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Gurney's Eagles
Although the Formula 1 and Formula 5000 Eagles did not produce the successes that Gurney had hoped for, the Indycar Eagles were no disappointment. In 1966, Joe Leonard placed ninth at the Indianapolis 500 and Roger McCluskey, in a customer Eagle, won the Langhorne 150. By 1967, many Indycar teams were customers, buying and successfully racing Eagles. Eagles finished 4th and 9th at the Indianapolis 500 and scored victories in five other Indycar races (including Gurney's own victory at the Riverside 300). Bobby Unser, driving a customer Eagle placed 3rd in the 1967 USAC National Championship. Note: 1967 was a great year for Dan Gurney "the race driver," with victories at the 24-Hours of Le Mans, the Belgian Grand Prix, the Riverside 300, and an SCCA Trans-Am race in AAR's own Mercury Cougar.
In 1968, the Eagle's successes mounted, with Bobby Unser's victory at the Indianapolis 500 and 1st place in the USAC National Championship, and six more Eagle Indycar victories by other drivers, including two by Gurney.
The Eagle's success in Indycar racing continued in succeeding years, including four victories by Bobby Unser in an AAR Eagle in 1972, and eight Eagle victories in 1973, one of them Gordon Johncock's victory in the Indianapolis 500 (a race that unfortunately saw the death of Dan Gurney's protege, Swede Savage). In 1974, Bobby Unser took 1st place in the USAC National Championship driving AAR's Eagle and, in 1975, the ultimate prize, an AAR Eagle victory at the Indianapolis 500!
Later years saw a gradual decline in the Eagle's success in Indycar racing, with British-built Lola and March chasses becoming more and more dominant. By 1986, the lone Eagle entered in the Indianapolis 500 even failed to qualify. In 1996, 10 years later, All American Racers, Dan Gurney, and the Eagle -- just as visually stunning as ever -- were back! With financial support and engines from Toyota Motorsports and driving talent from Juan Manual Fangio II and P.J. Jones (son of my first Indianapolis 500 hero, Parnelli Jones), Gurney was beginning the development of what could have proven to be another winner. After Fangio's retirement at the end of the 1997 CART season, rookie Alex Barron (1997 Toyota-Atlantic champion) joined the team for the 1998 season.
The 1998 and 1999 CART seasons were not good ones for Dan Gurney, All American Racers, or the "Indy" Eagles. But neither were they good seasons for any of the other teams using Toyota engines. Mechanical problems (many engine-related) kept Toyota-powered cars from the winners podium and even from the finish line race after race. Nevertheless, at the end of the 1999 CART season, Toyota took the unexpected and, in my view, unwarranted step of canceling its contract with Dan Gurney and All American Racers, Inc. Without its major sponsor and unable to obtain a new sponsor in time, All American Racers had to stop competing in the CART series championship. The record shows that up to that time, Toyota's CART racing engine development program wasn't exactly a resounding success for any of the teams using the Toyota engine. The record also shows that since 1983, Dan Gurney and Toyota had enjoyed an enormously successful relationship. Thanks to Dan Gurney and his All American Racers, during the period of 1983 to 1993, Toyota won a long string of IMSA sports car manufacturer and driver championships, culminating with back-to-back IMSA GTP manufacturer and driver championship victories in 1992 and 1993 -- against some of the most prestigious sports car manufacturers in the world! Although the 1996 to 1999 run of the CART Eagle-Toyota wasn't as successful as either Dan Gurney or Toyota would have liked, it was showing signs of progress. Although high-placed finishes continued to be elusive, the latest Eagle chassis was showing remarkable signs of competitiveness when the Toyota engines didn't fail it. Late in the 1999 season, Robbie Gordon campaigned his own Eagle-Toyota with additional signs that a breakthrough was soon to come.
What made Toyota's abandonment of Dan Gurney and All American Racers at the end of the 1999 CART season all that much harder to take was that, with Toyota's future now in the hands of the Target-Ganassi team, the final fruits of the hard work that Dan Gurney and the All American Racers team put into making Toyota a winner in CART racing eventually went to the Target-Ganassi and other CART teams that weren't around in the hard-going early years. Forgotten in all the headlines about how the "great" Target-Ganassi team brought Toyota its first CART victory were the blood, sweat, and tears -- all the hard work -- that Dan Gurney and the All American Racers team put into bringing Toyota from a "nobody" to a "somebody" in the international auto racing arena. Toyota owed Dan Gurney the confidence to stick with the Eagle-Toyota program for at least another season or two, especially given all the victories that Dan Gurney and the All American Racers team had produced for Toyota in the sports car arena over the previous 10-year span (1983-1993). Thanks to Toyota's unwillingness to give Dan Gurney and the All American Racers team the time to necessary to make the CART Eagle-Toyota a winner, in 2000 -- for the first time since Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby founded All American Racers in 1964 -- there wasn't an All American Racers Eagle either in development or competing on a race track somewhere in the world. That speaks volumes for the greed and "money talks" mentality that has unfortunately gained control of auto racing. To Dan Gurney and the entire All American Racers team, I "salute" you and wish you the greatest success in whatever future endeavors you choose to undertake. In my book you'll always be champions and the very embodiment of what auto racing was all about in the golden era of the 1960s and 1970s.
Long Live Dan Gurney!
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 The fantastically beautiful 1999 AAR Eagle |
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