Fantastic! I met him once, at the Shelby American Museum in Gunbarrel, CO. He is truly a unique individual. And an American Hero. The accomplishments of men like Dan Gurney, A.J. Foyt, Carroll Shely, Phil Hill- just to name a few- go underappreciated by the current throng of racing enthusiasts. Try to drive some of the beasts that they did, as I have many years later, and then you can truly appreciate what they accomplished.
I too was there for the Christmas fundraiser Gunbarrel. I was blessed to meet Gurney, Phil Hill and Peter Brock who to me are historical fixtures in my life. Gurney was a truly fun and entertaining personality to converse with. Dan Gurney, R.I. P. Looking forward to conversing with you again on the Other Side.
He hits the nail on the head right at the end....... " I cant believe that I used to do this for a living" Neither can I. Hats off to them back then in the 60's
Gurney won spa in chassis no. 104 of the MK-I Eagle. The first three Eagles were a bit heavy so to make 104 as light as possible it was built with titanium suspension parts and exhaust, and had a magnesium skinned chassis. One had to be particularly brave to race at a track like Spa, sitting in the fuel tank of a car made from a volatile metal like magnesium.
Dan's win at Spa in '67 -- in a car =he= built -- was probably the highlight of his great career. Moreover, it was for many years, the fastest F1 GP ever run... at over 145 mph start to finish. Pretty incredible for a guy who was racing the hideous but wicked fast Old Yeller at Riverside less than a decade earlier.
The drivers of that era had absolutely massive stones. 196mph in that car with no downforce, narrow tires, primitive brakes, etc! And 148mph average lap speed!! Unreal.
One of the best drivers ever, in one of the most beautiful cars ever raced. Dan Gurney actually won the race at Spa in a magnesium-bodied car. One of the Gurney Eagles was built from magnesium and titanium instead of aluminium, and that was the one raced at Spa in 1967. A different time, indeed.
Even more true if you recall Piers Courage, Jo Schlesser and Pierre Levegh's fates in magnesium skinned (or constructed) cars. For those who don't know, there's no conventional way to extinguish a magnesium fire once started, and even if it was easy NO Grand Prix circuit then - or perhaps even now - has the apparatus to do so. So when it burns (at 4,000 F. Yes, four thousand.) it's gonna burn until it self-extinguishes and you'd better not even get near it since it also sparks.
I'll have to go with the 60's, 70's & 80's. Too many cars to choose from, but... that Williams FW07 (w/Alan Jones driving) trips my trigger... Hockenheim 1980....
Hostage Negotiation App those early Williams were nice. The ultimate in ground effects design. I judge rear engine GP cars by pre-aerodynamics and post aerodynamics. Both have an appeal. But for pre-aero I'd say Lotus-Ford 49(67) then Eagle-Westlake then Brahbam-Repco.
I seen this exact car at Indianapolis over the summer. I seen it and immediately knew what it was. I had to be sneaky but I touched the car. I had never felt so much like an outlaw in my life!
I still have the (Aussie) Sports Car World magazine I used to but back then that features Dan's win at Spa. The only driver to ever win a GP in a car of his own design/manufacture other than Jack Brabham - and Dan's car was the most beautiful F1 car ever created. There was something wonderful about the F1 cars of that era, with their exposed engines, snakes-nest exhaust pipes, complete lack of aerodynamic aids....they really were beautiful machines - some more so than others. :) I miss 'em.
I remember buying Autosport magazine just after Dan won Spa, the title of the article in it was "Eagle Flies High at Spa".I never forgot it.The writer who covered F1 for Autosport then was an American , does anybody remember his name? it eludes me at the moment
And no seat belts- (he said because the chassis was made of Magnesium, the drivers were worried about burning to death in a crash- so they wanted to be thrown free- )
Benetton Treviso that's cause he came into F-1 when that was about the only way you could survive a crash. By '67 the speeds were so fast that theory died along with any driver unlucky enough to get thrown out of their cars. I guarantee you he never raced at Indy(68-)without wearing a seatbelt. But Dan was if anything a creature of habit and old habits die hard.
.... on a much more difficult and dangerous circuit back then. That Masta Kink was no joke - you either engaged it perfectly to maintain your pace or lost precious time (or your life) if you got it wrong. If there was just one event for the F1 Eagle to achieve victory - I'm glad it was at Spa w/Gurney driving.
I bought an American Eagle. Yep. A motocycle, Gurney took a stab at importing Kawasaki's. In 1970 3 of us bought 3 American Beagle 350 twin "scramblers" (side pipes, was the only difference from a street bike)...Gurney went out of business in short order. We got them for $350 each, in the crate, sans gas tank. The 750 American Beagle was a Laverda. You could buy one for $1300. I wonder if any exist in A.E. form.
+TheHypnotstCollector A friend of mine restored an American Eagle/ Laverda 750 as well as an AE Kawasaki 350 as You describe. He also picked up a Wankle Hercules and a scrambler made in the US with 2 Ossa 250 2 stroke engines grafted into a single engine, it was a Yankee 500, he let me ride most of these bikes. He also had a Bridgestone 350 rotary valve 2 stroke street model, damn quick little bike. He ran through a lot of bikes in his years of collecting and restoring, most of them were sold to overseas buyers, including the Japanese Lilac 250 I got in trade and later traded to him.
+Oldbmwr100rs He had a Lilac! Pretty rare. Seems to be one of the rare Japanese bikes that wasn't a big hit. I recently bought a Rabbit, it was in a garage for over 30 years, North Fork, Ca, home to Sam Peckenpah. I sold it for $200 or so. It was mostly together. Not many were imported. I remember that odd Ossa. I've never seen another American Eagle other then the 3 we bought in crates. We had to buy gas tanks so we bought Kawasaki tanks. I am Hypno, I can't post comments from THC channel for some reason.
+IExposeMormonism Yeah,the Lilac was something I picked up in a trade deal, only wish I could have gotten both the guy had. I got it running pretty well, then the clutch came apart, and it sat in the garage for a few years until My friend really wanted it. He ended up selling it with a few other bikes, and the Lilac ended up in So-Cal at the Garage company for a while, last i heard it might have found it's way back to Japan! I've worked on and ridden a couple Fuji Rabbit scooters, including a 200 "Hydraflow" i think it was. They were nice bikes! Well made and decent riders, shame they went out of production. It's rumored that all the tooling that wasn't scrapped became a breakwater for some harbor in Japan. The Yankee was actually very tractable with power delivery, too. He also had a Sears Puch "Twingle" split single 2 stroke bike in near mint condition, it was a neat bike. He had so many over the years I knew him, great guy, he was the person who got me into motorcycle repair and restoration. More I think about it the more I need to just get out of cars and get My own shop going again.
***** I remember hearing it from a giy from an old bike shop in San Francisco when I lived there. Couldn't understand why they didn't just recycle the metal, likly it was just inner building parts, who knows.. Sad though, but from that we got suburu cars..
It would be. Problem was that: 1) he was addicted to racing, so much that he never gave it up. 2) He had too much integrity to lower his personal standards of being bought off and pursuing a career that involves chronic deception to the public.
Wasn't just because of the Mag-Ti car. In general, the cars burned. Think Monaco and Lorenzo Bandini. All of these cars were essetially aluminum tubes that had a bladder inside, filled with an aviation gasoline mixture. The wisdom was that being tossed free and hopefully landing on the grass was preferable to a certain roasting. I beleive Mike Parkes was spared a horrible fate after he was pitched free, but never raced F1 again
Mr. Blutarsky that's what they believed in 1950's GP racing by 67 at the speeds they were traveling you were better off staying with the car and hope you could get out before you burned too death. They had Nomex suits by then so there was some survivability from a fire for about 30 seconds, being ejected from the car was guaranteed death.
Gnostic Brian, I'm replying quite late, but you're actually suggesting that I meant the cars were designed as aluminum tubes as load-bearing structure with engines and suspensions. Monocoque doesn't change the fact that the cars burned, magnesium or not. I'm very well initiated in the design theories and construction of these cars and I've known about monocoque in aircraft and racing autos since the '70s. Don't jump to such conclusions please. Miatacrosser, obviously, in the very well documented case of Mike Parkes, it was not guaranteed death, which is not to say I support that wisdom. That 1950s wisdom you mention was not replaced by wiser ideas until the end of the '60s...meaning it was not extinct in 1967, which we may take as the rea being represented here, since the car featured and the driver feratured won Spa in 1967. I'm confused by both the replies to my original comment. Monocoque does not make cars not burn, and the wisdom of no seatbelts in the era described (up to 1967) is ably demonstrated as being prevalent as F1 didn't have seatbelts until Clark's death in 1968.
That's the way it was back then, you drove the older car's with more feeling, not depending on wing's and downforce, you felt the car out and then you went with it, people didnt know any different tthen, you just did what you had to with the current design's.
.... and not with paddle-shifters... and electronic engineered contraptions... and drivers lacking so much talent that they felt compelled to force other drivers off the track.....
Overboost44 because Dan was old school(50's) on the belief that you were safer to be thrown from the car. I guarantee you he wore a seatbelt when he started running his Indy cars in '68
Авто/Мото
I was there that day, standing at Eau Rouge, watching him, Dan the man. RIP
Me too Frank, but that was some 20 years ago?
RIP Dan, a true legend of motorsport & a gentleman on and off the track. If Jim Clark feared you, then you must have been pretty damn good yourself!
Fantastic! I met him once, at the Shelby American Museum in Gunbarrel, CO. He is truly a unique individual. And an American Hero. The accomplishments of men like Dan Gurney, A.J. Foyt, Carroll Shely, Phil Hill- just to name a few- go underappreciated by the current throng of racing enthusiasts. Try to drive some of the beasts that they did, as I have many years later, and then you can truly appreciate what they accomplished.
Well spoken.
I too was there for the Christmas fundraiser Gunbarrel. I was blessed to meet Gurney, Phil Hill and Peter Brock who to me are historical fixtures in my life. Gurney was a truly fun and entertaining personality to converse with. Dan Gurney, R.I. P. Looking forward to conversing with you again on the Other Side.
He hits the nail on the head right at the end.......
" I cant believe that I used to do this for a living"
Neither can I.
Hats off to them back then in the 60's
Gurney won spa in chassis no. 104 of the MK-I Eagle. The first three Eagles were a bit heavy so to make 104 as light as possible it was built with titanium suspension parts and exhaust, and had a magnesium skinned chassis.
One had to be particularly brave to race at a track like Spa, sitting in the fuel tank of a car made from a volatile metal like magnesium.
The Gurney Eagle is arguably the most gorgeous formula 1 car ever constructed.
No argument here.
Of its era its up there
By far the most beauriful!!! I imagine its sound!!! best regards from Brazil
You’ll get no argument from me! 💯🇺🇸
Dan's win at Spa in '67 -- in a car =he= built -- was probably the highlight of his great career. Moreover, it was for many years, the fastest F1 GP ever run... at over 145 mph start to finish. Pretty incredible for a guy who was racing the hideous but wicked fast Old Yeller at Riverside less than a decade earlier.
one of the most beautiful F1 cars ever made
Len Terry designed some great F1 and Indy cars.
possibly the most beautiful racecar ever
Dan Gurney for President.. Met him a True Gentleman,, Top 5 racer of alltime
The drivers of that era had absolutely massive stones. 196mph in that car with no downforce, narrow tires, primitive brakes, etc! And 148mph average lap speed!! Unreal.
As Bert Munro, said to the tec officials @ Bonneville. brakes,??? we didn't come all the way from New Zealand to to go slow.
think about the point at which he achieved 196 mph... running up to Masta Kink.
My favourite car in GPL! And it's a thing of beauty.
RIP Dan. American motorsports will not be the same without you.
One of the best drivers ever, in one of the most beautiful cars ever raced. Dan Gurney actually won the race at Spa in a magnesium-bodied car. One of the Gurney Eagles was built from magnesium and titanium instead of aluminium, and that was the one raced at Spa in 1967.
A different time, indeed.
Even more true if you recall Piers Courage, Jo Schlesser and Pierre Levegh's fates in magnesium skinned (or constructed) cars. For those who don't know, there's no conventional way to extinguish a magnesium fire once started, and even if it was easy NO Grand Prix circuit then - or perhaps even now - has the apparatus to do so. So when it burns (at 4,000 F. Yes, four thousand.) it's gonna burn until it self-extinguishes and you'd better not even get near it since it also sparks.
What a beautiful racing machine! That front end, designed with only aesthetics in mind, was just perfect.
R.I.P. Dan, another hero gone. We will never again see the calibre of men that their generation produced.
True mechanical engineering genius and a gentleman above all else. RIP Dan.
Best looking F1 cars from the 60's where the best looking
No. The 1950s Maserati 250F takes the biscuit.
I'll have to go with the 60's, 70's & 80's. Too many cars to choose from, but... that Williams FW07 (w/Alan Jones driving) trips my trigger... Hockenheim 1980....
Hostage Negotiation App those early Williams were nice. The ultimate in ground effects design. I judge rear engine GP cars by pre-aerodynamics and post aerodynamics. Both have an appeal. But for pre-aero I'd say Lotus-Ford 49(67) then Eagle-Westlake then Brahbam-Repco.
this is one of my favorite f1 cars of all time!
Godspeed, Dan Gurney, our Hero.
RIP Dan you were among the greatest !
I seen this exact car at Indianapolis over the summer. I seen it and immediately knew what it was. I had to be sneaky but I touched the car. I had never felt so much like an outlaw in my life!
I still have the (Aussie) Sports Car World magazine I used to but back then that features Dan's win at Spa. The only driver to ever win a GP in a car of his own design/manufacture other than Jack Brabham - and Dan's car was the most beautiful F1 car ever created.
There was something wonderful about the F1 cars of that era, with their exposed engines, snakes-nest exhaust pipes, complete lack of aerodynamic aids....they really were beautiful machines - some more so than others. :)
I miss 'em.
Bruce McLaren won a GP in one of his cars
Nice to see Spa in this years F1 line up.
Video by John Lamm? I remember reading his articles in Road & Track when I was 15 years old. Wow. Great story of a great man and driver, great car.
rest in peace Dan Gurney.
A legend! Bless you Dan!
Dan Gurney, Jim Hall, Carol Shelby the best of the best, the kind of guys a kid could look up to and say, I want to be like them.
Great car and an even more ballsy driver. 200 mph in that thing? Lunacy in todays world.
I remember buying Autosport magazine just after Dan won Spa, the title of the article in it was "Eagle Flies High at Spa".I never forgot it.The writer who covered F1 for Autosport then was an American , does anybody remember his name? it eludes me at the moment
It might have been Denise McCluggage
Dan Gurney is a great American and one hell of a man
DAN GURNEY FOR PRESIDENT
Very nice see this video with a legendary Racing Driver and a beautifull and great car !
One of my teen heroes. A legend
thats my boss best boss ever!
American Legend
My great grandpa made this car his name harry weslake
That he did, the engine anyways. He built them for Jaguar and RR too, didn't he?
Weslake was an air flow genius. Brilliantly smooth engine, the Weslake V12.
We miss you Dan.
RIP Dan
@ALAPINO absolutely!! I still think that the Eagle Weslake is the most beautiful F1 car ever produced! Even nicer than the Lotus 49's!
And no seat belts- (he said because the chassis was made of Magnesium, the drivers were worried about burning to death in a crash- so they wanted to be thrown free- )
Respect indeed.
Dan won without seat belts, because he feared the car would catch fire during the race, so he could jump out quickly in case of that event!
Benetton Treviso that's cause he came into F-1 when that was about the only way you could survive a crash. By '67 the speeds were so fast that theory died along with any driver unlucky enough to get thrown out of their cars. I guarantee you he never raced at Indy(68-)without wearing a seatbelt. But Dan was if anything a creature of habit and old habits die hard.
Respect!
196mph, wow, thats not a whole lot slower than the modern cars at spa
Tom Salmon no wings = far less drag
A lot less tire as well.
.... on a much more difficult and dangerous circuit back then. That Masta Kink was no joke - you either engaged it perfectly to maintain your pace or lost precious time (or your life) if you got it wrong.
If there was just one event for the F1 Eagle to achieve victory - I'm glad it was at Spa w/Gurney driving.
And the helmet visor was the only aero aid you had
I bought an American Eagle. Yep. A motocycle, Gurney took a stab at importing Kawasaki's. In 1970 3 of us bought 3 American Beagle 350 twin "scramblers" (side pipes, was the only difference from a street bike)...Gurney went out of business in short order. We got them for $350 each, in the crate, sans gas tank. The 750 American Beagle was a Laverda. You could buy one for $1300. I wonder if any exist in A.E. form.
+TheHypnotstCollector A friend of mine restored an American Eagle/ Laverda 750 as well as an AE Kawasaki 350 as You describe. He also picked up a Wankle Hercules and a scrambler made in the US with 2 Ossa 250 2 stroke engines grafted into a single engine, it was a Yankee 500, he let me ride most of these bikes. He also had a Bridgestone 350 rotary valve 2 stroke street model, damn quick little bike. He ran through a lot of bikes in his years of collecting and restoring, most of them were sold to overseas buyers, including the Japanese Lilac 250 I got in trade and later traded to him.
+Oldbmwr100rs He had a Lilac! Pretty rare. Seems to be one of the rare Japanese bikes that wasn't a big hit. I recently bought a Rabbit, it was in a garage for over 30 years, North Fork, Ca, home to Sam Peckenpah. I sold it for $200 or so. It was mostly together. Not many were imported. I remember that odd Ossa. I've never seen another American Eagle other then the 3 we bought in crates. We had to buy gas tanks so we bought Kawasaki tanks. I am Hypno, I can't post comments from THC channel for some reason.
+IExposeMormonism Yeah,the Lilac was something I picked up in a trade deal, only wish I could have gotten both the guy had. I got it running pretty well, then the clutch came apart, and it sat in the garage for a few years until My friend really wanted it. He ended up selling it with a few other bikes, and the Lilac ended up in So-Cal at the Garage company for a while, last i heard it might have found it's way back to Japan! I've worked on and ridden a couple Fuji Rabbit scooters, including a 200 "Hydraflow" i think it was. They were nice bikes! Well made and decent riders, shame they went out of production. It's rumored that all the tooling that wasn't scrapped became a breakwater for some harbor in Japan. The Yankee was actually very tractable with power delivery, too. He also had a Sears Puch "Twingle" split single 2 stroke bike in near mint condition, it was a neat bike. He had so many over the years I knew him, great guy, he was the person who got me into motorcycle repair and restoration. More I think about it the more I need to just get out of cars and get My own shop going again.
Oldbmwr100rs I heard that breakwater story. Must have been on a RUclips video when I researched the Rabbit
***** I remember hearing it from a giy from an old bike shop in San Francisco when I lived there. Couldn't understand why they didn't just recycle the metal, likly it was just inner building parts, who knows.. Sad though, but from that we got suburu cars..
RIP and Godspeed Man :(
The world really would be a happier place if he were President...!
It would be. Problem was that:
1) he was addicted to racing, so much that he never gave it up.
2) He had too much integrity to lower his personal standards of being bought off and pursuing a career that involves chronic deception to the public.
Loved the I can't believe I did this for a living
@Overboost44 I'm afraid the only chance they had in case of crash was to fly off those highly flammable traps, back then...
@tazio2 Was it Gordon Kirby? His account of the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours was awesome in every sense of the word.
He still looks good at his age.. what a star!
Am I correct that
Bill Flowers had
a hand in Building
this Eagle Car
With Dan Guerny
Wasn't just because of the Mag-Ti car. In general, the cars burned. Think Monaco and Lorenzo Bandini. All of these cars were essetially aluminum tubes that had a bladder inside, filled with an aviation gasoline mixture. The wisdom was that being tossed free and hopefully landing on the grass was preferable to a certain roasting. I beleive Mike Parkes was spared a horrible fate after he was pitched free, but never raced F1 again
No. Many of the F1 cars had full monocoque chassis by that time.
Mr. Blutarsky that's what they believed in 1950's GP racing by 67 at the speeds they were traveling you were better off staying with the car and hope you could get out before you burned too death. They had Nomex suits by then so there was some survivability from a fire for about 30 seconds, being ejected from the car was guaranteed death.
Gnostic Brian, I'm replying quite late, but you're actually suggesting that I meant the cars were designed as aluminum tubes as load-bearing structure with engines and suspensions. Monocoque doesn't change the fact that the cars burned, magnesium or not. I'm very well initiated in the design theories and construction of these cars and I've known about monocoque in aircraft and racing autos since the '70s. Don't jump to such conclusions please.
Miatacrosser, obviously, in the very well documented case of Mike Parkes, it was not guaranteed death, which is not to say I support that wisdom. That 1950s wisdom you mention was not replaced by wiser ideas until the end of the '60s...meaning it was not extinct in 1967, which we may take as the rea being represented here, since the car featured and the driver feratured won Spa in 1967.
I'm confused by both the replies to my original comment. Monocoque does not make cars not burn, and the wisdom of no seatbelts in the era described (up to 1967) is ably demonstrated as being prevalent as F1 didn't have seatbelts until Clark's death in 1968.
That's the way it was back then, you drove the older car's with more feeling, not depending on wing's and downforce,
you felt the car out and then you went with it,
people didnt know any different tthen,
you just did what you had to with the current design's.
.... and not with paddle-shifters... and electronic engineered contraptions... and drivers lacking so much talent that they felt compelled to force other drivers off the track.....
What was the secret to the Gurney Westlake head?
Sorry for mispost, mobile app won't lt me delete....anyway the comment is no one who thinks this car would be
Too bad they didn't add this and the other 66 f1 cars in assetto corsa and pc2. Only the ferrari and lotus.
There is a GPL to AC mod out there - Look for "GPL MOD 1967 V2.20" and then, Have fun!!
@thepno95 And NO seat belts!
Overboost44 because Dan was old school(50's) on the belief that you were safer to be thrown from the car. I guarantee you he wore a seatbelt when he started running his Indy cars in '68
Lol, anyone who thinks this cr