[s-cars] Re: other cars vs. S4

[William Noland]

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Had a great experience with Dan a few years ago. A buddy of mine put
together a binder of old 60's car mags with articles on Gurney -- LeMans
win, F1 Eagle win at Spa, etc. Gave it to Dan at Laguna Seca, when he
was running the Toyota CART program. Dan invited us down to the AAR
raceshop in Santa Ana and out to Fontana for practice day. Got a tour of
the facility -- the shop where they built up the carbon fibre/aluminum
composite chassis pieces (with one enormous autoclave), the model
shop/wind tunnel, machine shop, secret suspension testing room (no
cameras, please), met Alex Barron and more.

Visited the "bone yard" with previous CART Eagles, IMSA cars, old Indy
500 cars, etc. Also got a tour of the facility where they were
developing the recently released Alligator motorcycle and talked for a
while with Dan's son. If you haven't seen the 'Gator, it's wild -- sort
of a recumbent sportbike. Dan also was temporarily housing some
motorcycle dirt track racers, who were in town for a race. One of the
hanger-ons was none other than Gary Nixon, former AMA champ and the kind
of guy who would start a race after sawing the cast off his broken leg.
Very down to earth and friendly guy -- just like Dan.

As if all that wasn't enough, practice day at Fontana was a kick. Place
was deserted, other than four teams, with Andretti, Papis, Unser, Jr.
and Dan's group. Watching and hearing a single car lapping around the
empty facility at 230+ mph was a major buzz.

If you're ever in Santa Ana, stop by AAR. They're very accomodating
people. It's worth it just to see the long hallway lined with photos of
Dan and (many, many) friends in and around every concievable sort of
race machinery short of a monster truck.

Bill



>
> I bought a set of matched Gurney Weslake heads (4valve) for the 289
> Ford engine from him. He was extremely nice and spoke with me for a
> long time about the engine we were building, he was not a superstar in
> his own mind really nice guy.


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