‘The Cars Are the Stars Here’ : Almost Anything Goes, Except a Sunday Drive by Roger Penske Into the Hotel Pool, When Corvettes and Their Drivers Get Together for a 40-Year Reunion in Palm Springs
Has it really been 40 years since the first Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Mich., to mark America’s entry into the world of sports car racing?
Apparently so. Rick Cole and Marty Yacoobian made a birthday party out of the eighth annual Palm Springs Road Races last weekend by dedicating the sports car happening to Chevrolet’s prized offspring.
Roger Penske was there. He scored one of Corvette’s first major victories when he won the Nassau Tourist Trophy in 1964, his last race before retiring to become one of motor racing’s most successful entrepreneurs. So successful that a $100-a-plate dinner was held in his honor Saturday night to raise funds for the Corvette museum.
Dick Guldstrand was there. He was the first driver hired by Penske when he formed his racing team in 1965. With George Wintersteen and Ben Moore, Guldstrand won the GT class in Penske’s coupe in the 1966 Daytona Continental race--forerunner of the 24-hour enduro.
Zora Arkus-Duntov was there. He was the first chief engineer in the Corvette project and is known in automotive circles as “Mr. Corvette.”
Augie Pabst was there. He was an internationally renowned driver in the 1960s, but he is best remembered for driving a rental car into a hotel swimming pool in Monterey. And memories of that day nearly made headlines Sunday in Palm Springs. More on that later.
But the cars were the show.
“No one came to see the drivers,” one of the winning drivers insisted. “The cars are the stars here.”
The original ’63 Corvette Grand Sport, serial No. 001, was there. Doug Hooper, who won the 1962 Times Grand Prix three-hour enduro driving the car with the 427-cubic-inch engine for the late Mickey Thompson, was at the wheel again. The veteran from Highland Park drove the immaculate blue convertible in a pair of 10-lap races around the two-mile Convention Center course as if he were challenging for a Sports Car Club of America national championship.
Hooper, 59, finished third in the Corvette vs. Cobra challenge on Saturday and second in the all-Corvette main event Sunday. Both races were won by Steve Prewitt, a food broker and vintage car hobbyist from Des Moines, Iowa, in a 1967 coupe.
One of the first 300 fiberglass convertibles--white with red upholstery--built in 1953, was there. It listed for $3,498, FOB Flint, Mich. It was on display at the Convention Center, but it attracted as much attention as the car sitting next to it--also white with red interior with a suggested list price of $44,974.
It was the millionth Corvette, built last July 2, at the factory in Bowling Green, Ky.
It nearly got a bath Sunday.
During the Saturday night roast for Penske, Pabst recalled the evening he drove a Falcon rental car into the Mark Thomas hotel swimming pool on a $100 dare from fellow driver Walt Hansgen.
“It was a beautiful job of driving,” Penske, who was there, recalled. “He maneuvered it right between the diving board and the fence, straight into the pool. The only problem was, Hansgen’s clothes were in the trunk. Walt raced to his room, got his swimming trunks on and dove into the pool. First he had to get the key out of the ignition, and then open the trunk. His clothes popped out like a cork.”
Pabst, at the conclusion of his remarks, offered his own challenge:
“I’ll put up $1,000, and I’ll bet a lot of folks here will match it, if Roger Penske will drive a car into the pool tomorrow,” he said.
Penske, in his closing remarks, trumped his old racing friend.
“You bring me the millionth Corvette at noon tomorrow and I’ll drive it in the pool,” he said.
It almost came off.
Dan Gale, president of the National Corvette Museum--recipient of the funds from the Penske dinner--had more than 40 enthusiasts lined up to donate $1,000 each to watch Penske’s drive into the Wyndham hotel pool. He also had Chevrolet’s permission to douse the millionth car and the hotel’s permission for the dunking, but a Penske appointment prevented it from occurring.
“It would have been a hell of a show,” Gale said. “Can you imagine how much publicity we would have got for the museum?”
Pabst’s last words: “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t done that. I was a pretty good race driver and all I’m remembered for is driving a car into a swimming pool. That’s kind of sad.”
In all, there were more than 500 Corvettes in and around Palm Springs, including 32 that raced, 170 driven by Chevrolet’s invited guests from around the country, 50 on display at the concours d’elegance at nearby Ruth Hardy Park and a dozen or more that were auctioned off during two days of vintage car bidding.
The Corvettes didn’t win top honors in the concours, however. That honor went to a 1930 Cadillac V-16 Sports Phaeton owned by Steve Nanini of Tucson.
Seventy-one cars were auctioned, a 1974 Ferrari Daytona coupe topping the bidding at $150,000.
Palm Springs was chosen for the Corvette birthday bash because it is in Southern California, where on the road courses at Pomona, Santa Barbara, Torrey Pines, Paramount Ranch, Willow Springs, Del Mar, Riverside and Palm Springs, the Corvette emerged in the early ‘60s as a viable challenger to the European sports cars that dominated East Coast racing.
“The early Corvettes didn’t have much power, but when the 427s (cubic inch engines) came out, the Southern California tracks were ideal to display the new muscle,” said Ralph Kramer, director of Chevrolet public relations. “Most of the tracks were wide and flat, on airports or parking lots, and had long straightaways where the ‘Vettes could stretch out. Back east, most of the courses were narrow, winding roads where the European cars were at an advantage.
“That, plus the proximity of the hot rod after-market industry made Southern California a perfect spawning ground for the new cars. From about 1963, racing just took off, and most of the drivers, like Dave MacDonald, Bob Bondurant, Andy Porterfield and Dick Guldstrand, were all Southern California hot rodders.”
Guldstrand, who lives in Culver City, has driven in all eight Palm Springs reunions. He says the experience is like reliving his childhood.
“You have to go back to the old Cal Club days to generate the kind of enthusiasm we have here,” he said. “Thirty years ago, there were race tracks all over the place, wherever there was some open ground. No one worried about liability insurance back then. We just all took our cars out and ran. If anybody wrecked, or got hurt, no one thought about lawsuits. It’s an era we’ll never see again. The camaraderie at these old-car races like here and places like Laguna Seca and Elkhart Lake (Wis.) and Lime Rock (Conn.) makes us all feel young again.”
Guldstrand recalled becoming Penske’s first professional driver:
“I’d driven midgets and sprint cars when I was in school, but when I got back from the Korean War, the Corvettes caught my eye and I bought a ’57 and won a couple of races. One day Zora (Duntov) called and asked me if I’d like to drive a Corvette for Penske at Daytona. He said Penske had been impressed with the way I always finished a race. Later, I found out why this was so important to Roger.
“I flew to the factory in St. Louis and was waiting there on the assembly line when the car was finished. It was called the Mystery Mark IV, the first of the 427s built especially for racing. I had to drive it to Newtown Square, Pa., where Penske was located and I nearly didn’t make it. The car wasn’t prepared for anything under 70 m.p.h. in first gear, so when I had to drive through towns, it lugged and sputtered and popped and caught everybody’s attention.
“One of the first things Penske did was get an engine from Traco in Culver City--another Southern California advantage. We trailered it to Daytona and had no idea how much power it had. We had a severe learning problem. I was out testing when I spun out and did a few 360s before coming to a stop. I saw Roger standing down pit row, staring at me and I figured I was through, headed back to Los Angeles when Phil Hill came through and looped his Ferrari in exactly the same place I’d spun.
“I’ve always felt Phil saved my job, because after Penske saw the world champion spin, all he said was, ‘Oh, a couple of crazy California hot-rodders at it again, eh?’ ”
During the race, Guldstrand learned the Penske mind-set about perseverance.
“Sometime in the middle of the night, Penske woke me up and said we had big troubles. I scrambled back to the pits and there was the car, all the front end wiped out, including the headlights. Daytona had a rule that no car could run without headlights so Penske taped two flashlights to the front end and told me to get out there.
“I almost drove off the track. I couldn’t see a thing, but I managed to catch up to a Ferrari and tailgated it as long as I could. The radiator was leaking so badly that we had to keep coming in for water. Penske cannibalized one from another car in the next pit so we could keep going. We won the GT class, the first time the car had ever run, but it was more a tribute to Penske’s tenacity than anything else.
“Back then, he had that green-flag mentality that absolutely doesn’t know the meaning of quit. I don’t know anyone else who would have kept us going the way he did--with two flashlights hanging on the front end.”
Vintage or historic car races are generally more exhibitions of equipment than full-blown races, but at times you couldn’t tell it from the competition last weekend.
Vic Edelbrock, in his rare 1963 split-window Corvette--one of only six built before General Motors shut down the project because it didn’t want to be involved in racing--made a daring pass on the 180-degree turn in front of the main grandstands that brought a gasp from the spectators.
“Some guy cut me off, and it made the horns start to grow out of my forehead,” Edelbrock said later. “I had to get him back, but I’ll admit that inside move was crazy. It was a no-brainer, but when you’re out there behind the wheel, things like that happen.”
Even if the car is worth a quarter of a million dollars.
Corvettes weren’t the only cars there. George Follmer was there with his Formula One Shadow. Brad Frisselle had the Datsun 240Z that won the 1976 IMSA GTU championship. There were McLarens and Porsches and Lolas from the Can-Am days. Robs Lamplough had a 1969 Gurney Eagle that ran at Indy. And, of course, there were Ford Cobras that had been brought to challenge the Corvettes.
The Cobra had a moment in the sun late Sunday when Don Roberts of Phoenix drove a ’65 coupe to victory in a race for Trans-Am and SCCA cars, but in the Corvette vs. Cobra challenge he finished second, unable to handle Prewitt’s Corvette.
“I was trying as hard as I could, but I couldn’t beat all that horsepower,” Roberts said, echoing the cry of the ‘60s when the two manufacturers were going head to head.
