At the same time that Andrew Carnegie had been building Carnegie Steel, John D. Rockefeller was building the Standard Oil empire. While the automobile had not yet been invented, neither had the the electric light bulb or commercial electricity generation; petroleum products were in demand for lighting, heating and increasingly for commercial lubrication. In 1900 a number of Pittsburgh businessmen lead by William Mellon decided to get into the growing petroleum industry, and it wasn't their style to make a small investment in someone else's company; instead they got together and built a refinery near the newly discovered oil fields in Texas, followed by a number of pipelines, service stations, a fleet of oil tankers and other bits of infrastructure to support the rapidly growing automobile industry. A few years later, these investments were consolidated as the Gulf Oil company, which would soon grow to rival giant Standard Oil.
Born in 1908, in a really small town in Texas not too far from Austin and the East Texas oil fields, Irion Grady Davis (you sometimes see him use his first initial, but mostly he just went by "Grady") had studied geology at Texas University, followed by a few years of polishing at Harvard. Fresh out of school, he went to work for Gulf Oil, spending 20 years in their Venezuelan operation. He apparently knew how to work with foreign governments to get things done, and in the mid 1950s was promoted to Administrative Vice President of Gulf Oil and transferred to Gulf's headquarters in Pittsburgh. A few years later he was promoted to Executive Vice President - the number 2 spot in the company. He would play a big part negotiating with the Kuwaiti government for access to cheap middle eastern oil, which would allow Gulf to expand into Europe.
Grady Davis - early 1960s |
Image shamelessly stolen from the Corvette Hall of Fame website, lots of good stuff there.
Davis may have looked like an escapee from a Mad Men episode, but he had a passion for fast cars - he was one of the first in the city to have one of the new V8 Corvettes. Donna Mae Mimms, another local Corvette owner and sometimes racer, would see Davis's car parked on the street and leave a card on the windshield inviting him to join the local Corvette Club of Western Pennsylvania. Donna would introduce Davis to Don Yenko - the son of a local Chevy dealer who had been racing Corvettes in SCCA events for several years - a relationship that would grow into the early semi-official Gulf racing team.
Between Davis's own substantial fortunes, his access to Gulf Oil's engineering facilities, and Yenko's connections at General Motors and his driving skill, they made an impressive team. In late 1960 Davis bought two new '61 Corvettes, with Yenko checking off all the unofficial racing options on the order sheet: high performance fuel-injected 283 engine, heavy duty 4-speed, posi-traction rear end, bigger brakes and stiffer springs. Along with the cars a number of boxes arrived without official part numbers, including a massive 37 gallon fuel tank and aerodynamic headlight covers.
Davis and Yenko took the cars to the 12 hour race in Sebring that spring; one blew an engine, while the other (co driven by Don Yenko and accomplished Corvette driver Ben Moore) held on to finish 32nd overall and 3rd in the over 3 liter GT class.
After Sebring the team would run in a number of east-coast SCCA races, and Don Yenko racked up a number of victories on the club-racing circuit. Grady Davis did drive at a few races, but without much success (best finish was a 5th place overall), and Gulf wasn't exactly happy about having a senior executive dicing with part-time racers on small-time race tracks, so the team would typically recruit local drivers to pilot the second car.
Halfway through 1961, a tech inspection at an SCCA race found an aluminum flywheel in Don Yenko's Corvette, legal for the FIA race in Sebring but not for use in SCCA events, resulting in a 6 month suspension from SCCA racing for Yenko. In need of a top-notch replacement driver, Davis would reach out to Dick Thompson, a dentist from Washington DC who was building a reputation as a solid driver in SCCA events. Thompson would win the rest of the SCCA events the car was entered in that season, resulting in a B-production SCCA class championship for Thompson (and unofficially for Davis's informal team).
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| Dick Thompson driving the '61 Gulf Corvette - Picture taken from a period Gulf ad |
1963 promised to be a repeat of the previous two years, with Davis buying - and Yenko's shop preparing - two new for '63 Corvette Stingray split-window coupes, the first Corvette with independent rear suspension. The car was ordered with Chevy's Z06 racing package - essentially all the heavy duty parts Don Yenko had special ordered for past Gulf cars. Davis would again take two cars to Sebring to start the season, although one would blow an engine and the other would only manage a 4th in class. In SCCA racing Don Yenko would clean up in B-production yet again, but the top-dog A-production class was a different story: a funny little car - something called a Shelby Cobra - would appear at race tracks and literally run away from Chevy's plastic sports car.
Despite the Corvette's powerful 327 engine and new IRS, compared to the Cobra the new 'Vette was heavy. In racing, weight is the enemy: in addition to the obvious impact on acceleration, weight adds to increased fuel consumption and stress and wear and tear on everything - especially on brakes and tires. Chevy had used fiberglass for the Corvette's body because it was cheaper to manufacture in small volume production than stamped steel. Contrary to common wisdom the thick fiberglass was not much lighter than steel and was not nearly as strong, requiring a heavy steel frame to give the car reasonable stiffness. By comparison, the Cobra was smaller and its light weight aluminum body was tightly integrated with the cars steel tube frame for strength (much like a WWII aircraft) making it a relative featherweight. Even with the Corvette holding a 50 horsepower advantage the Cobra still had a big edge in power-to-weight.
But Zora Arkus-Duntov - head engineer for the Corvette - was a racer. Carroll Shelby had been openly driving Cobra prototypes - powered by rival Ford's new small block V8 - around Southern California since early 1962, and Duntov knew exactly what that meant for the 'Vette's dominance in club racing, and its potential impact on sales; the Corvette was still not a big seller and could easily be canceled outright.
General Motors had officially stepped away from racing in 1957, part of a strategy to avoid increased government scrutiny of the automotive industry (which might draw too much attention to GM's near monopoly status in the US auto market). But while GM's senior management saw the racing ban as a good idea, the product managers and engineers, whose job was to build cars that people wanted to buy, were not exactly on-board. They would play a game where performance options were euphemistically described as "severe duty parts" and racing teams were given backdoor technical support.
Duntov would push the back-door policy to the limit, building a few Grand Sport Corvettes: purpose built racing cars thinly disguised by stock-looking Corvette body work. The Grand Sports had large diameter steel-tube frames - stronger and lighter than the production Corvette's stamped steel frame. The suspension parts were one-off forgings - again stronger and lighter than stock. While the body work was similar to the production 1963 Corvette, the fiberglass was thinner, and the weight-adding retractable headlights and chrome bumpers were missing. Inside, the cockpit was race-car sparse, without the street car's plush carpeting and sound deadening, or creature comforts like a radio or heater. An aluminum version of the 327 small block Chevy with a stroker crank (377 inch displacement) and 4 big side-draft Weber carbs pushing 500+ horsepower was developed for the car. The plan was to produce 125 of the cars, to be sold directly to select private racing teams, and so qualify as a "production" car with the FIA (just like the Cobras).
In early 1963 Zora would sneak one of the five (or was it six?) prototype Grand Sports out the back door to none other than Don Yenko and Grady Davis. The stroker engine was not yet ready, so the Gulf boys would make due with a stock fuel-injected 327, which was still plenty of power in a car weighing 1000 pounds less than a stock Corvette. I couldn't find a photo of this car I was comfortable using here, but you'll find some awesome pics of the Gulf Grand Sport from when it was restored here.
Unlike the scooped and flared Grand Sports we're used to seeing on T-shirts and in model car kits, the original Grand Sport looked very much like a stock Corvette and so the Gulf car attracted little attention - especially when it wasn't winning. Not surprisingly the car had teething pains - the front end wanted to lift, making it vicious on a fast track - and Yenko and Davis were not afraid to saw holes in the sides of the car to try to fix it. The Gulf R&D lab in Harmarville evaluated a number of engine setups on their dynos - including a 327 with dual fuel-injection units.
The first win would come at the Connellsville SCCA race on August 11th with Dick Thompson driving. Connellsville is a small town 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, and the "race track" was laid out on the local municipal airport pavement, but it was the closest road-course to Pittsburgh, and it drew some big name racers; the summer before Ed Hugus had brought one of the first Cobras in the eastern US to Connellsville to see what it could do.
Dick Thompson would rack up another win with the Grand Sport at a bigger SCCA race at Watkins Glen a few weeks later, which generated some real attention - the kind Chevy did not want to have. Gulf Oil was aggressively expanding their operations into Europe; having the Gulf name on cars at the big European races was more than a mid-life ego-trip for their boy-racer VP, it was good business. If the Grand Sports were campaigned by some rich gentleman racer, GM might have had plausible deniability as to their involvement, but the Gulf car had been supplied to an executive of a major oil company by way of the owner of a major Chevy dealership. It seemed just a little too official for the GM brass. Davis had suggested - in writing no less - having Gulf sponsor a team of Grand Sports at Le Mans, and that was never going to fly with the GM management.
So after Gulf and their unofficial racing team had spent many months developing the Grand Sport into a proper race car, Chevrolet took the car back and told Grady Davis to forget about Le Mans. Duntov would further modify the cars with wider wheels, wheel flares, a vented hood, and (finally) the all-aluminum engine - presumably hoping he could change management's mind about backing a racing program. And eventually management solved the problem by selling all of them - all five (or maybe six) to John Mecom Jr., son of a very rich Texas oilman, whose hobby was collecting racing teams. Mecom would take several of the cars to Nassau Speed Week in December of 1963, where Dick Thompson would manage a 4th place against some fairly hairy competition - including a number of Shelby's Cobras. Mecom would sell off a few of the Grand Sports to other private racing teams. Roger Penske would buy one, stuff in a big Chevy 427 and have a bit of success in 1964, but without a well-funded development effort the cars were quickly outclassed and faded from view - just as Chevy hoped they would.
GM shutting down the program did not sit well with Davis: there were no new Corvettes ordered for the 1964 SCCA racing season and no trip to Sebring that spring; the existing team cars were sold off. Gulf would continue to sponsor Don Yenko and Dick Thompson in various races, but Davis no longer owned the cars. Davis still wanted Gulf to go racing in Europe, but it was clear that wouldn't happen with General Motors.
In 1964 Ford would introduce their new Mustang and launch their Total Performance marketing strategy, which included a big investment in the GT40 program in European sports car racing. It looked like a perfect match, but Ford was not ready to share the spotlight with anyone else (race cars had yet to become rolling billboards, and the factory teams were happy just to have the factory's name on the cars). There were private teams campaigning GT40s, but they had little chance of competing with Ford's factory teams, and Davis was not interested in a second-tier effort.
Not much more would happen until 1966. In 1965 Shelby GT350R Mustangs were cleaning up in SCCA racing, and with GM still out of the racing business (and the Camaro still a year away) Don Yenko had the bright idea of building an R-model Corvair, to be known as the Stinger. Just like the GT350s, the Stingers were technically Yenkos, not Chevys. That meant Yenko was free to toss the rear seat making it a sports car in the eyes of the SCCA, and to heavily modify the suspension and engine for racing duty. The only catch was that Yenko needed to build 100 of them, which he did - turning part of the family's Canonsburg Chevy dealership into a production line.
Grady Davis would buy a Stinger for his daughter, and would sponsor old friend Dick Thompson to drive one at a few SCCA races. At a few of those races Davis would bring along a new toy for Thompson to drive in C-modified events; a new dark blue MkI GT40.
Grady Davis had gone to Sebring in 1966 "just to watch", knowing that Sebring would be the shakedown race for the armada of factory team GT40s being prepared for Le Mans. Davis would meet John Wyer, the manager for the Ford Advanced Vehicles shop in Slough, England where the GT40s were manufactured. Wyer had originally ran FAV and Ford's European racing team, but after poor results Ford had moved the race team to Shelby American and engineering and development to Dearborn, leaving FAV to crank out enough small-block powered MkI cars for sale to privateers to meet the FIA homologation requirements.
In late 1965 FAV had started producing "road coupes" - just MkI GT40s with slightly upgraded upholstery, detuned engines and even air conditioning - that at least in theory were "street legal" (although convincing your local DMV of that might be a bit of a challenge). Anyone with $16,000 burning a hole in their pocket could walk into a Ford dealership and order one. At the time $16,000 was enough to buy 3 new Corvettes with money left over, or even a nice ranch house in the suburbs - so not many folks would take Ford up on the offer. Shortly after Sebring Grady Davis would order one of the "road coupes".
What exactly Davis had in mind for the car is a bit of a mystery. Rumor has it he drove the GT40 around Pittsburgh, but it couldn't have been much fun on the city's many narrow, potholed and cobble-stone paved streets. By early May, Dick Thompson was driving the car at the SCCA race at Virginia International Raceway, so Davis may have always intended to evaluate it for a Gulf Oil assault on Le Mans. As evidence, the engine in this GT40 is said to have been quite a bit closer to race-spec than the "standard" 289 V8s installed in the "road" cars.
In October 1966 John Wyer was in New York on business. Grady Davis sent Gulf Oil's private plane to bring Wyer to Pittsburgh for a meeting. What Davis and Wyer knew from their many contacts in the auto industry and racing world, or could have guessed, was that the FIA did not want to see the big European road-races dominated by hordes of thundering American V8s; they would simply change the rules to phase out the big engines, most likely setting a new maximum displacement of 5 liters. The new rules would be the last straw for Ford; their 1-2-3 win at Le Mans that summer had generated the publicity they had wanted, and the mounting deaths of drivers and spectators was threatening to undo the positive exposure. 1967 would be the last year for the 7 liter engines Ford had built their plans around; Ford would run their new GT40 MkIVs one more season and call it a day.
Having met the FIA homologation requirements, Ford had already stopped producing MkIs at Slough, and had offered to sell the left overs - lots of parts and all the tooling to build the cars - to John Wyer at a very good price. There were plenty of GT40s in the hands of small race teams, and having Wyer keep the shop running to rebuild them as needed would keep the cars in the public eye for years to come at no cost to Ford.
John Wyer had a slightly grander plan in mind: along with cranking out replacement parts for the original MkIs, he would further develop the car, lightening the chassis and improving the aerodynamics. Power would come from Ford's new 302 and 351 small-block V8s in TransAm tune, which could make nearly as much power as the big block engine it would replace - enough to stay competitive with Ferrari and Porsche. Wyer had a willing partner in British Ford dealer John Willment; Grady Davis and Gulf Oil sponsorship was the last piece of the puzzle. In the fall of 1966 Wyer would go home with a 1-page contract in his pocket to form the first official Gulf Oil racing team to compete in major league endurance races - he would go back to England and start J.W. Automotive Engineering (whether J.W. was John Wyer or John Wilment is open to debate - they may well have chosen the name just to make people wonder).
Which is probably a good time to take a break, because the story is about to get a lot more interesting. Check out part 2!
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