Bill Murphy, 92; Southland Car Dealer, Top California Sports Car Racer in ‘50s

Bill Murphy, a longtime Los Angeles-area automobile dealer who was also a top California sports car racer in the 1950s, has died. He was 92.

Murphy died from complications of congestive heart failure July 14 at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, his family said.

Murphy was the owner and operator of Bill Murphy Buick on Washington Boulevard in Culver City and in his 40s when he began generating headlines for his car racing.

Driving a Kurtis roadster powered by a 322-cubic-inch displacement Buick engine that produced 400 horsepower, he was a consistent front-runner who won numerous races up and down the state.

He often competed against his friend, racing great and performance-car builder Carroll Shelby.

“The Buick engine that Bill had in his Kurtis was more powerful than any of the engines built for Ferraris, Maseratis or anything at the time,” Shelby told The Times this week. “It would outrun any Ferrari in the straight. He won a lot of races.”

In Art Evans’ 2001 book “The Fabulous Fifties: A Decade of Sports Car Racing in Southern California,” Murphy is described as “one of the very successful true amateur racers of the fifties.”

On the track, Evans said, “Bill was a very steady, safe driver; his car was fast and sometimes he won, but he didn’t take any chances. I can’t think of any time he got into any kind of trouble.”

In 1957, a Times columnist took note of Murphy’s quiet nature, calling him the “quietest Irishman in captivity” and noting that “his frugal use of words leads to the assumption that he thinks he’s sending a telegram when he talks and has to pay for his statements by the word.”

“What makes your car go?” the columnist asked Murphy.

After giving the matter considerable thought, Murphy said, “Gasoline.”

But Murphy grew more expansive when asked how fast it would go.

“I don’t really know,” Murphy said. “But I can give you a pretty good guess. It ought to hit at least 180 mph. The reason it can reach that speed is because it is pretty lightweight and is streamlined to minimize wind resistance. It has a fuel injection system, a four-speed transmission and can develop well over 300 horsepower.”

By the early ‘60s, Murphy had quit racing and turned his attention to other interests, such as flying, running his cattle ranch in San Luis Obispo County and raising thoroughbred racehorses.

In addition to running his own car dealership, he also provided financing to get a number of new car dealers started. And in the ‘70s he owned a Learjet dealership in Van Nuys, said to be the only one on the West Coast and one of only three in the nation at the time.

Born in Sitka, Alaska, on Nov. 17, 1912, Murphy grew up in Auburn, Wash., and moved with his family to Los Angeles when he was a teenager.

A 1930 graduate of Beverly Hills High School, he attended UCLA but dropped out after two years to launch his more than 70-year automobile career.

He began by selling cars wholesale, then opened a DeSoto-Plymouth dealership on Vermont Avenue in downtown Los Angeles in 1938.

Ten years later, he opened a Plymouth-Desoto dealership in Culver City, which became a Buick dealership in 1952. That business, which he owned and operated until 1997, earned a reputation as the world’s largest Buick dealership from 1962 to 1967.

In 1994, he opened Murphy & Shelby Dodge in San Fernando, in partnership with his son, Bill Murphy Jr., and Shelby. Murphy continued to be a five-day-a-week presence there until early this month.

Murphy, whose wife of 35 years, Diana, died in 1996, is survived by his five children, Susan, Meg, Tom, Cassie and Bill Jr.; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service is to be held at 5 p.m. today at the Bel-Air Country Club, 10768 Bellagio Road, Los Angeles.