John Nolan/ST-One Vintage Vee

[fvee62]

I have been vacationing in Lake Havasu, AZ over part of the winter and in a case of sheer coincidence, met a fellow named John Nolan. Turns out that back in the early '80's he and a couple other guys from central Michigan built a streamlined Vee they named the ST-One. He showed me a bunch of pictures of the car and they even had a brochure made up and sold 5-6 chassis.
He was apparently also a fairly high level National driver at the time.
Does anyone know the whereabouts of any of these chassis or recalls John?
Greg Davis

[Dave Woodmancy]

Greg,

I believe(I could be wrong) that the car your asking about is also called the Star. There is one for sure, maybe two of these cars still in Michigan. Mazuro ran one as a rental car for years in the late 90's, early 2000's, and I actually think they owned two of them. One certainly was sold off to a customer and occasionally runs at Waterford Hills. If I can find one I will post a pic..

[Bill Bonow]

Woody,

They were later called "Star", but originally they were "ST-One". Many nick-named them "Stone".

[hamilton]

Yes, John Nolan and Dennis Hamilton (my father) designed and built the st-one. We built the body buck and production quality molds in the garage while the frames were welded at a local fabricator. One chassis was written off at the "pro" oval race at mount Clemens. Another was sold to a guy in Canada. And then as Dave said, mazuro took the remaining pieces and put together a couple of cars; mostly run at Waterford. In 1986 Dennis qualified for the runoffs in Atlanta. No small feat back in '86, cendiv, fv.

The name st-1 was a play on the st-one. When things went we'll it was the st-1. On the bad days it was a stone. The next car would have been the sk-8.

And yes, John could hold his own at a national in the cendiv when he had an st-1 under him.

[davebennett]

AKA Laminar ST-1. Google it and you will see Dennis Hamilton's car.

Back in 1984, the cool Detroit car builder guys John Nolan and Dennis Hamilton asked me to run John's red ST-1 at the Runoffs instead of my Caldwell D-13. Arrive and drive, 1 set of NEW tires ( I literally didn't know what NEW tires were, never experienced them). Heck yes.

In typical Vee fashion for those days, Scott Rubenzer and I slept on the floor of Steve Lathrop's Citation trailer for the week. The savings allowed us to go out to dinner a few times. Awesome. Early morning frost in the trailer also resulted in a bit of walking pneumonia for me, but no big deal. Dude, that was Dave Freaking Weitzenhof that just stopped by. Gulp.

John and Dennis put a lot of work into their cars. Their families were there the whole week, a true grassroots effort. The results didn't reflect the car's potential but they were a class bunch. To this day, I still appreciate the opportunity they gave me.

[fvee62]

Thanks for the responses everyone.
I only met with John one day at his garage, where he is working on an old Squire (XK-SS replicar thingy). My wife introduced me to him as he runs the Lake Havasu bridge group and he got to talking to her about his Squire. We went over to his place and he was showing me the car when, much to my surprise, I happened to glance around and saw on the garage wall some photos of Vee's racing! I was amazed to find anyone who even knew what a Vee was, let alone raced and built them out in Lake Havasu (not exactly sports car country)!
He invited us into his house and he brought out a bunch of old photos and race sheets, etc. A real nice guy and we had a very enjoyable afternoon drinking coffee and sitting around with he and his wife talking Vee racing - past and present.

[fvracerone1]

When John decided to move to a smaller home, he gave me quite a bargain on his red car.John had if I recall a motor he called the Big 3. He had an original Noble that he gave to Mazuro and instructed him to do your "magic", He then had Pomeroy go over the motor and perform his..... When it was first fresh it was awesome..... I bought the car and John and his wife came to watch me race at Mid Ohio National. He started yelling at me for taking a minor "confidence" lift going under the bridge in Turn 1. As hard as I tried, my gonads said "lift". I don;t think we talked all the way home to Michigan and it is still a point of contention between us. I had 3 weekend old Bridgestone tires on.....
At the WOR games it was raining and I actually got up into the top 3 as sidepods blocked spray from from tires and I could see better then everyone else....

[veeracer98]

What a coincidence


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