Heros are so hard to find...

dave v. in nc

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So sorry to hear of the loss of one of my childhood heroes, Dan Gurney. If you watch the mid-60's movie, Grand Prix, you sort of have alot of the people that I thought were the "good guys"; Gurney, Hill, Hill, Ginther, Clark, Ireland, Stewart, Rindt, etc. and of course, James Garner. Arnold Palmer wasn't in the movie. Or my dad, or my brothers Bruce and John. We're running out of heroes, sadly.
 

dave v. in nc

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I fortunately still have Bruce and John :). Bruce used to let me ride on his lap and steer and shift his first car in high school, a 55 MGTF...
Gurney was my favorite of the drivers; got to see him at the Indy 500 in '67; best Eagle that year was the late Denny Hulme, tho Gurney was #2 qualifier. I had Parnelli Jones in the pool, the turbine car that ALMOST won.
And yes, you are correct.
 

Bmachine

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A little Gurney story.

In the early nineties, I was working for an advertising company and we did a lot for work for Toyota. Dan was, at the time, under contract with them for the IMSA GTP program and some other projects. (I never could stop marveling at the irony of All American Racers running cars from a Japanese company, but.. other story). At the time, Toyota was introducing a new "sporty" car. I believe it was the MR2. So we decided to go to Willow Springs raceway and do some laps in the MR2 and we asked Toyota if they could get Dan to do the driving. Much to our surprise they all agreed.

So we decided we would have Dan drive while I was in the passenger seat, filming and interviewing all along. At the time I was running my race Tii (built with Carl Nelson, Bill Holmes and Gary Ibusuki) in the SCCA ITA class so I knew the track very well. Even though the point that day was simply to have him talk about the car from a driver's perspective, without telling anyone, just for kicks I decided to get the chrono on my watch going. So we're running around the track for several laps and Dan is happily playing the role of the paid spokesman talking about how the car does this really well and that really well, all in a completely leisurely and relaxed manner as we are joking around and admiring the landscape all at the same time. Great fun with a super chill guy.

After all was said and done, back in the pits, I decided to check on my watch. It turns out we had been lapping the track 10 seconds faster than we were doing in race trim with the Tii... in a bone stock street car with all season tires and a passenger!

The man was and always will be a true legend.
 
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Dohn

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I was a Car & Driver reader back in the era of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, in those days a no-holds-barred blast from Manhattan to Redondo Beach, by any route and at full speed. Gurney and Yates won the second race in the series in a Ferrari Daytona, as I recall in a few minutes less than 36 hours, averaging approximately 80 mph for the trip. Impressive enough, but I remember Yates writing about watching in fascination as Gurney danced the car through the Rockies, on glare ice, never putting a wheel wrong. A legend indeed.
 

adawil2002

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The officer handed Dan the ticket while he was pumping gas. In his next breath the officer asked how fast will that car go. Dan said we're about to find out. A while later Dan topped the Ferrari out at 172. (Paraphrased from Brock Yates)

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