The Factory Twin-Engine 1963 Percival Wildcat Go-Kart

Long before electrification and software-defined vehicles dominated the conversation, American backyard engineering produced machines like this: a genuine 1963 Percival Wildcat go-kart that left the factory with not one engine but two. Mounted on the rear axle are a pair of McCulloch MC9 single-cylinder two-strokes displacing 99cc (6.05 cubic inches) apiece, effectively doubling the kart’s power output over the single-motor version. Each engine breathes through a Tillotson performance carburetor, a milled velocity stack, a McCulloch MC30 manifold and a Kraco exhaust header, with Horstman Rev-Grip centrifugal clutches feeding the rear axle through separate drive chains. Stopping power comes from a lone rear drum brake.

What makes the Wildcat more than just a curiosity is the company behind it. Percival began life in the refrigeration business. Its roots reach back to the D.H. McDaneld Company of Illinois, and the C.L. Percival Company was incorporated in May 1901 with Des Moines as its home, trading in butchers’ equipment, furs, sheep pelts and tallow. An 1901 patent for a forced-air, ice-cooled counter refrigerator set the course for most of the following century. By 1917 the firm was selling oak Percival Refrigerator Show Cases insulated with granulated cork, production shifted to a new 24,000 square foot plant in Boone in early 1941, and during the Second World War some of that capacity went to ammunition boxes. After the war, in 1949, Percival abandoned butcher supplies entirely to build commercial refrigerators full time.

The karting detour arrived in 1959, when the Iowa refrigerator maker decided to start selling go-karts built from prototypes designed by Frank Kurtis, the constructor whose cars had won the Indianapolis 500 five times, and tested by Rodger Ward, the 1959 Indy 500 winner who would take the race again in 1962. The timing was right: Art Ingels, a fabricator at Kurtis Kraft in Glendale, California, had built the first go-kart in 1956, large-scale kart manufacturing followed by 1958 with mail-order kits at $129, and the field exploded from a handful of builders in 1959 to more than 30 nationwide by 1962. Percival’s 1960 dealer literature listed four models, the Hellcat, Wildcat, Live Axle and the junior Cubcat, and period guides credited the company with corrected steering geometry and a string of wins at major events. Kart production was eventually shut down at some point in the 1960s.

Percival’s other pivot proved far more durable. In the early 1950s Iowa State University asked the company to build a controlled-environment chamber for growing plants, a task not so distant from refrigerated display cases, both being insulated boxes with glass doors and tightly managed internal temperatures. Plant chambers remained a sideline for nearly four decades until display equipment was dropped in 1989, the business became Percival Scientific on December 31, 1992, and moved to a new factory in Perry, Iowa, in 2000. The company still builds growth chambers there, and its published history covers butcher tools, refrigerated showcases and plant chambers, but never mentions karts at all.

This particular Wildcat, acquired by its seller in 2024, has since been refurbished. The chromoly frame was powder-coated in Fire Engine Red, the hardware re-chromed and both McCulloch MC9 engines rebuilt. It also received a matching aluminum floor pan, Wildcat graphics, and replacement Vintage Speed tires on gold-finished GoPower wheels. Period-correct details include a five-quart Chilton fuel tank behind the seat, twin box-style engine mounts, a three-spoke steering wheel and a black vinyl bucket seat with a white insert. The kart is now offered for sale at no reserve in Gilbert, Arizona, with a bill of sale.