Gurney built great career as an All-American racer

He limps a little now, walks slightly hunched over and needs glasses for those eyes that used to be able to calculate a hairpin turn 300 yards away.

Most of his movie-star, light-brown hair is still there, always tousled, parted on the right and still falling into his eyes. So is the boyish grin that always said, and still does: Let’s go racing.

Like the cars Dan Gurney drove, all kinds, all over the world, time flies.

He is 76 years old, and that seems impossible. The stories of racing through the orange groves and living the California hot rod life in the late 1940s and ‘50s seem frozen in time.

It seems like only yesterday that Gurney was in the heat of every battle at the Indy 500, then joining the good old boys of NASCAR and occasionally beating them, or standing on a victory podium and spraying champagne on photographers and A.J. Foyt, the guy with whom he had just won the 24 hours of LeMans.

That was 1967. Now champagne-spraying is almost a mandatory part of any victory ceremony.

In so many ways, Gurney was a pioneer. In so many ways, he is still in the game.

Gurney is the chairman and chief executive of All American Racers Inc. Most days, he is in the big office in the front of the factory in Santa Ana, surrounded by shelves and walls of memorabilia. From there, he oversees a company of more than 70 employees, led by son and general manager Justin Gurney, continuing to develop the engineering of racing and aerospace.

Last weekend, Dan Gurney was grand marshal at the 24 Hours of Daytona. He got a ride in the pace car and officially started the proceedings.

“I said, ‘Drivers, start your engines,’ ” he says. “I wasn’t sure if there were any ladies.”

His interest was more than just ceremonial. His son, Alex, drove on a team that led for a while and finished second.

“There’s some DNA there,” Gurney says, “Only he’s quicker than I was.”

The first time Daytona held a time race, in 1962, it was three hours, rather than 24, and they called it the Daytona Continental. The winner was Gurney, with a finish that speaks to the flair he brought to the sport.

“We were about 2 hours 59 minutes into the race and I was way ahead,” Gurney recalls. “On the backstretch, something broke and the engine died. So I started coasting, and I had enough to get to the finish line. But if I kept going, I was going to cross before three hours had elapsed, and the winner had to be first across after three hours.”

So Gurney steered his coasting car high on the bank near the finish line, hit the brakes and stopped two feet shy of the line. There is a picture of him, parked in his Lotus 19 and looking up at the starter on a platform at the line, checkered flag in one hand, stopwatch in the other.

“When it hit three hours,” Gurney says, “he waved the flag, I released the brake and coasted across the finish line, the winner.”

He retired in 1970, except for one aberration.

By that time, he had raced in 312 events in 20 countries with 25 makes of cars, winning 42 pole positions and 51 races.

He drove the Indy 500 nine straight years, starting in 1962, and finished second, second and third his last three years.

He won four Formula One Grand Prix races, including the best moment of his career, the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, when he beat Jackie Stewart and won the race in a car he manufactured himself, an Eagle.

“I’m not sure I felt it at the time, but I sure do now,” Gurney says. “That was the moment. That was our bragging rights.”

Only three other American-born drivers have ever won Formula One races -- Phil Hill, Peter Revson and Richie Ginther. Nobody else has ever won a Formula One race in a car they built themselves.

Gurney drove in 17 NASCAR races, spread over 10 years, won five -- all 500-milers at Riverside -- and captured 10 poles.

The aberration was a one-race comeback in 1980 -- when Gurney was 49.

“Les Richter was running Riverside Speedway and he called and asked if I’d like to drive in the Riverside 500, a NASCAR race,” Gurney recalls. “I’d had some luck there, plus I was curious about how this would feel, one more time.”

He even went to driving school for a refresher, then qualified seventh and was running second when a drive shaft broke. He had a driving partner in that race, a youngster named Dale Earnhardt.

“It was interesting,” Gurney says. “When I got into the race, I realized my mind had played a terrible trick on me. I remembered all the good things about racing and pushed aside all the bad things.”

These days, he is surrounded by mostly good things. He and wife Evi, the mother of Justin and Alex, are deeply involved in both the All American Racers business and Alex’s driving career.

“He is in what is still a dangerous business, and we have that concern,” Gurney says. “But he is very talented, and has good judgment, so that reduces the concern.”

Two of Gurney’s four children from a previous marriage work in the business, and his employees tend to remain loyal. Phil Remington turned 87 last week, has worked with Gurney on various projects since 1964 -- full-time since 1969 -- and still comes to work every day.

And if family and friends aren’t enough, Gurney can walk back into an adjacent showroom, where he still has some of the best cars he drove and/or built. One is a replica of the Eagle that Jerry Grant drove more than 200 mph at Ontario Speedway, a first there.

Nearby is a display of a chunk of bricks from racing’s mountaintop, a place still called the Brickyard. Out back, there are two chipped and peeling garage doors that once enclosed the Gurney Eagle team in Indy’s Gasoline Alley.

Inside, the plant buzzes with activity, much like a place that still wants to go racing.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.