DAN GURNEY LEGEND- "Red Barchetta"/ 'Rush'

6,446 views71 1 Share
SaveAirbajaPublished on Mar 26, 2014A montage of color film and photos of the greatest race car driver to ever drive. The only driver to win in all major forms of Auto racing, Indy Car, Formula One( first American to win and he built his own car), Winston Cup Stock Cars, Trans Am, and Le Mans ( first American).

 

Dan Gurney took a stock Chevrolet Impala to England and kicked their butts!
That car has been found and restored.

https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/g...ml#post9418927

 

Remembering Dan Gurney, the all American racer

Image by IndyCar127 sharessharetweetemailBy: RACER staff April 13, 2019 8:37 AM
The late Dan Gurney, who passed away in January of last year, would have been 88 years old today. Gurney was one of the greatest drivers, innovators, thinkers, that America has produced. He remains the only American team owner to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix in his own car,

Enjoy RACER’s six-part video series on Gurney produced in 2014, “Dan Gurney, All American Racer”, presented by Bell Helmets. RACER’s Robin Miller took the opportunity to accompany Gurney down the hallway of the All American Racing workshop in Santa Ana, California, and ask him for the stories behind some of the many hundreds of photos on the walls. The result was this video series giving some insight into the genial gentleman — and gentle man — who turned All American Racing into a winner on both sides of the Atlantic.


Dan Gurney, Formula 1, IndyCar, RACER Stuff

 

Riverside Rejuvenescence

Editor’s note: A recent phone call from an old friend had us bringing up some of our memories of racing at Riverside in Southern California back in the horribly smoggy days of the area’s Inland Empire. There was no track quite like it and I competed there on motorcycles and in Formula Fords. Yet it was the hellacious pro races there we witnessed that made the track’s final closing in 1990 so unthinkable, so difficult to swallow. So in this “Flashback Friday” here’s my column that appeared in VM issue 18.3, May/June 2018 on my first trip to the fabled circuit.—D. Randy Riggs



Preferring to remember Southern California’s Riverside International Raceway in its prime, rather than when California’s crush of humanity encroached on it and punched a shopping mall into its solar plexus, Dan Gurney’s recent passing got me thinking about Riverside and the many times I’d watched Dan run there, the once-famous circuit now 28 years gone. Its last day of operation took place in May of 1990—the Jim Russell School races running on an abbreviated circuit, since part of the track was already plowed into sad piles of asphalt.



My first sojourn to the track that holds so many racing memories for countless fans and participants was the January 23, 1966 Motor Trend Riverside 500 stock car race. In those days NASCAR opened its season each January at Riverside. It was well promoted and there was no way I was going to miss this, a newcomer race fan to California who’d read about the circuit for years and the many drivers who were scheduled to race that weekend. Even then, barely 10 years old, the place had a mystique about it that remained as part of its DNA for its lifetime. When a race fan heard the name “Riverside,” it was never the nondescript town it was named after that they thought of.



[img]https://www.vintagemotorsport.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/D—Dan-Gurney-Wood-Brothers-Ford-Motortrend-500-Riverside-1966-Tronolone.jpgDan Gurney in the Wood Bros. Ford at Riverside’s Motor Trend 500 in January 1966. Photo: Bob Tronolone-D. Randy Riggs Archive




From my then-home in the San Fernando Valley it was a long 90-mile trek to the track, since few of the freeways that exist now were not yet built. Tagging along with me in my ’65 Chevelle SS were a girlfriend and my younger brother and we wound up watching the race from the tall and elbow-to-elbow packed stands in Turn 6, a spectator spot that also had a wonderful view of the track’s trademark esses. Along with us there were 73,328 others vying for viewing spots around the 2.7-mile circuit that Sunday, the weather warm and pleasant. How many racetracks would kill for attendance like that today?



Having never been to Riverside I did a lot of hiking around to explore different viewpoints and corners, and was blown away by the speeds the stock cars carried down the straight. Unlike the sports car races where Turn 6 was like a horseshoe that sent cars back in the opposite direction down a hill to Turn 7, the stock cars used the longer course, going across the top there, heading straight over to Turn 8 out of Turn 6 before screaming down the track’s long, long backstretch. This was before the 1969 modification when a left-hand dogleg into Turn 9 was completed, making it somewhat safer.



Stock car drivers charging through those tricky and challenging esses was pure entertainment, the dust clouds stirred up by errant cars lunging off the circuit rivaling the area’s notorious smog layer, that on most days in the summer was so thick and bad you couldn’t see the length of the near mile-long straightaway.



The entry list was a Who’s-Who of American drivers of that era, but one of the things that really struck me about Gurney was how precise he was in comparison to most of his competition. At his every exit out of Turn 6, his left-side tires were right at the track’s edge, while even many of the better drivers would vary—six inches away one lap, 12 inches away the next. It was an exhibition of driving art, and no surprise that he won.



Years later Dan told me that he gave credit to his wins there to the Wood Brothers team, saying that they pretended to be just sort of hillbillies but they were always one step ahead of everybody else. He had four straight wins there with them in Fords, but FoMoCo company politics forced him into a Bud Moore Mercury Comet for the ’67 event, which he called a “barn door,” because it sat so high.



His greatest memory of Riverside was the four wins there with the Wood Brothers when they were in their prime, and I’d have to say my greatest memory of Riverside was watching Dan when he was in his prime. My first time at Riverside and Gurney the victor. Hard to top that.

 

JUSTIN GURNEY HONORS DAD’S LEGACY WITH FORD GT DUO IN FAMILY’S GARAGE

SANTA ANA, Calif. – Any motorsports fan worth their salt can tell you that “Dan the Man” left big fingerprints on the Ford GT’s modern, and historic, legacy. In fact, with just about everything he touched, the late and decidedly great Dan Gurney enjoyed a glorious history powered by Ford.

He built flathead V-8 hot rods as a teen back in the day. He was among the first to race the new Ford Indy small-block V-8s in the Indianapolis 500 in the early 1960s. And later, many of his All American Racers Eagle race cars carried Ford V-8 power. He was a member of the factory Ford GT racing team in the 1960s, with all of that effort coming good in a remarkable all-American win in a Ford GT Mk IV 427, paired with A.J. Foyt to pave the way for Ford’s Four-peat of victories at Le Mans from 1966-69. He was also a factory SCCA Trans-Am Mercury Cougar team driver in 1967. And he won five NASCAR races in Fords and Mercurys during the ’60s. In other words, Gurney was, more often than not, a Ford guy throughout his career.

 

When Dearborn reinvented the Ford GT as an exotic street car in the mid-2000s, it only made sense that “Big Eagle” have one in his considerable garage; so his wife, Evi, teamed and schemed with Ford to build him a very special one for his birthday in 2005, ordering him up a bespoke-built ‘05 Ford GT painted “427 Red.” Gurney took delivery of this special car, and often drove it himself.

You’ll recall that the blonde-surfer-guy-looking Gurney was a slim, trim, 6’4” for most of his adult life, sitting so tall in those racing GT40s and GT Mk IVs that his helmet contacted the roof when the door was closed. It was then that the Shelby American team’s uber-brilliant and innovative fabricator/inventor/magician divined and fabbed-up what became known as the “Gurney Bubble” -- an aerodynamically smooth teardrop-shaped sheetmetal bump that gave Gurney’s lid a few inches of extra clearance in the closed-cabin GT cars. Naturally, Ford built Gurney’s ’05 GT to incorporate this feature; although some have likely been added by owners since, Dan’s is the only example so built during production by Ford.

 

Much has changed at All American Racers, Inc., as well as in the Gurneysphere since then. AAR no longer builds or enters racing cars in any pro-level racing series; the business has evolved in many other directions since last contesting Indy, IMSA or Formula 1. AAR still has an auto shop, and now and again restores an original AAR Eagle racing car, either for its own collection or for an independent owner/collector/vintage racer; currently under construction is a ’67 Galaxie 427 street-legal restomod that will, on the outside, identically resemble Dan’s ’67 Wood Brothers NASCAR stocker.

All four of Gurney’s sons now run AAR, with Justin Gurney as President and CEO, and Alex, Mike, and Danny taking other front-line leadership roles. Since building its last IRL Indy car chassis, AAR has gone heavy into the high-tech composites fabrication business, primarily for use in aviation -- a somewhat natural extension of its former profile since among many of the assets AAR has on site in its Southern California shops is an autoclave used for the baking and curing of high-tech composites like Kevlar and various carbon-fiber materials.


Another major sea change at AAR is that Dan Gurney passed away January, 14, 2018.



When Ford reinvented the Ford GT yet again into its current uber high-tech, EcoBoost V-6 configuration, it was elementary that Gurney, who was still alive when the car debuted and won the GT class at Le Mans in 2016, would have one. Son Justin took the lead in procuring a new GT for his dad. There was no question that it would be red, and wear race number 1, as did Dan’s ’67 Le Mans winner.

 

Justin was hopeful that he could convince Ford to also build this one with a Gurney Bubble in the roof, and after considerable analysis, decided against it, based on where the top of the door cap and the roofline meet up. There wasn’t an immediately clear area on which to place it that would center it over the driver’s head, and they didn’t want it to be off-centered too close to the middle of the roof, or have to split the bubble-shaped panel between the roof and the door -- so the car was built sans Bubble.

Justin was pleased, after discussion with Edsel Ford II and then-Ford product chief Raj Nair, that the Gurneys would be given car serial number 67, in honor of the year of that historic Le Mans victory -- of course wearing the red, white, and Number One livery. Gurney the younger speaks with much enthusiasm about his father and these very special cars, often remarking “Isn’t that cool?” Or, “How cool is that?

Seeing the two cars together is a humbling sight. There’s no question they are related, but obviously very different. The ’05 is a more clear homage to the original Ford GT40 look, while the ’19 is much swoopier and knife-edgier, and obviously designed with much more attention to advanced aerodynamics. The differences continue everywhere you look; the ‘05’s rear-of-body aero tricks come down to its overall shape, plus a barely visible and tiny black lip spoiler that follows the bodyline at the trailing edge of the decklid. That’s where, of course, the new GT has a very high-tech, deployable, multi-angle rear wing that snaps up into the airstream.

The cabins are equally differentiated; the ‘05s awash in design cues that again recall that mid-’60s GT40 racer, plus analog instrumentation and a stick-and-clutch manual transaxle. The new car is ultra-modern and high-tech, resembling a racy cross between a current Le Mans-spec machine, and the best possible racing video-game console. The older car runs a supercharged V-8, the new one a much more powerful twin-turbo V-6. The ’19 also has the aero tricks and driver-configurable suspension and aero, and powertrain performance hardware and software that the ‘03-‘05 GT couldn’t dream of. You’ll find Dan Gurney and Phil Remington’s autographs on the glove box door of the ’05 GT.

 

As if to further punctuate the Gurney’s performance and racing past with Ford, two other interesting cars are parked up near the GTs. They being a 1968 Dan Gurney Edition Mercury Cyclone Spoiler muscle car, fully and highly optioned to include factory air conditioning and the requisite 390 FE big-block V-8. Another is a perfectly faithful Superformance recreation of the black #15 Shelby Cobra that Gurney raced at Sebring in 1963, teamed up with Phil Hill. A period photo of the original car appears on the cover of the Rip Chords’ Hot Rod Hits album featuring the song dedicated to the car, Hey Little Cobra. Dan Gurney’s original Shelby American Cobra team jackets quietly hang over the #15 Cobra’s rollbar.



It’s clear that Justin Gurney really loves his family’s legacy in motorsport, and equally enjoys this dazzling pair of crimson GTs dedicated to his father -- but with one major and two minor disappointments. The big downer of course is that his father passed away just prior to delivery of the 2019 GT, so Dan never got to see this car in his garage, nor drive it. Justin also wishes that the new GT could be left in its lowest ride-height position with the engine off, which it cannot; so it could be shown and displayed with the rear wing fully deployed, and the car hunkered down for the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans. (The car can be lowered to minimum ride height while the car is running, but pops back up -- about an inch or so -- once the engine is shut off.) He also quietly wishes there were an easier way to integrate the Gurney Bubble into the new car’s roofline.

No matter, seeing this fabulous pair of GTs in his family garage, both liveried and dedicated to his famous father, begs the expected question: “Isn’t that cool?”

Yes, young Mr. Gurney, that’s most definitely cool.

 

As if to further punctuate the Gurney’s performance and racing past with Ford, two other interesting cars are parked up near the GTs. They being a 1968 Dan Gurney Edition Mercury Cyclone Spoiler muscle car, fully and highly optioned to include factory air conditioning and the requisite 390 FE big-block V-8. Another is a perfectly faithful Superformance recreation of the black #15 Shelby Cobra that Gurney raced at Sebring in 1963, teamed up with Phil Hill. A period photo of the original car appears on the cover of the Rip Chords’ Hot Rod Hits album featuring the song dedicated to the car, Hey Little Cobra. Dan Gurney’s original Shelby American Cobra team jackets quietly hang over the #15 Cobra’s rollbar.



It’s clear that Justin Gurney really loves his family’s legacy in motorsport, and equally enjoys this dazzling pair of crimson GTs dedicated to his father -- but with one major and two minor disappointments. The big downer of course is that his father passed away just prior to delivery of the 2019 GT, so Dan never got to see this car in his garage, nor drive it. Justin also wishes that the new GT could be left in its lowest ride-height position with the engine off, which it cannot; so it could be shown and displayed with the rear wing fully deployed, and the car hunkered down for the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans. (The car can be lowered to minimum ride height while the car is running, but pops back up -- about an inch or so -- once the engine is shut off.) He also quietly wishes there were an easier way to integrate the Gurney Bubble into the new car’s roofline.

No matter, seeing this fabulous pair of GTs in his family garage, both liveried and dedicated to his famous father, begs the expected question: “Isn’t that cool?”

Yes, young Mr. Gurney, that’s most definitely cool.





.