John Arthur Ingels (sometimes misspelled as Ingles; May 14, 1918 â December 16, 1981) is known as 'the father of karting'.
In 1956, while he was a race car builder at Kurtis Kraft, a famous builder of Indy race cars during the 1950s, he assembled the first Go-Kart in history out of scrap metal and a surplus West Bend Company two-stroke engine. It was built in his two-car garage in Echo Park, California, (now FIX Coffee Co), and was tested in the Rose Bowl parking lot, where it gained hundreds of enthusiasts.