran the shop in Mountain View while his wife did the bookkeeping and ran for parts in San Francisco. According to Mariella, this was not work, it was play day every day. In the early 1960s the family moved their business to Los Gatos, California with Triumph Sports Cars. Bob sold the agency in the mid 1960s, basically retiring, and he took up his hobby at Velvet Paintings, then oils egg tempras. In the early 1970s he built a super modified race car, plus wings and gas tanks for super modifieds. Bob passed away at the age of '73 in 1979, still active in moulding aluminum until a few months before his passing.