While all the automotive internet has been aflutter with the announcement of a restored “Dan Gurney” 1969 Mustang Trans-Am racer for sale on eBay, we’ve been scratching our heads a little. There are large chunks of the car’s colorful racing past missing from the ad text and they even misspelled the name of the car’s primary driver (which was NOT Dan Gurney). 

To start with, click here to see the eBay auction for the car, with a Buy It Now of $1,100,000.

We’re total, absolute, racing history dorks here and after doing some digging we’ve uncovered some interesting stuff about the car, and its 1969 season, that didn’t make it into the eBay auction information. The car is stunning, and the fact that it has been restored to the level that it has makes us drool. We want to make it clear that we’re not taking shots at the car, because we’re not. We just wanted to fill in some of the gaps in the story.

For starters, Horst Kwech (misspelled in the ad as Kewck) was the primary driver of the car. Kwech made a name for himself through the early years of Trans-Am driving Alfa Romeo GTAs with solid success from 1966-1968. About mid way through the 1968 season, Kwech started driving Ford Mustangs and he recorded a race win at Riverside, California, on September 8, 1968. He edged out Pete Revson’s Javelin for the victory.

One of the statements in the ad, about how the Boss 302 “thrived” at high speeds, is a little ill-advised as the engines were notoriously fragile, with many teams cooking through several of them per weekend. This would be a problem for the motor through most of its Trans-Am days. When they worked right, they were every bit the match for the Camaros, but drivers like Follmer, Revson, Kwech, and Parnelli Jones often found themselves dead in the water. One such engine failure caused the most significant piece of this car’s history, in our opinion anyway.

By the time the Trans-Am tour for 1969 had reached Le Circut Mont-Tremblant, in St. Jovite, Quebec, Canada, in August of 1969, Ford held a slim six-point lead in the Manufacturer’s Championship and the Camaros were breathing down their neck. The hardest two runners of the Ford stable, George Follmer and Parnelli Jones, were having an awful weekend. Both of them had grenaded engines in practice prior to the race. While the Bud Moore team was thrashing, the Shelby Team of Pete Revson and Horst Kwech qualified solidly in the field and were looking to help the Ford cause for the weekend. 

Disaster struck on the 14th lap of the race when George Follmer’s car (remember he was running one of those Boss 302s that “thrived” at high speed) broke a valve spring and exploded the engine right in the middle of the track. He guided the car off the course and ran up a nearby hill. He then watched an amazing series of events where a turn worker waved a yellow flag instead of an oil warning flag, causing the field to barely slow and fly into a turn completely lubricated with engine oil. An incredible wreck ensued and both of the Shelby Mustangs were not only caught up in it, they were completely mangled. We’ve seen photos of Kwech’s car (the one in the ad) being hauled off behind a wrecker and it is so bad they used the wrecker as a crane and hoisted the car up off the ground to remove it from the track.

Chevrolet ended up with the points lead after that race and never looked back. The Shelby team cars were another story. Both cars were hurried back to Kar Kraft where they were repaired with haste, but they never really worked correctly again according to statements made by Kwech and others involved with the team. According to our research the cars were too flexy after being fixed and would not hold their front suspension settings while being raced.

At the following race in Watkins Glen, Revson is listed as competing in a Mustang but not finishing the race and Kwech is not on the qualifying sheet. As listed in the ad, the single race that Gurney drove in the car was Kent, Washington, as he did not actually drive the car at Sears Point in racing competiton. 

Gurney continued his career as a racing icon and Horst Kwech went back into his familiar Alfa Romeo GTAs and picked right up where he left off as a very solid driver in the “Under 2 Liter” class. During the 1970 season Kwech was a dominant force, recording a worst finish of fourth place during the season opener and winning four races that season. In our opinion, this should be called the Horst Kwech 1969 Mustang Trans-Am racer, but that would probably negate the million dollar asking price.  

So here’s the question of the day. If a guy drives a car for one race, is it really “his” car?