“Eddie Ka-Zoom” was considered one of the top five Indy roadster builders and fabricators. He built the car 2005 inductee Troy Ruttman drove to victory in the 1952 Indianapolis 500 and made the eleventh-hour modifications that helped inductee Mario Andretti capture the 1969 500. In all, cars Kuzma designed or worked on claimed 60 major races between 1951 and 1969. The Portland, OR native ran an auto body shop before joining the Navy in WWII. Afterward, he moved to LA and began building some of the most successful midgets, sprint cars, roadsters and dirt championship cars of the postwar era. 1999 inductee Jimmy Bryan won three USAC national championships (1954, ’56, ’57) in Kuzma cars. Often there were five or six Kuzma chassis in a given Indy 500. “The man was an artist and a craftsman,'' 1989 inductee A.J. Foyt told The New York Times. ''Most of the really good craftsmen in racing owe some of their skills to Eddie.'' Kuzma was inducted into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame in 2003.