The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

the race (they were 700 lbs. lighter than Shelby’s GT40s), the race course was rough on the heavier cars and the weather turned awful. Gurney and Grant managed to lead the race on a couple of occasions early on, but at two and a half hours the Lotus 19 broke and Hall’s Chaparral swept to victory by four laps, despite a long pit stop to wait out a downpour. Miles and McLaren salvaged 2nd OA in GT103. June 1965 found the Gurney/Grant duo at LeMans in CSX2286, a Day- tona Coupe. Like most of the cars that year, a bad batch of head bolts led to various engine failures and the Gur- ney/Grant car expired on Sunday morning after 204 laps, while leading the GT class. Jerry Grant had set GT- Class lap record at LeMans in the process. He spent the balance of 1965 running his own Lotus 19 with an oc- casional drive in one of Gurney’s cars. Grant and Gurney moved up to a MK II GT40 for Daytona (P/1012) and Sebring (P/1031) in 1966, finishing 2nd OA to Miles and Ruby at Daytona and suffering a heartbreaking DNF at Sebring when the engine let go within sight of the finish line with Gurney in the lead by a lap. As Gurney pushed his car home to a disqualification, Miles made up the lap and won the race. Grant raced a Lola T70 Westlake/Ford for Gurney in the 1966 United States Road Racing Champi- onship, taking four poles and a win. Indy was also on the docket for Jerry Grant who entered the great race 14- years straight from 1964 to 1977, all but the first two of those years in AAR Eagle cars built by Gurney. Grant fin- ished the race 10 times, best place 7th OA in 1970. There was a better story in 1972. Bobby Unser was AAR’s number one driver from 1971 to 1975 but he had a distinct dislike for Jerry Grant, who he considered merely Gurney’s buddy. In 1972 Unser put his AAR Eagle on the pole, qualifying at 18 mph more than the pole-speed the prior year, the biggest jump in Indy history. Grant qualified his AAR Eagle 15th, in the eighth row. As the race unfolded Unser went out early, on lap 31. Gary Betten- hausen in a Penske car, inherited the lead with Jerry Grant having moved up to second and Mark Donohue in the other Penske car running third. By lap 182 Grant was still following Betten- hausen, and the pair had lapped Dono- hue, when Bettenhausen’s car quit leaving Grant in the lead with 18 laps to go. Six laps later Grant unexpect- edly came into the pits with a tire problem. Because there was no two- way communication, he was directed to Bobby Unser’s AAR pit because it had plenty of fuel supply, if that was the problem. The fuel line was hooked up before Grant could describe the tire problem and was removed seconds later as the tire issue was addressed and he was back on the track, now be- hind Donohue. Unfortunately, the rules used to be a $500 penalty for tak- ing fuel from another competitors sup- ply, but in this case Jerry Grant was relegated from 2nd to 12th OA as his last 12 laps were disallowed. A few months later Jerry Grant became the first driver of an IndyCar to run over 200 mph for a four-lap qualifying run. As an aside, the Eagles that Jerry Grant drove at Indy and USAC races were owned by others. In 1967 and 1968 that was Tom Friedkin, the 32 year-old heir to Pacific Southwest Air- lines (“PSA”). His father had founded the airline in 1949 and after Dad’s un- timely death in 1962, young Tom Friedkin became the largest share- holder of PSA. During the 60’s Fried- kin’s hobbies included racing cars and through that connection he became buddies with Carroll Shelby. By 1968 Shelby was preparing a pair of Toyota 2000GT cars for SCCA Class C racing. At the same time Toy- ota was looking for distributors in the US and offered Shelby the Gulf States sales territory which included Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. After Lee Iacocca assured Shelby that “ Detroit was going to push the Japanese back into the ocean ,” Shelby introduced Tom Friedkin to his contacts at Toyoya. Friedkin Enter- prises remains the Gulf States Toyota distributor to over 150 dealerships in the region. Tom Friedkin died a bil- lionaire in 2017. Jerry Grant passed away from liver failure and diabetes. He was 77. His old friend Dan Gurney spoke at his fu- neral. P/1031 MK II: Mario Andretti and Lucien Bianchi drivers. This car was shipped to SAI in November 1965 as a replacement for GT106 which had been largely used-up as one of the two 427 test mules. P/1031 was prepared for H-M for the Daytona 24 Hours where Walt Hansgen and Bruce McLaren brought the new car home 3rd OA. A month later it was entered by SAI at Sebring under Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant where Gurney was leading into the last turn when the en- gine broke and he and Grant were first denied 1st OA, then denied 2nd OA when Gurney pushed it across the The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 71 P1031.