Raoul “Sonny” Balcaen III passed away unexpectedly after a short illness. He was 88. Raoul belonged to a generation of young men and women who made Southern California the epicenter of American and global car culture. In the 1950s,
Raoul was a pioneer hot rodder and drag racer. As a teenager, he successfully competed with his homebuilt Top Fuel dragster, “Bantamweight Bomb.” Later in the decade he was hired by a young Jim Hall to build a Lister-Chevrolet, a race-winning precursor to Hall’s Chaparrals and Carroll Shelby’s Cobras. That prompted Lance Reventlow, the racer son of Woolworth five-and-dime-store heiress Barbara Hutton, to recruit Raoul to help develop the California-made Scarabs that dominated American road racing in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s; Raoul was in the Scarab dyno room when the engine for the first all-American Formula 1 car was fired up the first time. Raoul then did a number of consulting projects for Shelby, including serving as occasional Shelby-American pilot.
In the ‘60s, he started IECO (Induction Engineering Company), a high-performance parts business specializing in Chevrolet Corvairs and Vegas. The firm succeeded mainly due to Balcaen’s mechanical genius, garnering several patents, and business acumen; in his “spare time” he’d earned an MBA from UCLA. After 20 years he sold IECO and, feeling too young to fully retire, returned to consulting. An early project got him involved with Margie & Robert Petersen in the beginning days of what would become the now world-famous automotive museum.
He also immersed himself in the local food and wine scene, becoming a student of oenology and longtime member of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin. This led to his involvement in the early years of Vintage House, a wine importer and distributor later renamed the Henry Wine Group.
In recent decades, Raoul enjoyed riding motorcycles, traveling and becoming an economist. He also worked for various local charities and most recently was a trustee, fundraiser and goodwill ambassador for the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America. It is largely due to Raoul’s efforts the Hall was able build its beautiful museum on the grounds of Daytona International Speedway that attracts 150,000 visitors a year. A member of the prestigious Road Racing Drivers Club, in 2022, he published his autobiography: Raoul ‘Sonny’ Balcaen: My exciting true-life story in motor racing from top-fuel drag racing pioneer to Jim Hall, Reventlow Scarab, Carroll Shelby and beyond.
From gearhead to gourmand, Raoul was a renaissance man of many passions and will be dearly missed by his wife Franziska, sister Barbara, family and friends. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (mshf.com) or your favorite charity. A private celebration of life will be held in September.
Copy published by Los Angeles Times on Aug. 13, 2024.
