Butch "The California Flash" Leal

INTRODUCTION

It has been said that regardless of the brand of car, with Butch Leal behind the wheel, it was worth an extra two hundredths of a second on the tree. Considered one of the best 4-speed men in the business, Larry Butch Leal was born on May 10, 1944, to parents Pansy and Frank Leal Jr. in the agricultural town of Tulare, which is located in Central California’s San Joaquin Valley just 80 miles south of Modesto.

My grandmother Donna, also known as Doney, named me Butch the very minute my parents brought me home from the East Tulare hospital—her reasoning being that I looked more like a Butch than a Larry, and the nickname just sort of stuck, Butch said.

As a youngster, Butch resided in the agricultural town of Pixley but spent his summers on his grandparent’s dairy farm, Frank Leal Dairy, in Hanford, California. Those were idyllic times: chasing cows, tossing cow chips, riding on his grandfather’s tractor, and playing with Shemp, the family dog.

The two of us would go out and herd the cows every evening, Butch said. I ate well there. My grandmother was such a good cook that every summer I would come home 20 pounds heavier.

Butch’s love of hot rods went as far back as the fourth or fifth grade.

My teachers at Pixley Grammar School [where Butch excelled in stick and ball sports, winning numerous awards] became so frustrated with me, as I was more interested in drawing pictures of cars on my school papers than I was about learning about math and history, Butch said.

With the obvious staring them squarely in the face, Butch’s mother eventually caved in and gave her son his own subscription to Hot Rod magazine for Christmas at age 12!

One of life’s lessons that young Butch learned (and it wasn’t from school, either) was that hard work has its own reward and with it came the value of a dollar as he became engrossed more and more in the family business called Frank Leal Trucking.

I used to load cotton seed and hay, Butch said. "We also used to haul tomatoes from the Sacramento River Delta area. After delivering a load, I would run the steam cleaner, which was pretty nasty work. If the trucks were stopped, we weren’t making any money, so I did all kinds of odd jobs around the yard to help out.

My dad and I used to kid around with each other, and he even proposed that we re-letter the trucks to say ‘Frank Leal and Son Trucking’ on the doors. Of course, that gave me a somewhat inflated sense of entitlement. One day, I think I was about 14, I had grown tired of loading hay and steam cleaning tomato haulers and walked into my dad’s office and said, ‘I’ve got to do something else with my life. I’m tired of steam cleaning trucks. Why don’t you just buy me out?’ Looking back, that was some pretty funny stuff.

At age 9, Butch is at his grandparents’ dairy in Hanford, California.

Friends For Life

Quite typically, young Butch learned the ins and outs of rudimentary auto mechanics from his father, Frank, and put them to good use. However, Butch also had a willing helper in lifelong friend Doug Walden.

Doug and I were friends all the way through school and beyond, Butch said. "We did almost everything together. When I was 14 [1958], there was a kid in town who was selling a Mustang motorcycle, so Doug and I snuck off together away from home and chopped cotton out in the fields around Pixley until we had saved up the $80 the seller was asking for it.

"We rode it around for a while before I ended up trading it for a 1946 Ford coupe that didn’t run. Doug and I ended up installing a 1953 Mercury flathead V-8 with Edelbrock heads and three-twos [three 2-barrel carburetors]. We also installed a LaSalle 3-speed transmission, rebuilt the rear end, and bolted up a set of 1948 Mercury wheels with whitewall tires.

"One night, I was cruising Pixley, California’s Three Brothers hamburger joint, and a friend of mine named J.C. was there with his 1931 Model A Ford coupe. At the time, Model As were all the rage, so I said, ‘Let’s trade straight across, but I’ll keep my tires and wheels,’ and we did.

One day, Doug and I were loading hay for my dad down in Bakersfield and were having lunch at the local burger joint when he met this young lady named Betty, and it was love at first sight. Doug and Betty have been married for 57 years now, which I think is pretty neat. Today, Doug is retired, lives in Bakersfield, builds hot rods as a hobby, and regularly comes to the Southern California Auto Club–hosted California Hot Rod Reunion events where it’s just like old times!

Running Afoul of the Law

"That first night, as I drove my ‘new’ 1931 Model A home, the local California Highway Patrol officer pulled me over for not having a brake light. When the officer asked me for my driver’s license, I told him that I didn’t have one, and he wrote me a ticket.

"About an hour later, he pulled me over again! He said, ‘I thought I told you to go home?’

I said, ‘No, you just wanted to know if I had a driver’s license. You already gave me a ticket for that, so I’m just out cruising for the rest of the evening.’

When Butch’s father appeared with him at the Porterville, California, juvenile court, Frank Leal explained to the judge that the family lived out in the country, owned a fleet of agricultural trucks, and in times of immediacy, young Butch was called upon to drive.

"The judge wrote me a special pass, and I got my driver’s license at age 14.

The farmers around there had given me a total of six Model A Ford engines, which Doug and I took apart and were able to make one good motor out of all those parts and pieces. I raced that old Model A everywhere I could. With a set of 8.20 x 15-inch Atlas Bucrons mounted, it made enough horsepower to chirp the tires in second gear at Bakersfield, California’s Famoso Raceway and top out at almost 70 mph, which was pretty darned fast for a stock ‘A Banger’ in those days!

And so began the legend of the yet-to-be-christened California Flash. In hindsight, you can only wonder what that California Highway Patrolman would have thought that fateful evening had he known that he was ticketing one of professional drag racing’s up-and-coming superstars.

CHAPTER

1

EL CAMINO LE-AL!

"When I drove the car home that night, I had to drive at a 45-degree angle across the railroad tracks because it was so low.

My dad came out of the house giving me all kinds of static."

When I was 14, I made a deal with my father that if I worked real hard at the yard (Frank Leal Trucking in Pixley, California), he would buy me any new car I wanted on my 16th birthday—that is, anything except a new Corvette, Butch Leal said. "He didn’t pay me a salary or anything like that, but over the next few summers, I accumulated three or four thousand dollars in ‘credit’ doing every type of odd job at the yard that my father could think of.

"At the time, the hot car to have [was] a 1960 Chevrolet Bel Air equipped with the 335-hp 348-ci W-Series Turbo-Fire V-8 complete with Tri-Power and a 4-speed. At first, I was going to get one of those, but then I read in Hot Rod magazine that the 348 El Caminos were rated at 350 hp. Basically, it had something to do with the fact that the El Caminos had bigger intake valves because they were slightly heavier and were classified as light-duty trucks. Since our family owned a trucking business, it all worked out perfectly!"

Butch ordered a Royal Blue (Frank Leal Trucking Company’s official color) 1960 Chevrolet El Camino 348 4-speed that arrived at Pixley, California’s Dale Mun-son Chevrolet on his 16th birthday, and he became the scourge of the San Joaquin Valley.

A Slight Hiccup

Once the dealer washed the protective coating off the car and backed it out into the sun, I noticed a huge white cloud in the driver-side rear quarter panel. When I pointed it out to the dealer, he said that they would spot paint it. I said no and insisted that (with this being a metallic paint job) the dealership should repaint the entire car!

Fortunately for young Butch, the GM district sales representative happened to be paying Munson Chevrolet a call that day.

I’m looking at it, and I’m just totally blown away, Butch said. "Just as the conversation was starting to become a little heated, he [the GM representative] walked out the front door of the dealership, took one look at it, and turned to the sales manager and said, ‘We’ll [re]paint the whole thing.’

In this group photo taken in 1961 of the Vapor Trailer’s Car Club of Tulare, a flat-top-wearing, 16-year-old Larry Butch Leal (fourth from left) can be seen admiring the club dragster. Also captured are H.L. and Shirley Shahan (seventh and eighth from left). Ed Ace McCulloch is also pictured, but his exact location is difficult to pinpoint due to photo quality.

Well, they shouldn’t have told me that!

Rather than spend several weeks in the dealership body shop where projects such as this often get shoved on the back burner, Butch and his father drove the El Camino to Doyce’s Paint & Body Shop in Tulare where the El Camino was repainted the original GM Code 912 Royal Blue Metallic with 20 coats of clear lacquer thrown in for good measure.

Doyce’s would spray on a couple of coats of clear and sand them down only to spray on a couple more, Butch said. "Once they buffed out the final coat, it just sparkled in the sun and turned purple under the lights at night. I mean, it was drop-dead gorgeous.

"I also had the first set of chrome-reverse wheels for it here in the valley. Everybody had their cars lowered back in those days, so during my lunch break at Tulare Union High School, I took the car over to a fellow in town who took a coil out in the front and half a coil out in the back. I mean, the car sat perfect.

"When I drove the car home that night, I had to drive at a 45-degree angle across the railroad tracks because it was so low. My dad came out of the house giving me all kinds of static. I stood my ground and said to him, ‘Is this your car, or is it mine? I paid for it!’

That ended the conversation.

This extremely rare photo shows the 16-year-old Tulare Union High School student posing with his pride and joy, a mild custom, H.L. Shahan–engine 1960 Chevrolet El Camino W-Series 348 and 4-speed. Butch ran his El Camino in the SS/S class for a year and a half and won well more than 100 trophies while clocking a best ET of 13.80 at 104 mph. The unfortunate irony of this photo is that after trading the car back in to Dale Munson Chevrolet for his 1962 409 Biscayne, the second owner stalled the car at a Union Pacific Railway crossing in Tulare and the El Camino was unceremoniously cut in half!

The Lure of the Drag Strip

At the time, my dad didn’t want me to even think about drag racing, although deep inside, he knew that’s where things were headed, Butch said. "The first time I took the El Camino out to Famoso Raceway (which was the place to hang out on the weekend) I let a friend of mine named Bobby Dykman drive because I was a little nervous. He ended up getting beat. The next month, my girlfriend Susann and I went. This time, I decided that I would drive, and I won.

Well, that got me completely hooked on drag racing. Then, I went back the next month and won again. When I came home, I was holding this trophy behind my back, and they [Mom and Dad] asked me where I had been? I figured that my dad wouldn’t like hearing that I had been out drag racing against his wishes, but once I showed him my trophy, he got pretty excited about it. In fact, he and my mother went to the track with me the very next month, and I won again.

"In September 1961 the 409 Impalas came out, and they were wicked fast—so fast that my friend Bobby was constantly outrunning me with his. The next day, I walked outside of the house. Dad had the hood up on the El Camino and said, ‘If you’re going to do this, then let’s do it right!’

We pulled the motor and took it over to H.L. Shahan’s Precision Automotive shop in Tulare. We changed out the pistons (a couple of them were cracked because I had been street racing the thing for a while), and H.L. replaced them with a set of Forgetrue Pistons. Then, we balanced the motor. Otherwise, the rest of the engine remained stock.

Butch ran the El Camino in the SS/S class for a year and a half and clocked a best elapsed time (ET) of 13.80 seconds at 104 mph. In the process, he won more than 100 trophies.

My mother cleared off a shelf in our den to show off my trophies, but after my winning so many, she gave up trying to dust them all, Butch said. "Man, I raced that thing everywhere I could—even circle track. They had a quarter-mile circle track in Hanford called March Bank Stadium where they raced NASCAR. We would race down the straightaway, and then when you would go to shut it off, you would coast around the corners.

"I would race twice a week at the small tracks around here when I could. I even raced San Fernando once. I’ll be darned if ‘Dandy Dick’ Landy wasn’t there driving Andy Andrews’s 406 Ford. I out-ran Dick with the El Camino, and he said, ‘Where did you come from, young boy?’ Yeah [laughing], he called me a ‘young boy.’

In those days, good tires were always a problem. We didn’t have cheater slicks back then. I would run Atlas Bucron tires, which were really soft. I can’t remember how many sets of those I went through. Actually, I ran two classes with the El Camino. I would run the three-two class, and then I would switch back to the factory 348 intake and run the car in the single 4-barrel class!

In late 1961, Butch pulled the H.L. Shahan–prepared 348 drivetrain out of the El Camino and replaced it with a stock one. Chevrolet Division’s 1962 409s had just been released, so Leal drove over to Dale Munson Chevrolet and traded the El Camino in on one. Suffice it to say, vintage 1960s NHRA Division 7 Super Stock Eliminator class racing was never the same.

Family Ties

Ronnie Broadhead and his 1960 Tri Power 389 Pontiac Catalina are caught in action at the 1963 NHRA Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a banner year for Broadhead, as he won the NHRA Stock Eliminator World Points Championship. In 1966, cousin Butch Leal won class at the NHRA Winternationals driving the very same car. (Photo Courtesy Jeanette Broadhead)

In 1961, Porterville, California, custom car upholsterer Ronnie Broadhead (Buster’s Custom Upholstery) decided to get in on the fun. He was encouraged by the reasonable degree of success that his cousin Butch Leal was experiencing drag racing his Chevrolet El Camino big-block at AHRA and NHRA racetracks up and down the Golden State.

A Pontiac man by preference, Broadhead fielded a number of Tin Indians throughout his driving career, including an H.L. Shahan–prepared and tuned 1960 Pontiac Catalina Tri-Power 4-speed car that Ronnie campaigned in the C/Stock class to take the 1963 NHRA Stock Eliminator World Points Championship.

We were close—just like brothers, Butch Leal said.

After running Pontiacs, Ronnie Broadhead transitioned to Oldsmobiles. Toward the end of his racing career, Broadhead teamed with racing great Joe Alread on a Mopar small-block program, but after a heart attack in 1975, Broadhead was forced to hang up his driving gloves for good.

CHAPTER

2

GIDDY UP, GIDDY UP 409

… if Butch Leal ever beat you out of the hole, you needed all the horsepower and driving skills you had just to catch him. — Hayden Proffitt

In the fall of 1961, Butch Leal ordered a Royal Blue Metallic W-Series 1962 409 Chevrolet Biscayne that was factory rated at 409 hp and equipped with twin 4-barrel Carter AFB carburetors and a BorgWarner 4-speed transmission (QB-8-409) through Pixley, California’s Dale Munson Chevrolet.

Being that the 119-inch-wheelbase Chevrolet Biscayne was a lighter car, weighing approximately 3,405 pounds, I reasoned that it might be a bit more competitive than the heavier SS 409 bubbletops that my competitors were running, and I ordered the car through the same dealership that I ordered my El Camino from, Butch Leal said.

As it turned out, Munson Chevrolet became the soon-to-be-christened California Flash’s first associate sponsor.

My family knew Dale Munson personally and helped set up a meeting with him, Butch said. "I told Dale what I was going to do and that I wanted to order this factory hot rod through his dealership but needed a little help.

Munson enthusiastically replied, ‘No problem!’

What Dale Munson actually did was discount the sticker price on the Biscayne to the degree that it enabled young Butch to put together a first-class racing program at the age of 18.

This National Dragster newspaper clipping shows Butch competing against soon-to-be-appointed NHRA Division 7 Director Bernie Partridge. At the time, both Butch and Partridge campaigned 1962 409 Chevrolet Biscaynes in the Top Stock class. On this particular outing, Butch took Top Stock honors at Inyokern, recording an ET of 12.06 at 118