Every time we post a cool video, document a racing accomplishment, or revel in the pure awesome of a video we found on the interwebs we end up thinking that Mickey Thompson should have been there to see it. Surely, he would be into it if he were still walking the Earth. That thought led us to wonder about what figure or figures from the gearhead past we would hop in a time machine and bring back to modern times given the chance.
The guy in the small lead photo for this blog item would be one of them. That’s Zora Arkus Duntov, one of the most forward thinking automotive engineers of the last 100 years. His ideas about racing, performance cars, and developing products that an energetic youthful audience could afford to buy and then modify for competition were revolutionary and GM listened to him, amazingly.
Imagine dragging Henry Ford up to 2014. Either his head would explode, or he’d figure out all this modern junk in record time and start changing the world again, although lots of his political views wouldn’t fly these days.
Who would you snatch from the annals of gearhead history and bring into the 21st century?
Smokey and Mickey.
Walter Hayes, CBE, . . . the legendary European Ford executive.
Nobody ever understood the importance of factory participation in motorsports better . . . or was more influential at developing revolutionary great bang-for-the-buck factory-funded programs (e.g. Formula Ford, Ford Cosworth DFV)
But for Walter Hayes, Ford motorsports would have completely died in December 1970 and likely couldn’t have ever come back. Hayes’ men were the ones who kept hope alive and had the corporate political knowhow to bring it back in the 1980s.
In today’s world, where cubic money and politics predominate in nearly all forms of racing, Hayes would be invaluable. (Honorable mention to Vince Piggins (Hudson, GM), which was the closest thing America ever produced to Walter Hayes)
Stock Cars – Smokey Yunick – http://www.smokeyyunick.com/
Drag Racing – Pete Robinson – http://www.nhra.net/50th/top50/P_Robinson22.html
Outlaw Sprints – Hooker Hood – http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Hooker+Hood&qpvt=Hooker+Hood&FORM=IGRE
Indy car – A J Foyt – http://foytracing.com/
Virgil Exner…. Today’s styles are so mundane…
Mickey Thompson John Lingenfelter
Smokey Yunick, Mickey Thompson, Ettore Bugatti and John Z Delorean
Fred and Augie Deusenberg, Glen Curtis, Walter Chrysler, Ed Cole
Mickey just because he didn’t get to live his life.
Bill Mitchell,GM stylist. He would kick all there asses into gear and make beautiful cars.
And make Smokey head of the engineering dept.
Smokey — See this week’s Americarna With Ray Evernham
Bill Jenkins, Buddy Morrison, J Maurice Williamson
carroll shelby mickey thompson smokey yunick
huh huh…you said annals
Harley Earl
A.J. Watson, “Big”, Mickey Thompson and “Jocko” Johnson.
Preston Tucker. I’d be interested to see how he’d take on the big auto companies today.