Moon Discs: A Brief History of the World’s Fastest Accessory

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Moon Discs: A Brief History of the World’s Fastest Accessory

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Dry lakes racer Bob Rufi turned the lakes racing scene upon its head when in 1939 he appeared with a bomb-shaped bolide built from an electrical conduit wrapped in aluminum. On May 19, 1940, crouched in the nose ahead of his Chevy 4, Bob hit 140 mph. More than clocks stopped when fellow racers realized what streamlining could do. Part of Bob’s secret of speed was the front and rear, inner and outer wheel covers that came from a World War I Curtiss Jenny airplane.
America’s impending entry into World War I propelled Frank Curtiss into the aircraft business and he hired Benjamin Douglas Thomas from Sopwith in England to design the Curtiss Models J and N. Thomas brought with him the idea of wheel covers. Sopwith had been founded in 1912 and there were wheel covers on their planes almost from the beginning.
It’s not too far a leap from an airplane to an automobile and land speed racing and the first image I can find of a land speed racer using wheel covers is dated 1903. It was Louis Ross racing in the twin-engined Stanley ‘Woggle-Bug’ steam automobile at Daytona Beach, Florida.
The next reference I found related to the famed ‘Blitzen Benz’ that was shipped from Germany to the US in January 1910. On March 16-17, 1910, driver Barney Oldfield duly posted a new best of 131.4mph (211.4kph) at Daytona Beach. The one-way run was not recognized as a record.
Ten years on, Tommy Milton’s twin-engine Duesenberg set seven new speed records including a fastest run of 156.046 mph (251.132 kph) on April 25, 1920. Again, it was only one-way and would not be internationally recognized. According to contemporary reports, the Duesey had ‘fabric wheel covers that Milton added to improve the vehicle’s aerodynamics and increase its speed.’
From that point on, wheel covers of various shapes and sizes appeared on many lsr cars including those of the legendary Sir Malcolm Campbell who’s ‘Bluebird’ sported some nifty ribbed covers. Indeed, by the early-30s prestigious road cars such as Cadillac and Rolls Royce were using covers to embellish their wheels.
As we have seen, just before America entered WWII, Bob Rufi put wheel covers back on the land speed map with his little ’liner that got sold to Charles Beck. Beck ran it in ’42 with a Winfield Model B but it ‘only’ ran 131.96mph. He kept the wheel discs, however, for the most part lakes racers did not cotton to discs and we don’t see them again until the late-40s when Stu Hilborn fitted some to his streamliner-the first hot rod to go 150mph.
Eventually, in the search for speed other racers tried wheel discs including.
That said, in 1952, Alex Xydias, founder of the So-Cal Speed Shop in 1946, fitted some flat discs to the front and rear of his belly tank lakester. He wasn’t the only one to try this; Mickey Thompson had some flat discs on his ’52 Bonneville Bantam coupe and a couple years later the Chrisman Coupe and Roadster both sported flat discs.
Suddenly, it appeared that everybody racing at the lakes had to have a set of discs. You have to remember, at that time, there were no aftermarket mag wheels-they hadn’t been invented yet. The only wheels available were magnesium Indy-type racing wheels introduced by Ted Halibrand in 1946 -maybe too expensive for your average drag racer and they had funky pin-drive thing.
Early drag cars such as the J.E. Riley and Sons slingshot driven by Calvin Rice at the ’55 Nationals had flat discs on the front wheels but nicely dished aluminum discs on the rears. However, discs for drag cars were perhaps a detriment as they added weight, albeit minimal, and the aero assistance might have been negligible.
Until 1956, and the invention of the first bolt-on mag wheels for drag cars, people had little choice in wheels and so when Dean Moon introduced his Moon discs they were an instant hit and we soon fitted to lsr cars, drag cars and every type of streetcar. They were an easy dress-up accessory.
Of course, once Palamides’ American Racing wheels became available in aluminum in the early-60s, interest in Moon discs began to wane except for lsr cars where they remain almost de rigueur.
In 2004, while campaigning my own Bonneville Roadster with Jimmy Shine, we were in search of more speed and my good friend Peter Stevens, designer of the Mclaren F1, made some suggestions regarding the aerodynamics of an early-Ford Roadster. We hatched a plan to take the car to England and put it in the Motor Industry Research Association wind tunnel to see if we could aero-up some ‘free’ horsepower.
As it turned out, the Moon discs were worth a good 5hp and the flat, inner discs were worth another 5hp. So, without the aid of a wind tunnel all those years hence racers had known instinctively that Moon discs made a positive difference.
Seventy years on, they are still made for numerous applications by Mooneyes.com