Legendary team owner Frank Arciero has died from the aftereffects of an aneurysm. Arciero was a 14-year-old Italian immigrant when he arrived in America just prior to the outbreak of World War II, and despite speaking no English proceeded to craft a classic American Dream success story in three different business arenas.
Landing in Detroit in 1939 with no marketable skills beyond determination and a strong work ethic, young Arciero began digging ditches and working his way up the ladder in the construction industry. Eventually, he met a man named Tony Parravano, who invited him to bring his talents to Southern California just in time to take part in the building boom that transformed the Golden State in the years following WWII. In 1948 Frank became the youngest licensed contractor in state history at the age of 23, and together with his younger brother, Phil, launched their own concrete construction business at the absolutely perfect time.
In 1954 he went with Parravano to the road races at the Palm Springs airport and fell under the spell of a red Ferrari belonging to Jim Kimberly. All Arciero knew was that he had to have one. He soon bought his own 2.0-liter Ferrari and began racing. “I wanted to be Fangio,” he once told me in his characteristic deep rasp. Soon, however, he was forced to quit driving by his insurance company after being presented with the ultimatum that he could either go racing or continue running his business.
Upon giving up the steering wheel he became an entrant, but later admitted to “doing a little cheating” with several clandestine entries, then much later on got back in the cockpit to race off-road. As a car owner he quickly gained a reputation for fielding top-flight machinery, including both his favored Ferraris and subsequently a new rear-engined sports racing design, the Lotus 19. His drivers during those years included Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Jim Clark, Chuck Daigh, Bill Krause and the Unser brothers, Bobby and Al, as well as Bud Tinglestad and Roger McCluskey.
It was Gurney’s performances in Arciero’s Ferrari 375 Plus and 335 Sport while winning the 1958 USAC Road Racing Championship that led Ferrari to sign him for both sports cars and Formula One, and his classic victory in the 1962 Daytona Continental came at the wheel of the famed Arciero Brothers Lotus 19. This latter car (above) has been carefully restored and remains in family hands.
Frank fielded his first entry at Indianapolis in 1959, a Maserati-powered Kurtis 500C roadster for Shorty Templeman, but it was not fast enough to qualify. He returned in 1965 with the same power plant in a rear-engined Weismann chassis that Al Unser used to pass his rookie test, but the engine expired during his qualifying run and Unser switched to A.J. Foyt’s backup Lola in order to make the race.
After concentrating on consolidating his contracting business, Arciero returned to racing as the ’80s opened, sponsoring Kevin Cogan’s Formula Atlantic ride with Teddy Yip’s Theodore Racing and fielding a Super Vee entry of his own for Pete Halsmer. After a couple of successful seasons in Super Vee, Arciero, Halsmer and crew chief Mike Hull moved together into Indycars for 1982, but kept the Super Vee operation going as Michael Andretti took the team’s Ralt to that year’s championship.
IMSA champ Randy Lanier followed Halsmer into the Arciero Indycar cockpit, earning Rookie of the Year honors at Indy in ’85, a feat duplicated two years later by Italian youngster Fabrizio Barbazza, who had also claimed the ’86 Indy Lights title driving an Arciero March-Buick. Arciero continued running Indycars for a variety of drivers over the next few seasons before entering a five-year partnership with Cal Wells III to form Arciero-Wells Racing in the 1990s.
As all that transpired, Frank was busily accumulating land near the Central California coast that he turned into vineyards where he grew the grapes for his award-winning Arciero Wines. His native St. Elia region in Italy was wine country, and winemaking had been the traditional family business back home. Thus did Frank Arciero craft a legacy of success in three different endeavors, construction, racing and winemaking. Although the winery was sold in 2007 and the racing team has long been dormant, the construction business diversified into real estate development and continues to thrive.
Frank Arciero was preceded in death by his wife Angie and is survived by his sons, Frank Jr. and Albert, five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, to whom Vintage Racecar extends its sincerest condolences.
By John Zimmermann
