All American Racers is an American

auto racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...

team and constructor based in

Santa Ana, California Santa Ana () is the second most populous city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census, making Santa Ana the 13th-m ...

. Founded by Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby in 1964, All American Racers initially participated in American

sports car A sports car is a car designed with an emphasis on dynamic performance, such as handling, acceleration, top speed, the thrill of driving and racing capability. Sports cars originated in Europe in the early 1900s and are currently produced by ...

and

Champ Car Champ Car World Series (CCWS) was the series sanctioned by Open-Wheel Racing Series Inc., or Champ Car, a sanctioning body for American open-wheel car racing that operated from 2004 to 2008. It was the successor to Championship Auto Racing Teams ...

races as well as international

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

events with cars named Eagle. The Formula One team, based in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

and using British-built Weslake engines was named Anglo American Racers. Under team manager Bill Dunne they set up shop in

Rye, East Sussex is a small town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England, two miles from the sea at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. An important member of the mediaeval Cinque Ports confederati ...

. The team were adjacent to Harry Weslake's engine development plant and half a mile from Elva cars. They participated in 25 Grands Prix, entering a total of 34 cars. The first Eagles were created after AAR entered a Goodyear-backed Lotus 38 in the 1965 Indianapolis 500 and Gurney hired former Lotus designer

Len Terry Leonard E. Terry (11 February 1924 – 25 August 2014) was an English racing car designer and engineer, known for his work with Lotus, BRM and Eagle. He also designed chassis for many other teams, including ERA and Aston Martin and produced hi ...

to develop their own car for 1966. The resulting Ford-powered Eagle T2G was codeveloped with the Eagle T1G for Formula 1. After exiting Formula One in 1968 and concentrating on Champ Car, Eagle turned to sports car racing in the 1980s, partnering with

Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...

to develop the Celica and later sports prototypes for the

IMSA GT Championship IMSA GT was a sports car racing series organized by International Motor Sports Association. Races took place primarily in the United States, and occasionally in Canada. History The series was founded in 1969 by John and Peggy Bishop, and Bill ...

. The company built the Ben Bowlby-designed DeltaWing that was run by Highcroft Racing at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Formula 1

In order to run the Formula 1 operations, Gurney established Anglo American Racers. The Eagle T1G, powered by an obsolete

Coventry Climax Coventry Climax was a British forklift truck, fire pump, racing, and other specialty engine manufacturer. History Pre WW1 The company was started in 1903 as Lee Stroyer, but two years later, following the departure of Stroyer, it was reloca ...

engine, debuted at the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix and scored its first points with a fifth place three weeks later at the French Grand Prix. In 1967

Richie Ginther Paul Richard "Richie" Ginther ( Hollywood,''Richie Ginther Enters Times Grand Prix'', Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1960, Page C1 California, August 5, 1930 – September 20, 1989 in France) was a racecar driver from the United States. During ...

was signed as a second driver. The Climax engine was replaced by a new 3-liter Weslake V12 designed by Aubrey Woods and built in Great Britain by

Harry Weslake Weslake & Co also known as Weslake Research and Development was founded by Harry Weslake, described as England's greatest expert on cylinder head design, with premises in Rye, East Sussex, England. Weslake is most famous for its work with Bentley, ...

. At the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix Gurney got a victory, the first "all-American" victory in a Grand Prix since Jimmy Murphy´s triumph with

Duesenberg Duesenberg Automobile and Motors Company, Inc. was an American racing and luxury automobile manufacturer founded in Indianapolis, Indiana, by brothers Fred and August Duesenberg in 1920. The company is known for popularizing the straight-e ...

at the

1921 French Grand Prix The 1921 French Grand Prix (formally the XV Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France) was a Grand Prix motor race held at Le Mans on 25 July 1921. The race was held over 30 laps of the 17.26 km circuit for a total distance of 517.8 km ...

. Excluding the

Indianapolis 500 The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly called the Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of Indi ...

, this is the only win for a USA-built car as well as one of only two wins of an American-licensed constructor in Formula One. The Eagle- Weslake was a beautiful and efficient car, one example of which was constructed in

titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion i ...

and exotic

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductili ...

s. More than this, the Eagle was designed to make the tall Gurney fit comfortably at the wheel. Their efforts produced a V12 that was smooth and powerful. At Monza, an insight into the future of engine design was seen for the first time. The engine had four valves per cylinder at a narrow included angle (thirty degrees) that allowed a single cover to enclose both the close-spaced camshafts on each bank. The sixty-degree-vee layout had a larger bore than stroke (72.8 X 60mm). Gurney's program ran out of money in 1968 and by the end of the year he returned to the United States to concentrate his efforts on the more successful Indycar program, in which

Bobby Unser Robert William Unser (February 20, 1934 – May 2, 2021) was an American automobile racer. At his induction into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1994, he had the fourth most IndyCar Series wins at 35 (behind his brother Al, A. J. F ...

had won the

and the 1968 Indycar Championship. A non-works version briefly appeared with privateer Al Pease in the 1969 Canadian Grand Prix, but Pease became noticed for all the wrong reasons and made history as the only F1 driver ever disqualified for being too slow.

USAC & CART Champ Car

During the USAC years, the Eagle chassis was very successful in the late 1960s and 1970s. Eagles won 51 Champ Car races, including the 1968 and 1975 Indy 500's won by

and the 1973 race won by Gordon Johncock. During this two-decade period, Bobby Unser, who drove Eagle cars for most of his teams, joined AAR as the sole driver, winning the 1975 Indianapolis 500. Unser also claimed 22 wins and 52 podiums with Eagle cars. After Unser's departure from the team for Team Penske, All American Racers started to lose their edge in IndyCar competition. Mike Mosley won a few races for the team before being dismissed at the end of 1982. By 1984, AAR merged with

Mike Curb Michael Curb (born December 24, 1944) is an American musician, record company executive, motorsports car owner, philanthropist, and former politician. He is also the founder of Curb Records where he presently serves as the chairman. Curb also ...

's team to form Curb-All American Racers. After a two-year partnership with Curb, Gurney and Curb parted ways, and this marked the beginning of the end of AAR's time in IndyCar. The All American Racers team was inactive in single-seaters from 1987 to 1995 and returned in 1996 again building their own chassis and using new

engines. However, this new effort, a combination of new and untested equipment, did not prove to be successful, never winning a race and collecting only occasional top-tens. The team ceased active racing after the 1999 CART season.

CART/USAC drivers

* Alex Barron (1998–1999) * Raul Boesel (1999) *

Geoff Brabham __NOTOC__ Geoff Brabham (born 20 March 1952) is an Australian racing driver. Brabham spent the majority of his racing career in the United States. Racing career CART He raced successfully in CART early in his career, finishing 8th in 1982, 19 ...

(1981) * Mike Chandler (1982, 1984) * Kevin Cogan (1984–1985) * Juan Manuel Fangio II (1996–1997) *

Pete Halsmer John Peter Halsmer (born March 3, 1944, in Lafayette, Indiana), is a former driver in the CART Championship Car series. He raced in 5 seasons (1980, 1982–1985), with 33 career starts, and started in the Indianapolis 500 in 1981–1982. He fini ...

(1984) * P. J. Jones (1996–1998) * Jan Lammers (1986) *

(1972–1978, USAC) *

Andrea Montermini Andrea Montermini (born 30 May 1964) is an Italian racing driver. Career Montermini raced in Formula 3 in 1989, taking second place in the Monaco GP support race and 4th in the Italian F3 Championship. He then moved up to Formula 3000, racing f ...

(1999) * Rocky Moran (1981) * Mike Mosley (1979–1981) *

Ed Pimm Ed Pimm (born May 3, 1956 in Rock Tavern, New York), is a former driver in the CART Championship Car series. He raced in the 1984–1988 seasons, with 42 career starts, including the 1985–1987 Indianapolis 500s. He drove two CART event ...

(1984–1985) * Gualter Salles (1999) *

Tom Sneva Thomas E. Sneva (born June 1, 1948) is a retired American race car driver who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1983. He primarily raced in Indy cars, and was named to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2005. A former math teacher from Spoka ...

(1985) * Vincenzo Sospiri (1998)

IMSA GT

Gurney's team was contracted by

in 1983 to enter the

with specially-modified

Toyota Celica The is an automobile produced by Toyota from 1970 until 2006. The Celica name derives from the Latin word '' coelica'' meaning 'heavenly' or 'celestial'. In Japan, the Celica was exclusive to the '' Toyota Corolla Store'' dealer chain. Pro ...

s. In 1988, the team moved up to the GTP category with two chassis – a modified

Toyota 88C The Toyota 88C was a racing car entered by Toyota from 1988 to 1989. It is the successor to the Toyota 87C and the predecessor to the Toyota 88C-V. Like other Toyota-powered sports prototypes of the era, it was designed and built by Dome. The 8 ...

Group C car and a team-designed

Eagle HF89 The Eagle HF89 and its evolution, the Eagle HF90, is a racing car built and entered by Dan Gurney's All American Racers team, for the IMSA GT Championship. It was raced from 1989 until 1991 in IMSA's premier sports-car racing category, the GTP (G ...

purpose-built for IMSA competition. AAR experienced its greatest success in GTP competition with the Eagle MkIII, introduced in 1991. Powered by a

turbocharged In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (often called a turbo) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to pr ...

2.1-liter Toyota inline-4 developing up to 800 horsepower and generating 10,000 pounds of downforce at 200 mph, the MkIII won 21 of the 27 races in which it was entered – a record so dominant that it has been blamed for the collapse of the GTP series.Toyota Eagle MkIII
, Mulsanne's CornerEagle MkIII GTP
, quoted from RACER magazine

Trans-Am

AAR created a special

Trans-Am Series The Trans-Am Series is a sports car racing series held in North America. Founded in 1966, it is sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). Primarily based in the United States, the series competes on a variety of track types includ ...

version of the

Plymouth Barracuda The Plymouth Barracuda is a two-door pony car that was manufactured by Plymouth from 1964 to 1974. The first-generation Barracuda was based on the Chrysler A-body and was offered from 1964 to 1966. A two-door hardtop (no B-pillar) fastback de ...

, running in the 1970 season with drivers Dan Gurney and

Swede Savage David Earl "Swede" Savage Jr. (August 26, 1946 – July 2, 1973) was an American race car driver. He died at age 26 from complications while recovering from injuries suffered in a crash during the 1973 Indianapolis 500, nearly five weeks Early l ...

. A

homologation Homologation ( Greek ''homologeo'', ὁμολογέω, "to agree") is the granting of approval by an official authority. This may be a court of law, a government department, or an academic or professional body, any of which would normally work ...

special production edition was offered in 1970.

Racing results

Complete Formula One World Championship results

Anglo American Racers

( key)

Non-works entries

( key)

Complete Formula One Non-Championship results

( key)

Complete CART PPG Indy Car World Series results

( key) (results in bold indicate pole position)

Notes

References

External links

Official Website
{{American open-wheel car racing champions Formula One entrants Champ Car teams Sports car racing teams 1964 establishments in California 1999 disestablishments in California American auto racing teams American racecar constructors Companies based in Santa Ana, California Auto racing teams established in 1964 Auto racing teams disestablished in 1999 Atlantic Championship teams