Most competitive off-road racers have descended from Big Oly in some way.
It should be on permanent display in the Smithsonian’s gallery of awesome.
Instead, here’s the Big Oly Bronco sitting in the dusty front yard of photographer Todd Blubaugh’s home in Pioneertown, California, 30 miles north of Palm Springs. Big Oly is a 50-year-old artifact but somehow as ageless as the desert that surrounds it. Still relevant. No, it doesn’t represent Parnelli Jones’s greatest racing achievement. It is, however, likely to be the most enduring part of his legacy.
There’s nothing temperamental about it. The 351-cubic-inch Ford Windsor V-8 starts up almost instantly. No starter fluid dumped into the Holley 650 four-barrel carburetor, no fiddling with the distributor cap, no reason to crank it until the battery drains. It rumbles through the side exhaust but doesn’t roar. This isn’t a high-strung power- plant; it’s been built to lope across the Mexican desert, not scream around a road course. Output is, at the most, maybe 400 hp. Likely less. The engine is part NASCAR and a bigger part 1970 Torino Squire station wagon.
But the three-speed automatic transmission won’t shift into reverse. “It’s been sitting a long time,” explains Christopher Caram, who manages the collection of Phillip Sarofim, Oly’s current caretaker.
This story originally appeared in Volume 9 of Road & Track.
“It probably needs some transmission fluid.”
A few pints of hydraulic rejuvenation later, the ’box drops into reverse with a solid thunk. Amazing for a vehicle that won the 1971 and 1972 Baja 1000s, then sat in Jones’s personal collection virtually untouched for decades.
In frenzied bidding, Sarofim bought Big Oly for $1.87 million (including the 10 percent buyer’s premium) at the Mecum auction in Indianapolis last May. History ain’t cheap.
The radical, tube-frame Big Oly came into existence only after Jones pretty much destroyed stock-based Broncos in earlier races.
Todd Blubaugh
Legend has it that Jones was goaded into entering the Baja 1000. Bill Stroppe, the longtime NASCAR team owner Jones drove for in the Sixties, supposedly needled Jones at a party that he wasn’t tough enough to enter the grueling Baja race. So, in 1968, the pair entered with a Stroppe- prepped, production-based, four-wheel-drive Ford Bronco. Carrying solid front and rear axles and with a heavy transfer case keeping weight up high in the stock pig-iron ladder chassis, that Bronco was neither rugged enough nor optimized for Jones’s balls-out driving style. It broke at the 150-mile mark.
Jones and Stroppe won the 1970 Baja 500 in the “Pony,” a Stroppe-modified two-wheel-drive Bronco that at least had some connection with the production vehicle. Jones wanted more. At first, Stroppe didn’t want to give it to him.
Big Oly’s mostly stock 351 Windsor V-8 is set well back in the engine bay.
Todd Blubaugh
Almost covertly, Jones recruited Dick Russell, who worked for Stroppe, to build a full tube-frame off-road racer. Compared with the previous pro- duction-based Broncos, it would be lighter and tougher, with longer suspension travel. Eventually, Stroppe’s full shop was enrolled in producing the machine that, after gaining Olympia Beer sponsorship, they called Big Oly.
Big Oly’s steering wheel is a stock, large-diameter Ford truck piece with a rubberized rim. The only other stock Ford parts are, apparently, the glove-box door and the brake pedal with the familiar-at-the-time “Disc Brake” logo at its center. Everything else, from the seats to the shifter, is aftermarket or custom fabricated. The front suspension is a narrowed Ford truck twin-I-beam swing-arm setup, while the rear is a Ford 9-inch solid axle suspended on four links, coil springs, and Gabriel shocks. Reportedly, there’s 10 to 12 inches of travel up front and 9 to 10 in the rear. Modest numbers now, huge then.
Narrowed about three inches and sectioned about three inches, the fiberglass body is only inferentially a Bronco. Jones has long insisted the big wing adds stability, but how much? Most of the engineering on Big Oly is eyeballs and best guesses. So, who knows?
The air intake is in the cockpit, poking out of the dash, where it’s well protected and likely to inhale the least amount of dust. There’s a slight whooshing sound as it sucks in atmosphere, even when the truck is at idle. Once it’s in gear, Big Oly rips forward easily. The steering is slow with little feel, the acceleration is easygoing, and the ride is almost cushy—almost. Big Oly ran for the first time a half-century ago, so there wasn’t going to be much jumping today. But putting a foot onto the same stubby steel post that Parnelli Jones used as a dead pedal is transcendent. It’s easy to imagine pounding through the Mexican desert for almost 20 hours, dodging burros, cacti, and the occasional improvised booby trap. It wouldn’t be easy or comfortable, but it would be, well, awesome.
Hideaway driving lights nestle in Oly’s wing-shaped roof.
Todd Blubaugh
It was a short trip around the desert hills, then a few more runs along surrounding roads and paths for photos. Just a handshake with a legend, but the kind that tells you all you need to know.
Big Oly was innovative in that it applied the techniques of tube-frame construction to the challenge of off-road racing. Jones’s creation changed the sport in the same way Holman- Moody was revolutionizing NASCAR and Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins was shaking up NHRA Pro Stock drag racing. Now virtually every competitive off-road racer is a tube-frame monster. They’re all the children of Big Oly.
Keyword: The Big Oly Bronco Defined the Future of Off-Road Racing