A dealer, and a champ, in cars for the long run

Howard A. Hanna told an Inquirer reporter in 1961 that he had fallen in love with car racing while still in grammar school.

"I've been a racing nut ever since I was 11 years old," he said, "when I got my first Model T Ford."

He didn't say where an 11-year-old was allowed to drive a car - let alone race one - in those less restrictive days of 1930, but it must have been good training.

By the time of that 1961 interview, the 42-year-old was in first place in the national championship standings of the Sports Car Club of America.

On Thursday, Oct. 28, Mr. Hanna, 91, of Malvern, owner for six decades of YBH Sales & Service Inc., a Delaware County car dealership, died at Dunwoody Village, the retirement community in Newtown Square, of complications from a stroke he suffered in 2008.

Born in Bryn Mawr, Mr. Hanna graduated from Tredyffrin/Easttown High School in 1937 and, he told the 1961 interviewer, worked for an ordnance plant before World War II and for an experimental-tool firm after it.

Mr. Hanna's racing mentor was Griswold, for whose firm Mr. Hanna was a precision machinist, son James said.

In 1948, Griswold won the first Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Grand Prix in a 1938 Alfa Romeo touring coupe, and Mr. Hanna was on Griswold's team there, his son said.

"Sports-car racing was just a hobby in those days," Mr. Hanna said in 1961. "But then I discovered I was spending all my money on my hobby. So I decided to get into it full time."

Between 1953 and 1969, Mr. Hanna raced "almost every year" in the 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida, his son said.

One of Mr. Hanna's efforts is noted in a 2008 story on VeloceToday.com, which describes itself as "the online magazine for Italian and French classic car enthusiasts." It states that Mr. Hanna decided to compete for a 1959 championship in a Deutsch-Bonnet car, starting with the 12 Hours of Sebring.

He and teammate Richard Toland "were doing well until Lap 82, just about midrace, when they were forced to retire" from the race, the story says. Despite that, "Howard Hanna went on to win the 1959 Class H championship."

That Class H was an annual competition run by the Sports Car Club of America, which he also won in 1961 and 1962, his son said. Mr. Hanna ranged far to compete.

In July 1962, he raced in the Lake Garnett (Kan.) Grand Prix and won the Class F production class in his Deutsch-Bonnet.That November, he was an overall winner in the Grand Prix Festival of Puerto Rico at Caguas.

"Hanna's victory" in Puerto Rico, the New York Times reported, "was a start-to-finish-in-front performance in the DB that had carried him to the American national championship this year in Class F."

But it could be dangerous.

In 1967, Mr. Hanna was hospitalized with minor burns and bruises after he crashed with another racer on the last lap of the four-hour Trans-American sedan race at Sebring.

He also raced at Le Mans, Reims, and Havana, his son said. Mr. Hanna began selling cars in the late 1940s with two others, who soon left the business but whose initials remain in the YBH title.

He became a Volkswagen dealer, "one of the first in America," in 1951, his son said.

"He soon outgrew the modest shop in Havertown" on West Chester Pike, James said, "moved to larger quarters on the pike at Township Line Road in Broomall, and, finally in 1959, moved the business to its current location in Edgemont," on the pike at Providence Road. In the 1970s, he said, his father added four other European brands to his Volkswagen dealership.

Mr. Hanna was a former governor of the Sports Car Club of America, a member of the Road Racing Drivers Club, a founding member of the American International Automobile Dealers Association, and a member of Overbrook Golf Club, Merion Golf Club, and Moselem Springs Golf Club near Reading.

Besides his son James, he is survived by his wife of 43 years, Mary Lou; son H. Alexander; daughters Gwendolyn Welsh, Sandra Verdiani, and Nancy; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A daughter, Susan, died in 2002.

Services were private.