Part 25-My 2008 Magnificent Colossal Indy 500 Photo Blog Thing: More Pole Day Musings...

This is the 1966 version of an Eagle designed and built by Dan Gurney and driven by Lloyd Ruby. The fact that these two Indy racing legends are associated with this car makes it doubly cool in my book.

If you look closely, you will see it has a red basket of snakes perched atop its Ford power plant!

Snakes frighten me.



See, Lloyd Ruby was a hard-chargin' and hard-luck real Indy racer back in the day. He almost won the Indy 500 innumerable times...to many to list here now. I suggest Google or David Donaldson for further information.

I will tell you this. 1966 was the year of the infamous First Lap Pileup. This heinous racing incident destroyed 10 cars before the race really even started. Somehow, Ruby wasn't involved and went on to finish 11th after breaking his camshaft on lap 166.

First Lap Pileup, 1966 (Dave Knox Photo)

Anyhoo...Lloyd always seemed to break or crash at the most inopportune of times, and he never won at Indy. But, seeing as he was a laid-back Texan and uber cool, he didn't flip out and act like a jerk when bad things happened. That's why Lloyd Ruby will always be groovy and a fan favorite. Lloyd knows what Indy means.

The other guy connected to this rig is Dan Gurney, and anything Dan ever touched is cool. There can be no disputing of this fact, so don't even try it.

I would like to see Dan Gurney, and his son Alex, back at The Indianapolis Motor Speedway in some kinda competitive way. Even though Gurney wrote the White Album, or something, I would much rather have Dan and Alex around than Paul Newman.

Paul Newman seems bitter and angry and crotchety about something...and not very pleasant to be around. Paul should know that Indy means more than a 40 year old movie lots of people have never heard of anymore.