1966 All American Racers Gurney Eagle Indy Car

Specifications:
Est. 475 hp, 255 cu. in. (4,177cc) dual overhead camshaft V8 engine, four-speed Hewland transaxle, four-wheel independent suspension with coil springs, four-wheel disc brakes. Wheelbase 96.5"

It could only have happened in the sixties, when everything was possible. There were no barriers to entry in any racing series. No multi-million dollar deposits, no permits, no limits on the number of teams, cars or drivers. There were no restrictions requiring teams to build their own chassis. Neither were there any restrictions requiring teams to buy identical chassis and lease spec engines, pit the same number of times and share spec tires.

Even a kid from southern California could take the wheel of wealthy backers' Ferraris and earn himself a seat on the factory Ferrari team, drive a Porsche to a Grand Prix win, join stock car stars in Ford GTs at Le Mans, then jump into Galaxies and beat the best of them at Riverside or Daytona.

It was, perhaps, the best of times.

In Grands Prix the mid-engine car ruled. The last front-engined winner was a dim and distant memory. At Indianapolis the roadster ruled until 1964, but the writing was on the wall.

In 1962 the bricks at The Brickyard shrank to a yard at the start-finish line and road racer Dan Gurney qualified 8th and drove 92 laps in a lightweight mid-engined Mickey Thompson chassis powered by a Buick stock-block, the only mid-engined car in the field. In 1963 Jim Clark's Lotus Powered by Ford finished second. In another Lotus, Dan Gurney finished seventh on the lead lap. A year later Champ Car specialist Rodger Ward followed A.J. Foyt's Watson-Offy roadster across the line in the A.J. Watson-built, Offy-powered, mid-engined Kaiser Aluminum Special.

The transition came in 1965 when Jimmy Clark's Lotus Powered by Ford broke the roadster's grip. It was no great surprise that a mid-engined car won the 500 in 1965; twenty-seven of the thirty-three starters were mid-engined. There were no fewer than fifteen different chassis builders represented on the 1965 Indianapolis grid, marking a time of unparalleled diversity, creativity and innovation.

No wonder a mechanically-inclined talented road racer dreamed of building his own car and beating the world's best. The amazing part is that he dreamed of doing it both at the Indianapolis 500 and on the world's Grand Prix road courses.

Talk about hubris!

But, then, it was ' maybe ' the best of times, and he succeeded in bringing both dreams to reality. The dreamer was Dan Gurney. The cars that did it were the Eagles, built in Santa Ana, California.

Putting the pieces together to make it happen was not easy. Dan Gurney was not an independently wealthy sportsman along the lines of Briggs Cunningham or Lance Reventlow. It took a particularly serendipitous confluence of corporate influences to grease the wheels that launched the Eagles: Ford's no-holds-barred assault on worldwide motor racing and the ambition of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company to replace its arch rival Firestone as the premier name in racing tires.

After Jack Brabham brought a 2.7-liter Cooper to Indy and demonstrated that he could make up in cornering speeds and pit stops what the small Climax four-cylinder engine gave up in straightaway speed, Gurney invited Lotus founder Colin Chapman to Indy in 1962 to explore the possibility of building a Lotus Indy car. He introduced him to Ford, with whom Gurney was associated in the GT40 and Cobra projects. That resulted in Lotus's 1963 Indy car, powered by Ford's 255 cubic inch aluminum pushrod V8, in which Jim Clark finished second and Gurney seventh.

For 1964 the Lotus team knew what was expected; Ford had a four-cam fuel-injected V8 that challenged the established power of the Meyer-Drake Offenhausers. They brought a team from the Woods Brothers NASCAR team to work the pits. Victory came the following year.

Another tectonic shift started in 1964 when Goodyear showed up at Indy in the opening barrage of the famous 'Tire Wars'. Firestone robbed Goodyear of its opportunity by hiring the Agajanian team to build an oversized Offy for Parnelli Jones' 'Calhoun' Watson roadster. On Carburetion Day, Jones, his deep-breathing Offy inhaling an atmosphere rich in nitromethane, put down a few untouchable laps, which the Goodyear runners (and the Goodyear engineers) interpreted as a new batch of killer tires. When qualifying started the next day all fourteen Goodyear cars were on Firestones ' and a legal motor was back in 'Calhoun'.

Goodyear determined that was not going to happen again. Along with burying Firestone in tire development budget. their chosen means was to back Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby in their new venture, All American Racers, to build winning cars for both Formula One and Indianapolis. Goodyear's financial backing ensured not only iron-clad loyalty to Wingfoot tires but also a dedicated development partner to share data and testing experience.

Shelby was already busy building and racing the Cobras powered by Ford and soon would take a leading role in making the GT40 competitive, all with Dan Gurney in the driver's seat. AAR was Gurney's dream and a year later he and his wife Evi bought out Shelby's interest in the team. While remote from the world of Formula One, AAR established itself in Santa Ana, California in the heart of southern California's flourishing auto racing culture.

For years the Indianapolis constructors and hot rodders who dominated American motorsports in the fifties and sixties were based in southern California. It was a region rich in heritage, starting with Harry Miller and the oval track car builders who followed Miller's generation like Kurtis, Watson, Deidt, Epperly, Lesovsky and Kuzma. The L.A. builders delivered the most artistic, beautifully designed, constructed and finished racing cars the world has ever seen. Adding to them were the technicians, body shapers, tuners and mechanics who learned their craft among hot rodding's creativity, individuality and craftsmanship. A booming, exciting road racing and sports car movement completed the ideal environment for building beautifully constructed, innovative, reliable automobiles.

Gurney had worked with Len Terry at Lotus and hired him to design the first AAR cars, not surprisingly christened 'Eagles'. Time was of the essence so while the original plans called for the F1 and Indy Eagles to be different, in the end, the first iterations of both were essentially identical.

The first GP Eagle was powered by a Coventry Climax FPF four-cylinder for development. It was superseded in later cars by the famed Gurney-Weslake V12, which scored its first victory in the non-championship 'Race of Champions' at Brands Hatch in 1966 and the famed victory at record speeds by Gurney in the Belgian GP at Spa in 1967.

In the States, the Indianapolis counterpart known internally as the Mark 2 took shape. Len Terry's design was based upon the 1965 Indy-winning Lotus 38, an evolution that minimized the need for an extended development program for the Indy Eagles. The monocoque tub was double walled both for stiffness and to make room for fuel cells between the walls. Four bulkheads defined the shape and strengthened the pickup points for the rocker arm front suspension with inboard springs and shocks and for the rear suspension with its lower wishbone, single upper link and long trailing arms. The suspension, unlike many of its competitors, centered the body on the wheel track. Brakes were the same 12 1?2 - inch Girling discs used in the F1 car.

The four-cam Ford Indy V8 made about 475 horsepower from the 75 gallons of methanol on board in both the integral tanks and an add-on tank grafted to the left (inside) flank. It drove through a simple four-speed Hewland transaxle.

Aside from a slim, effective design evidencing the best of form following function, the Eagles had one distinctive feature which has made them instantly recognizable, the aggressive hooked raptor's beak shape of the nose and radiator air intake, a design feature that Gurney attributes to the artistic talents of his father. Both effective and emblematic, it is one of the finest design elements of any single-seat racing car in history.

The Indy Eagle made its debut at the Speedway in 1966. In addition to the three team cars driven by Gurney, Joe Leonard and Lloyd Ruby, the team built customer cars for John Klug (driven by Jerry Grant) and Lindsey Hopkins (for Roger McCluskey.) None of the five completed 200 laps. Gurney was caught up in the Dave MacDonald/Eddie Sachs opening lap accident. Leonard and McCluskey were sidelined by engine problems. Grant was flagged off after completing 167 laps. Ruby contended for the lead until the engine failed after oil escaped through a cam cover leak with only 30 laps to go.

McCluskey scored the Eagle's first win in August, a convincing victory at Langhorne after leading all but eight of the race's 150 laps.

New generations of Eagles were fledged thereafter and AAR's attention soon focused entirely on Indy. Only seven years later, in 1973 nineteen of the 33 starters at Indianapolis were Eagle chassis, but after the first few years aerodynamics dictated the disappearance of the beautiful eagle's beak identity and no Eagle ever looked as purposeful, elemental and aggressive as those first few series that were the foundation of the marque's reputation.

The 1966 Eagle Indy car in Joe's Garage is one of the most important. Chassis number 201, it is the first of the Indy cars, the ultimate ancestor of a long and successful line of AAR Eagle Indy cars.

Although its race history in the hands of the AAR team is currently unknown, its history picks up in 1972 when it was back at the Speedway with turbo Offy power in the hands of Carl Williams. The same entrant, Vatis Enterprises, is listed in Jack Fox's Indy 500 reference work entering a '66 Eagle driven by Bentley Warren in 1971, possibly the same car. It was subsequently acquired by Bob Johnson in Indy with no actual race history known. In 1978 Johnson sold it, without engine, gearbox or rear suspension, to Jim Mann. Mann turned around and passed it on to Bob and Don Tarwaki as part of a trade for a two-man Indy car.

The next owner in the chain was the highly perceptive, prescient collector of old race cars Bob Sutherland. He recognized the Indy Eagle's importance and had it restored by Jim Robbins. Joe MacPherson acquired it for Joe's Garage in 1997 where it has been one of the most significant of the many important milestones in race car history and evolution in the garage.

Since acquisition it has been on display only and has not been demonstrated or even run. The engine is a 255 Ford dual overhead-cam Indy engine with the fuel injection system as supplied by Ford. It rides on a set of the particularly attractive centerlock magnesium six-spoke wheels, which contributed to the Indy Eagles' handsome, purposeful presentation. The restoration has been carefully conserved in both Sutherland collection and in Joe's Garage.

Indy Eagle chassis 201 is undeniably the seminal Eagle Indy Car, the initial piece from which the entire distinguished AAR Eagle Indy history began. It would make for a welcome participant in this summer's tribute to the Eagles at Monterey, appropriately powered by Ford and riding on Goodyear tires.