It seemed a most unlikely thing that we were doing. On a typical sunny California afternoon, we were howling down Sunset Strip in a turbin-eengined Corvette, leaving a wake of shimmering air and astounded onlookers. Under the hood, the source of the jet-plane noise the car made, was the same engine that powered the very first turbine Indy car, the one in which Parnelli Jones led the 1967 race for 198 of the 200 laps before the transmission broke. At the wheel was a man who had been a crewman on that car during the race: Vince Granatelli, son of Andy, mechanic extraordinaire in his own right and, for awhile, our chauffeur into a jet-powered fantasyland.
These days, Granatelli owns a company called Pit Stop Service in Van Nuys, California, that…
You're reading a preview of
MotorTrend (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 1979