The Hall of Fame Museum at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will open “An All-American Exhibition” this Friday, May 1, featuring a selection of cars built by or driven by Dan Gurney. The exhibit will run through November 30.
All but one of the 11 cars on display were built at Gurney’s All American Racers in Santa Ana, California, and the one that wasn’t, the Ford Mark IV with which Gurney and A.J. Foyt won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1967, has just come from a “freshening” at AAR. It is on loan from The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
The other 10 cars were all constructed at AAR and include eight Indycars, the Eagle-Weslake Formula One car with which Gurney became the only American ever to win a World Championship Formula One race in an American car and the Toyota-powered Eagle MkIII GTP car with which AAR drivers Juan Manuel Fangio II and PJ Jones dominated IMSA in the early 1990s.
Included among the Eagle Indycars are three Indianapolis 500 winners (above), Bobby Unser’s 1968 Rislone Special, Gordon Johncock’s 1973 STP Special and Unser’s 1975 Jorgenson Special. The other five are: Lloyd Ruby’s 1966 Bardahl Special from the first year Eagles were built; the 1969 Olsonite Special with which Dan finished 2nd to Mario Andretti; the 1972 Olsonite Special that Unser used to obliterate Indy’s qualifying records; the 1981 Pepsi Challenger that Mike Mosley qualified 2nd for that year’s 500 then won with at Milwaukee; and a 1999 Castrol Eagle 997 from the final year of Eagle chassis production.
The Museum is located within the grounds of the Speedway, and for information on its collection, tours and hours of operation, please visit: http://www.imshalloffamemuseum.org.
