Kurtis Kraft was founded by Frank Kurtis, an American race car designer and builder who began constructing his own midget car chassis in the late 1930s. Based in Glendale, California, the company rapidly grew to produce a wide variety of racing machinery including midget cars, quarter-midgets, sprint cars, sports cars, and Bonneville land-speed record cars. Indianapolis Championship cars, however, represented the pinnacle of the company's engineering ambitions.
Over the course of its existence, Kurtis Kraft built 120 Indianapolis 500 cars in total. The roadster configuration — a front-engined, low-slung, offset-driver layout — became the dominant formula at Indianapolis during this period, and Kurtis Kraft's machines were at the forefront of that movement. Five of the company's Indianapolis cars went on to win the race outright, a record that cemented Frank Kurtis's reputation as one of the foremost race car constructors in American motorsport history.
The Kurtis Kraft Indianapolis cars were typically paired with the Offenhauser four-cylinder engine, the dominant power unit in American Championship racing throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. The Offenhauser's torque characteristics and reliability suited the oval-racing demands of Indianapolis perfectly, and the Kurtis Kraft chassis was engineered to extract the maximum performance from it.
The company's midget car division used a smaller version of the same Offenhauser motor, a combination the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame described as "virtually unbeatable for over twenty years." That same engineering philosophy — pairing a proven Kurtis chassis with the Offenhauser engine — translated directly into the company's success at the Championship level.
Kurtis Kraft's presence at Indianapolis spanned a formative era in American open-wheel racing. The company's cars were competitive year after year, and five of their Indianapolis entries took the overall victory. This record of five wins from 120 entered cars reflected a strike rate few constructors could match across the roadster era.
Because the FIA World Drivers' Championship included the Indianapolis 500 as a round between 1950 and 1960, Kurtis Kraft cars simultaneously hold World Championship entries for that decade. Drivers piloting Kurtis Kraft machines at Indianapolis during those years therefore scored World Championship points under the FIA's hybrid Formula One–USAC calendar, placing the brand briefly within the context of international Grand Prix racing even though the cars were purpose-built for American oval conditions.
Frank Kurtis sold the midget car portion of the business to Johnny Pawl in the late 1950s, and the quarter-midget segment to Ralph Potter in 1962, marking the gradual wind-down of the company. His contribution to the sport was recognised when he became the first non-driver inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame in the United States.
The Kurtis Kraft 500 Roadsters remain iconic artifacts of the roadster era, representing a moment when American Championship racing was defined by low, offset, front-engined machines rather than the rear-engined revolution that would sweep Indianapolis in the early 1960s. As constructor of 120 Indianapolis 500 cars and five race winners, Kurtis Kraft's legacy in American open-wheel motorsport is unmatched among the independent constructors of its generation.