Dan Gurney is one of the greatest racing drivers ever to take to the track. And he started out as a hot rodder.
He won races in every major circuit from 1955 to 1970-Formula 1, Indy Cars, NASCAR, Can Am, Trans Am, as well as the long distance World Championship Sports Car races at Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans. He finished second twice at the Indy 500, and he is the only American in history to win a Grand Prix in a car he built himself.
A driver of Gurney's caliber today would need to have the skills of drivers such as Michael Schumacher, Tony Stewart, and Sam Hornish all rolled into one-with hot rods and street racing in the background.
"I was a hot rod guy for sure," Gurney said in a recent interview. "It was the only thing possible to do on a shoestring, as you could put a car together from junkyard parts."
He started it all in high school by adding a two-carburetor setup to his 1933 Ford roadster. "I sent away for California Bill's hot rod book on how you do it," he said.
"[The Ford] made all kinds of noise, but didn't run any faster. That was the beginning of learning how to do things," Gurney remembered.
In 1948, a few days after he graduated from Long Island's Manhasset High School, he and his family moved to California. His parents had purchased an orange grove in Riverside, and Dan drove across the country in a 1940 Standard two-door Ford. He immediately traded it for a chopped '32 five-window coupe.
"I got the long end of that deal, but it was a huge education for me," Gurney said. He described the Deuce's flathead V-8 as "mild," but it must have been good enough to get him into trouble with the local police.
"After getting too many tickets I no longer wanted it to be so obvious that I was driving a hot rod, so I ended up putting a good engine in a '35 Ford," he said. Gurney bought the two-door sedan for $50 in west Riverside. It was definitely less noticeable than the chopped '32 Ford coupe with the aggressive stance.
Gurney bored and stroked the sedan's Ford flathead V-8 engine. "Like an eighth by eighth," he said. It had Evans heads, an Isky track grind camshaft, Spaulding ignition, and an aluminum flywheel. Gurney did the porting himself. He remembered three Strombergs, "97s or 48s-I don't know, one or the other-on an Edelbrock manifold," he said. "The transmission had Zephyr gears."
He used flex headers that went into chambers attached ahead of each muffler. When he went racing he removed the entire exhaust system from the flex pipes back. "That's how I got some of the weight off," he said.
Here's Dan Gurney's '32 five-window. He traded a '40 Ford for the car. He thought he got the short end of the deal. The Deuce was too visible to the police around Riverside, so he got rid of it in favor of a 1937 Ford Sedan that he made into a sleeper for street racing.
Gurney pared the sedan's weight down to 2400 pounds by stripping everything out of it, including rear brakes. It had little aluminum seats that were out of a light plane, perhaps a Piper Cub.
Street racing was happening in Riverside in the early 1950s, and everywhere else in Southern California. Gurney was good at it, too. The '35 Ford was fast, and he won a lot of races with it. Soon he was a hired gun, driving others' cars.
"I got a reputation for being able to shift pretty good. In those days, speed shifting was something you had to do. And if you didn't do it, you were going to lose," Gurney said. "I remember a guy named Herman Phelps-had a '40 Deluxe coupe with a good engine in it, 3/8 by 3/8, something like that-and he asked me, 'Would you drive it?' Absolutely!"
Gurney was proud of that. His reputation was growing, but sometimes it was inconvenient, like one night when he was already in bed at home in Riverside. He was called out to race, and, without hesitation, he jumped into his Ford sedan-in his pajamas-and went out to the usual road near March Field, the Strategic Air Command base nearby. "There was a stretch with no crossroads, and it was far enough out of town that the police didn't bother you," Gurney said. He ran, won, and then went back to bed.
Dan Gurney about to leave the line at Bonneville in 1950. He went 130.43 mph with a Ray Torres flathead in the car. He also tried the engine out of his own '37 Ford. "The Ray Torres engine was better," Gurney said. | 
Dan Gurney poses on the fender of a Toyota GTP car. His All American Racers team built and raced the cars to dominance in the IMSA GTP series in 1992-93. | |