The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

FIA racing, the development of the Daytona Coupe, the development of the GT350 and the development of the 427 Cobra, not to mention the GT40. In his spare time Miles won 18 races outright for Shelby American, let alone numerous class wins and podium finishes, most famously his overall victories at Daytona and Se- bring in 1966 along with his relegation by twenty-four feet to 2nd OA at Le- Mans that year when he obeyed com- pany orders to produce a photo finish for Ford. A cursory review of his race record reveals he entered 324 races over his long career, most of them in small bore cars in the ‘50s, earning 160 podium finishes. Ken Miles died testing a MK IV GT40 (J2) at River- side. He was 47. (June 18, 1936 – October 4, 1992) Born and raised on a farm in New Zealand, Denis Clive Hulme was the only son of Clive and Rona Hulme. Clive earned a Victoria Cross (the British equivalent of the Medal of Honor) for his action in the Battle of Crete in WW II where, in a private war among other heroics, he stalked and shot 33 German snipers, while being twice wounded, over the course of a week in late May 1941. Denny learned to drive a truck on his father’s lap, and by age six was driving solo on the property. He left school at 17 to become a mechanic and driver for his father’s cartage business and on long hauls on New Zealand’s wind- ing roads he would dream of being race driver. His first car, like so many of the men who inhabited this racing era, was an MG, this time a TF, fol- lowed by an MGA. Success in local events led to a new F2 Cooper in 1959 with which Hulme won the second “Driver to Europe Scholarship” from the New Zealand Grand Prix Racing Association. The first winner of that scholarship was Bruce McLaren in 1958 and he was already in London where he took young Hulme under his wing. Prize money was hard to come by, so Hulme took a job as a mechanic for Jack Brabham which led to an occa- sional drive in one of the boss’ cars. Hulme won seven Formula Junior races in 1963 and then he and Brab- ham dominated F2 in 1964. They moved up to F1 the next year and Brabham won the F1 driver’s title in 1966 while his protégé finished fourth in the standings. Hulme finished on the podium in eight F1 races in 1967, including wins at Monaco and the Nürburgring, on his way to the F1 Dri- ver’s Championship. He left Brabham in 1968 to drive for Bruce McLaren where he enjoyed continued success in F1 and the Can- Am series. Hulme and his boss domi- nated Can-Am racing, one or the other winning every race in 1969. Along the way Hulme gathered two Driver’s Championships and four second place honors in Can-Am, interspersed with third place Driver’s honors in F1 in 1968 and 1972. As an interesting met- ric of his consistency, if not his speed, between 1965 and 1974 Hulme en- tered 112 F1 races and won eight of them and finished on the podium 33 times but only once did he grid on the pole. In Can-Am he entered 52 races over six years, won 22 of them and podiumed 35 times. Hulme entered the Indy 500 five years running from 1967 to 1971; his best finishes were 4th OA in 1967 and 1968. Prior to his F1 and Can-Am ex- ploits, Hulme spent a good deal of time in sports cars. His first go at LeMans was in 1961 in a Fiat/Abarth 850S with which he and fellow Kiwi Angus Hyslop finished 14th OA and 1st in the 850S class. He next appeared at LeMans in 1966 and, but for the now- famous marketing stuff-up by Ford, would have won the race. Between February and June 1967 he ran five more races in GT40s for Sydney Taylor and Holman-Moody. First up was Day- tona where the car (P/1046, the prior year’s LeMans winner) was painted silver with black stripes in deference to Hulme’s national colors and he was poignantly paired with Lloyd Ruby (they had been Ken Miles’ last team- mates in 1966). The pair DNF’d, as did all the MK II entrees, due to transmis- sion problems. February 1967 found Hulme in P/1001 at Snetterton where he finished 2nd OA; March 1967, 1st OA at Silverstone and a month later 2nd OA, again at Silverstone. Then it was on to LeMans in June 1967, again with Lloyd Ruby, this time in J-8 for Holman-Moody. After his friend, mentor and boss, Bruce McLaren, was killed in a Can- Am practice in 1970, Denny Hulme soldiered on with McLaren Racing into the 1974 season. But when his friend and team mate Peter Revson was killed in March 1974 in an F1 practice wreck in South Africa, Hulme vowed to finish the season and retire. In “retirement” he enjoyed saloon car racing, truck racing (as in Peterbuilts and Kenworths) and he was active in the early days of vintage racing. Denny Hulme was a man of few words. He could be gruff; his nick name was “The Bear.” But he could drive the wheels off almost anything as evidenced by his record, often rac- ing F1, F2, Can-Am, Indy and Sports cars in the same season. He rarely crashed, he simply got the job done. During the 1992 Bathurst 1000KM touring car race in Australia his BMW M3 suddenly swung off the track and stopped. When race officials arrived at the scene they found Denny Hulme dead of a massive heart attack. He was 56 years old. P/1016 MK II: Ronnie Bucknum and Dick Hutcherson drivers. Like all the GT40 MK IIs this year, P/1016 was fin- ished at SAI, but in this case with an automatic transmission for testing at Daytona and Sebring. The car was sent to H-M and they kept the car throughout the 1966 and 1967 racing seasons, before the car was donated to the Harrah Museum in 1970. Ronnie Bucknum drove the car at Daytona (DNF, 329 laps, gearbox) with Richie Ginther and again at Sebring with A.J. Foyt (12th OA). Foyt was to co- drive with Bucknum at LeMans, until he was badly burned in practice for the Rex Mays Classic on June 4, 1966. Fortunately, Ford had been using a few out-of-work NASCAR drivers to test the reliability of the GT 40 and Dick Hutcherson won the nod to go to France on less than two week’s notice. Bucknum gridded their car 9th but The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 67 Dennis Hulme