Red and Chuck Robinson

Red and Chuck Robinson to be inducted at upcoming Greater Vancouver Motorsport Pioneers Association ceremony
Vancouver Sun
30 Sep 2011
Alyn Edwards

submitted photosA youthful Red Robinson broadcasting from the seat of a dragster at the Abbotsford Airport in the 1950s.
Iconic rock-and-roll DJ Red Robinson and his uncle Chuck are the latest inductees to the Greater Vancouver Motorsport Pioneers Association
Vancouver’s Croatian Cultural Centre will be packed with motorsports enthusiasts of all ages for the 11th annual Greater Vancouver Motorsport Pioneers Association induction ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 9th.
Inductees are judged to have had a major historical influence on the hot rod and custom car scene, drag racing and land speed, sports car and road racing, oval racing, motorcycling and boat racing.
It takes only a $ 10 donation to attend and lunch is served during an afternoon designed to bring local motorsport history alive. Red Robinson will talk about broadcasting live from the Abbotsford Airport in the early 1950s when the BC Custom Car Club used it for drag races.
“ I strapped a big tape recorder on my chest and climbed into my uncle’s hot rod,” Red recalls. “ He took off and I said, ‘ Holy &@#%’ into the microphone. It seemed like we were doing 150 miles-an-hour and almost went off the end of the runway. It scared the bejeebers out of me. I had to delete the first words from the tape before I could play it on the air.”
Uncle Chuck Robinson, the youngest brother of Red’s father, was only eight years older than Red. Chuck was one of Vancouver’s first custom-car enthusiasts and hot rodders. It was just after the war that the car-customizing craze that started in California spread up the West Coast and hit Vancouver.
Chuck was a young apprentice automobile painter working at Bowell McLean Cadillac on Vancouver’s Burrard Street when he bought a 1941 Ford convertible. He used his skills as a body man to lower the car, remove the chrome trim, fill the holes and paint the car deep green. The engine was a hopped-up flathead V8 with dual carburetors and high-compression heads.
“ There were only a few of us around with customized cars in the 1940s, including Bob Phinney and Ray McBride, who both drove customized, hot 1940 Mercury convertibles with chopped tops,” Chuck recalls.
Chuck joined the BC Roadster Racing Association with members racing stripped-down Ford Model A and B cars at the newly constructed Digney Speedway in Burnaby.
His 1932 Ford Roadster with a high-horsepower flathead V8 engine became one of Vancouver’s most recognized hot rods and was featured in international magazines. By the early 1950s, Vancouver’s Kingsway was the drag strip and the Aristocrat Drive-In restaurant on the corner of Kingsway and Fraser was the hangout.
Chuck remembers a police officer named Allan Rossiter who hung out nearby and chased the drag racers down Fraser Street on his motorcycle.
“ The hot-rodders knew that if they made a quick right turn off Fraser there was no way a motorcycle with a sidecar could turn quickly. So they always got away,” he says.
One night, two hot-rodders were racing side by side on Fraser Street when they locked front wheels.
Page one newspaper photographs the next day showed the result of one of the cars that had lost control and run right up a guy wire, shearing off the top of a hydro pole. Both drivers ended up in the hospital and a public campaign to end street racing was launched.
Chuck had become the first president of the BC Custom Car Club ( BCCC) after a formative meeting in 1951. Within a matter of a month, the club had 300 members. Chuck and BCCC secretary-treasurer Bob Phinney were subsequently invited to meet the police chief, who assigned then-traffic constable Bernie Smith as police liaison with the club.
The same Allan Rossiter, who used to chase the hot-rodders, had become the police traffic sergeant. In a move to stop street racing, he and Smith arranged for BCCC members to use the wartime Abbotsford airport as a drag strip on weekends.
The car club was given an old BC Electric transit bus, which they gutted and fitted with lockers for drag-strip timing equipment. Chuck painted the bus with BCCC colours in a club member’s backyard. By that time, he had customized a nearly new 1950 Ford convertible by dropping in an Oldsmobile V8 engine and painted it metallic royal maroon. What followed was a cut-down and hopped-up 1932 Ford Roadster that was used for weekend drag racing and then a Buick V8-powered 1932 Ford Coupe.
As the hot-rod and car-customizing craze continued to gather momentum, the first BCCC-sponsored Motorama car show was held at Kerrisdale Arena in the spring of 1953, displaying several dozen hot rods and customized cars.
By 1954, Red Robinson was on the radio and hit his stride three years later broadcasting on the 50,000-watt CKWX station. He would be recognized as one of the original rock-androll disc jockeys and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Uncle Chuck taught him how to drive his brand new, red 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Sunliner convertible. Chuck also helped to customize the car and hopup the engine with triple carburetors.
Red became a member of the Igniters Car Club of Burnaby. He cruised his red convertible through the streets of Vancouver with a Marconi radio telephone in the trunk to allow live broadcasts.
“ It was the best of times with the music and the hot custom cars creating the excitement,” he says.
Jim Greenwood, known as James, applied the gold pin stripes as a custom feature on Red’s red convertible. James pinstriped and flame-painted hundreds of hot rods and customs in the Pacific Northwest. He is the current president of the Greater Vancouver Motorsport Pioneers Society. Red and Chuck Robinson are inductees.
“ We are really excited to have Red and Chuck Robinson as our guest speakers,” Jim Greenwood notes.
“ They were there at the beginning of the hot rod and custom car and with Red spinning the first rock-and-roll records in this city. They are both outstanding storytellers.”
The GVMPS induction ceremony runs from noon to 4 p. m., Oct. 9 at the Croatian Cultural Centre, 3250 Commercial Dr. Members of the public are invited. For more information, visit www. gvmps. org.