Though not well remembered today, in the 1950s, Andy Linden was a popular and successful driver competing at the top echelons of open-wheel racing.
Born April 5, 1922, his life’s passion turned to auto racing when his family moved to Los Angeles. As a teen, Linden fell in love with the Southern California car culture and the year-round racing the Golden State’s pristine weather provided.
At 15, a neighbor, impressed with the youngster’s enthusiasm, gave Linden an old Willys Overland that didn’t run. Undeterred, he used money earned from his part-time service station job to piece the aged machine together.
Willys’ parts were hard to come by, even from junkyards, forcing Linden to modify parts from other cars to create his unique machine. Its performance proved impressive enough that his friends urged him to compete with hot rodders on the Muroc Dry Lakes.
Linden loved the timed competition and hoped he could advance to midget racing, which was attracting fans and racers in droves. However, as happened with many young people of that generation, the outbreak of WWII curtailed those dreams.
Linden joined the U.S. Navy. During the war, he toughened up through combat and his exploits in the boxing ring. He became a Navy boxing champion, developing physically while learning mental toughness and focus. Attributes that served him well when he embarked on his racing career following the hostilities. Though easygoing, few wanted to raise the ire of the muscled, 200-pound Linden.
Discharged and back home in LA, he raced in the CRA’s first season in 1945. He finished 5th in points in 1946, then in ’47 he won 10 features at places like Huntington Beach, Bonelli, Carrell Speedway, and the Rose Bowl to finish fourth in points. By 1948, he was dabbling in sprint cars with the AAA. And in 1950, he captured the AAA Pacific Coast Sprint Car Championship.
His success carried him to Indianapolis in 1950. But he missed the show along with fellow California midget racer Bill Vukovich Sr. In 1951, assigned to the ancient Leitenberger Offy, he appeared on the verge of falling short again, but finally squeezed the car into the race in the last row, 31st position. That accomplished, he made an amazing run through the field and raced to a fourth-place finish.
For 1952, he moved from the last row starting position to the middle of the front row, next to polesitter, Freddie Agabashian and his sleek Cummins diesel. His race was short-lived, going out early with an oil leak.
He qualified in the middle of the second row for the 1953 500, then crashed in the race’s early laps. Yet, his day was far from over.
He’d received second-degree burns in the accident but convinced the doctor that if released, he’d return trackside only to watch the race. Upon arriving in the pits, however, Jerry Hoyt needed relief. Linden took the wheel of the car until it overheated on the 108th lap. He was still not finished. No sooner had he stepped out of Hoyt’s car than he was called to relieve an exhausted Rodger Ward. That car lasted another 29 laps.
On a scorching afternoon which one driver described as, “… like racing in a furnace,” and another died of heat exhaustion, Linden left no doubters concerning his toughness and fortitude. The press tagged him, “Asbestos Andy.”
Linden routinely qualified questionable equipment well at Indianapolis, but also, it seemed, routinely fell out early with mechanical problems. By 1957, he was earning better rides.
For that year’s 500, he drove a new Kurtis roadster for the McNamara team and pushed it to a fifth-place finish. He drove the same car when USAC competed on the big oval at Monza, Italy, taking third place in the first heat. On the USAC short tracks he won races in midgets and sprint cars.
Back home in California, he entered a November 3 midget race at Clovis Speedway to close out the ’57 season.
While battling with Rodger Ward in the feature, he caught a rut and the car slammed the outer guardrail, then flipped back onto the track. In the melee, a piece of metal pierced his helmet, causing severe brain damage.
Confined to a wheelchair, Andy Linden never gave up. With the intense focus and fortitude he used on the track, he battled back. Before he passed away on February 11, 1987, he’d learned to walk again, regained some of his memory and retaught himself to drive.
He was inducted into the Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 2013.
