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The Justice Brothers and the
company they founded are true American Originals.
Since the Justice Brothers built their first race car during their early
teens, all things mechanical have been a passion in their life. They
dreamed of building race cars and racing in the famous Indianapolis 500.
In the 1930's the Justice Brothers burst on to the California racing
scene and found jobs relating to fabrication and development. Ed went to
work for Douglas Aircraft Flight Test Department and Zeke became part of
the Joel Thorne racing fabrication shop.
After the interruption of World War II, Zeke became the first employee
of the then new Kurtis-Kraft race shop. Ed followed soon after and both
were thrust into the post war boom of midget car racing in America.
Before it was over Kurtis-Kraft would build a reported 500 midget racing
cars. Kurtis-Kraft became one of the World's most famous race shops and
Frank Kurtis' cars would win more races than those of Ferrari, Lotus and
Bugatti combined.
While working at Kurtis-Kraft, Ed also painted some of the most
well-known midgets of the day. These included Sam Hanks Black Beauty and
Henry Banks Lindsey Hopkins Special. It was on a fateful day at
Kurtis-Kraft, Ed and Zeke came upon the idea to place Dzus fasteners on
a race car for the first time ever. Ed had quite a bit of experience
with them at Douglas Aircraft and didn't see why they wouldn't work.
Zeke agreed! When Frank heard about it though, they almost lost their
jobs. After cooler heads prevailed, Frank realized that Ed and Zeke had
really hit upon something.
Kurtis-Kraft only took up their daytime hours, that left their
nighttimes and weekends open. With this extra time, the Justice Brothers
opened up their own racecar repair and fabrication shop for the
nighttime and weekend hours. Justice Brothers Racecar Repair and
Fabrication handled the odd jobs that Kurtis-Kraft didn't have the time
for.
It was during there time at Kurtis-Kraft that Ed and Zeke discovered
that better lubrication did make a difference in the performance of
racing and street engines. In this they saw a better future and took
their chance.
Selling oil additives in these early days was not easy and many of the
selling techniques that are taken for granted today had to be invented.
Surprisingly, many of the sales and promotional techniques originated by
Ed and Zeke are used today by many in the industry.
For example, Ed and Zeke placed some of the first sponsorship decals on
the then new racing series called NASCAR. They provided "crew shirts" to
the entire field for NASCAR's first super speedway race in 1950 at the
new Darlington Motor Speedway. At this event, they also provided Pith
helmets for all of the NASCAR officials, track officials, and race
teams. And each one had their products logo on them. Pretty cool, huh!
They had become good friends with Bill France, Sr. when they sold them
their product. You see old Bill ran a Amoco Service Station before
coming up with the idea for NASCAR. I'd say it was a pretty good idea!
In that same year (1950) their car won at the Indianapolis 500 with
Johnnie Parsons driving for their former boss and friend Frank Kurtis.
To say 1950 was a good year is no joke! And it's only gotten better from
there.
In 1952 their car finished second at the Indianapolis 500 with Jim
Rathman driving for the Granatelli brothers. Andy Granatelli would later
run a company called STP.
The Justice Brothers have innovated many of the best selling products in
the additive industry starting with the world's first transmission
stop-leak in 1952. Today the corporation continues on this same road.
Our line numbers over 90 products today.
And when it comes to racing today, you'll find Justice Brothers
sponsored teams around the world in almost every form of racing. Racers
have carried our products over the finish line in their engines,
transmissions, fuel tanks, etc. and our logo over the finish line on the
sides of their race vehicles. Justice Brother's products have won almost
every major event in racing. Just this last year cars carried Justice
Brothers into victory circle at LeMans, Baja, NHRA, NASCAR, IRL and
CART.
And what about participating in the Indianapolis 500, that they dreamed
about, in their childhood? Well as you already know, they won it in 1950
and in the last few years; Justice Brothers sponsored cars have both sat
on the front row, lead the race and finished second.
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