The Ford Flathead V-8 engine is listed as one of the top 10 engines in the U.S. While there were earlier V-8 engines, the flathead was developed for mass market consumers and would appear in Ford vehicles from 1932 until 1953, while the Ford and licensee flatheads would be used on other vehicles up through the Simca trucks in 1990. The name for the flatheads came from the flat cylinder heads, with one of the few drawbacks of the motor being a barely adequate cooling system, which would sometimes result in cracked engine blocks in periods of intense use.

Morristown’s James Long would become a widely noted flathead engine builder along with having a national reputation as being a noted automobile restorer. James has come across his reputation honestly by having lived around race cars and mechanics for nearly 70 of his 76 years of life.

Born in Morristown in 1946, the youngest of Morris and Anna Ruth Stubblefield Long’s six children. Father Long supported his family with his job working on machinery and trucks starting back in the days when the Coca Cola plant was In downtown Morristown. Morris would work on that machinery from 1939 until 1974 when the plant was in its new building. Young James would sometimes spend time with his dad at the shop, and following his dad’s lead would soon begin working on bicycles for the neighboring kids and fixing articles for the neighbors..

Dad Morris enjoyed stockcar racing and young James would attend the races with his mom and dad, and sometimes with just his dad, at the old Morristown Speedway, which operated between 1950 and 1954 and which was located on the A.J. highway behind the current McDonalds. Cars from 1935 and up would race at the speedway, and James would first notice the legendary Paul Gose, who sometimes ran at the track. Morris had bored the first engine in Gose’s famed #32 race car and helped Johnny Kirk and Tommy Sams when Gose was also racing at the Newport track in the late ‘50s and early 60s. Other notable drivers at the Newport track would be L.D. Ottinger, Little Bill McMahan and Don Collins. Gose would race across the south from Kentucky to the Carolina and onto Chattanooga.

At the age of 13, James was known for doing a good job adjusting brakes for people and got his first car, a 1940 Ford sedan, which his dad helped him build. Young James would go to work at Mr. Kirk’s Gulf service station, where he fixed flats, washed cars, pumped gas and checked the oil and tires, which was a standard service at the time. Tommy Sams kept his race car at the station. James would soon be working on other cars for his friends..

Having attended Roberts and the old Junior High school, James moved on to the former Morristown High School. Near the end of his freshman year James crossed from the school to Main Street to begin helping Paul Gose with his race cars, along with Tommy Williams. “Paul had three little daughters that he loved”, James recalled. “He was good to them and would pick them up and play with them. They had swings and would play outside while we’d work and I’d have to sometimes climb to the top of their house to get their badmitton birdies.”

“Paul was an incredibly strong man and kept a 50 pound weight to exercise with. He had a grip box that not many could even close, but he could just clack away on it. He could sit down and stretch his legs out and climb a rope to the top with just his arms. I was later up at Paul’s in 1976 after other people had been trying to buy Paul’s famous Number 32 race car, but he gave it to me and I restored. It’s still popular to display at races.” While Paul Gose passed away in 1994, James still considers the Gose sisters as among his favorite people.

“Paul kept his ’32 racer under a peach tree”, James continued. “Tommy Williams had helped Paul since 1955 and stayed upstairs over his garage. Paul raced all over the country in the Carolinas, Chattanooga and Newport. I kept up his car from mid 1962 until 1966 and he said that if I had done the work that he didn’t worry about it. In 1965 we started running at Kingsport and Johnson City where they were running ‘35s and up with bigger motors. We were about the last running flat heads and we’d pull our racecar behind a ’56 Ford, spend 5 or 6 dollars for gas and $15 to enter, and we kept beating the modern cars. Paul would tell me that I knew more about how a car was running than he did.”

“We built a ’37 Ford in 1965 and won 5 races straight at the 411 raceway and at Tazewell. Our flathead would still outrun 327’s, 350s, 427s. There are a lot of little deals you can do to make a car run better. You could start at 100 horsepower and work it up to 200 horsepower. We sold the flathead engine out of the car and ended up with a junky Chevy engine in it, but still won some races. Paul quit racing in ’69 or ’70 and I kept going to about 2015.

While still in high school and needing a dependable paycheck, James had also started working at the nearby Morningside Shell station, where he said that it was not uncommon to wash 30 cars a day. While on his high school senior trip, he had met Carole Hardin. After his graduation in 1965, James and Carole would be married in 1966 and are still together.

With his marriage and needing a solid job, James followed his dad to the Coca Cola plant in 1966, where by 1970 he had been moved to the service department. His spare time was spent by building street rods for others, and by 1976 he left the plant to concentrate on building street rods.

“I had been restoring some cars at my house”, he continued. “David (Britton) had bought a ’34 Ford for $80 and I helped him rebuilt it at home when we were in Junior High. I’d done a ‘’32 Ford and a ’29 Ford at home. My business began to take off and a few years later, five of my cars placed among the Top 25 at the Nationals show In later years many of the top 25 cars in top national shows in mine I had a lot of cars In the top 25 of Shades of the Past shows in Pigeon Forge . I did all the chassis, body work and paint on the cars and done several cars for Don Bunch. Some of my cars went to California, Georgia and Kentucky.

“It got to where my biggest problem was getting the time to work on them. Will Hyder has helped me for a lot of years and he knows everything that I know, and Ronnie Schropshire had been with me for 17 years. In my time I’ve built 80 cars or more.”

Having earlier bought a roomy work location on Lincoln Avenue, James has now slowed his pace but is still working ’48 Ford, a ’41 Ford and a ’34 Ford.