Al Singer

Born on December 12, 1906, in Wyandotte, Michigan, Al Singer's father owned a horse track called Singer Track and when his father allowed a few race cars to use the track for practice, Al would watch and soon was bitten by the racing bug.

 

By 1928, Al was a race car owner with Paul “Monty” Miller driving for him and they finished second place in a 100 lapper at Davidson, Michigan with a single port Fronty. Throughout 1928-29 Al ran his car on the outlaw circuit of Michigan at tracks such as Bay City, Saginaw, Ann Arbor, Comstock Park, Kalamazoo, Davidson, Rochester, Flint, Cassopolis, and Adrian.

 

From there, Singer started towing his big car around the country hitting the bigger shows including Syracuse, N.Y. where George Conners set his car on the pole against 76 qualifiers and took second in the feature. Conners finished in the top five for him at Milwaukee and at the Indianapolis Fairgrounds in 1941.

 

After World War II, Al got involved with AAA racer Charley Van Acker on one race car and put his “Voelker 6” engine in Norm Olson’s championship car after Indy with Eddie Zalucki doing the driving. After 1948, Singer left the Olson team and took a short vacation from racing.

 

On July 4, 1953, Al was at the Detroit Fairgrounds and met his old friend, Clint Brawner, who asked Singer to join, the crew on the Dean Van Lines Special with Chuck Stevenson being the driver.

 

Singer stayed with Brawner and the Dean car through 1957. During that period, they won the National Championship three times with Jimmy Bryan. In addition to the Dean car, Al was on the crew of the Wyandotte Tool Special (Jim Hurtubise), Chapman Special (Dick Rathmann), and Federal Engineering (Bud Tinglestad).

 

By 1970, Al Singer retired from active racing, but returns to the Indy Old Timers Club each year and keeps busy restoring race cars.

 

Al died at the age of 87 on September 29, 1994.   (1906 - 1994)