1969 Camaro Pace Car (with the big 396 under the hood)
It may be hard to imagine through the eyes of the 21st century, but the Indy 500 once generated the kind of excitement that only the Super Bowl or the World Cup can generate today. Everybody watched. Jim Clark was my grandma’s favorite driver, solely because he competed in and won the Indy 500. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Grandpa Vic, who (as I once heard Ray Evernham say about his driver Jeff Gordon) didn’t know a hub from a rotor, was a lifelong fan of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” He even used his job as a newspaper ad man to snag some photographers’ credentials for the big race several years running. My parents recently converted his old slides to digital pictures, and in honor of the classic race, the month of May, and Vic himself, these are some of his pictures of the 1969 event.
Here’s the handsome man, proudly wearing his badge so he could get up close to the cars, racers, and celebrities that made up the whirlwind that was the Indianapolis 500. This photo is from the 1970 event, but the glasses, the cocked hat, and the casual posture bring back all my fond memories of my charismatic grandfather. He had a big personality to go with his big frame (he was 6’4″), along with a loud voice and a temper to match, but nobody could laugh at the everyday absurdities of life like he could. I find it surreal that Vic was in his middle 40s, my age today, in this picture.
This is my mom (with my cousin) wearing an Indianapolis Motor Speedway “official photographer” t-shirt back in the early ’70s. Grandpa had several of these, and I remember wearing one as a kid, but I don’t know what happened to it.
Grandpa started taking pictures right at the gate, where it was apparently Ford day, with a Mustang and a couple of big Fords in view.
Traffic control doesn’t look bad considering how many people attend the event every year.
The parking lot is filled with new models, including two ’69 Chevys, a Cutlass, a ’68 Charger, a newer Firebird, and more.
This reminds me of many events I’ve attended down at Michigan International Speedway, the drag races, or even the local short track – people just parking in the infield and bringing along a cooler.
Here’s Grandma Doris, who sadly passed when I was only five, getting some race food ready.
Oh my gosh, it’s Hoss Cartwright! Yep, Dan Blocker was a Chevy spokesman of long standing as a star of Bonanza; he passed after gall bladder surgery in 1972, at the young age of 43.
Um, well, this one is a little more controversial. Of course, before the Bronco chase, O.J. Simpson was a popular football star, actor, and Chevrolet spokesman. Here he is with, for some reason, Kirk Douglas, who played all sorts of movie characters before passing away at 103 in 2020 (!), and another man I haven’t been able to identify. Any ideas?
Here’s A.J. Foyt, one of America’s greatest racing drivers of all time, and the eventual four-time winner of the 500 (though Mario won it in ’69 – his only win at Indy).
Grandpa even got near enough to the Borg-Warner trophy to take a picture. There are a lot more faces on it these days.
I can’t see this banner without Rod Stewart’s “Gasoline Alley” playing in my head. There are few more famous alleys in the world than this one.
They’re about ready to get underway!
Grandpa didn’t actually take a lot of pictures of the race itself, but it looks like this is Mario Andretti’s race-winning backup car, a Hawk-Ford (number 2, the red car). He crashed his Lotus-Ford in practice and suffered severe enough burns to his face that his identical twin brother Aldo stood in for the picture of the front-row starters.
I got a bit of a chuckle out of these pictures; aside from Mario’s car, Grandpa didn’t take a single picture of a car that finished higher than 11th place. He must have rooted for the underdog in 1969. This car was raced by Carl Williams, and it was a Gerhardt-Offy. Indy cars used the ancient Offy engine into the early 1980s (!), although it was fed by a massive turbocharger by the time the 1969 500 took place. It’s worth noting in today’s atmosphere of close competition and artificial-feeling finishes that 11th place was a full 35 laps down at the end of the race in 1969. Mr. Williams finished in 25th, retiring due to a failed clutch.
This STP car belonged to Art Pollard, who passed away at Indy in 1973. He finished a lowly 31st in 1969 with his Offy, apparently due to a driveline issue.
This car belonged to Lloyd “Hard Luck” Ruby, who often lived up to his name. Ruby was an excellent sports car and open wheel driver with two endurance wins in GT40s and seven wins in Indy cars; he led 10 laps of the 1969 500 before taking off too soon with the fuel hose still attached. The fuel tank ruptured and he was out of the race, finishing 20th.
Here’s Ruby himself (in ’71 or ’72), trademark cowboy hat and all.
The #15 was driven by Bud Tingelstad, whose Lola-Offy finished 15th, a failed engine ending his day.
Sonny Ates’ Brabham-Offy finished 17th due to a failed magneto.
George Follmer, a very good Trans Am driver and eventual champion of that series, was a rookie at Indy in ’69. He didn’t fare so well in his Gilbert-Ford, finishing 27th due to engine problems.
This is the cockpit of Wally Dallenbach’s 21st place Eagle-Offy; he also dropped out with a bad clutch.
Get out the hammers, boys – it’s time for a pit stop! It’s a far cry from the 2.5 second affairs of today’s Formula 1.
Here’s Billy Vukovich’s Mongoose-Offy, which apparently dropped out on lap one. He was still 32nd out of 33; Bruce Walkup apparently didn’t make the start.
Here’s another shot of Dallenbach’s car.
I’m not sure whose car this is, but that looks like a Turbo Offy under the engine cover. The Ford engine was a V8, the Offy a four. ***This might be Bruce Walkup’s car (33rd place); that was the Thermo-King Gerhardt-Offy.***
This is Lee Roy Yarbrough’s (no relation to Cale, who spelled his last name differently) Vollstedt-Ford. He was primarily a NASCAR driver who finished 23rd this day, apparently due to a broken exhaust header.
The number 10 was driven by Jim Malloy, who finished in 11th, and was apparently still running at the end of the day. Good for you, Jim!
Here’s the Carl Williams car again, still looking like quite the professional outfit.
Here’s George Snider in a Coyote-Ford; he finished 16th.
This is Jim McElreath’s Hawk-Offy; he finished 28th due to an engine fire (he was able to get the car stopped and was uninjured).
I’m not sure if these pictures are from 1969, but Cummins apparently brought a couple old race cars to show off. This one raced in 1931; it was by far the slowest car in the race, but didn’t have to stop for fuel once! It finished 13th as a result.
This sleek 1952 racer is perhaps more famous, as it was competitive and running 5th when it dropped out due to turbocharger failure.
I went back to the database of Grandpa’s newspaper to see if there were any pictures from the 1969 Indy 500, and they simply used photos supplied by the Associated Press, so Grandpa’s ability to secure a press pass isn’t much of a mystery – they simply didn’t send anyone else to the event. Grandpa left behind a significant number of Indy pictures, including the tragic crash in 1964 that took the lives of Eddie Sachs and Dave Macdonald. I’ll leave this 1969 edition, however, with one of his later pictures of the 1969 winner, Mario Andretti. Andretti never won Indy again, and his car was (according to crew chief Clint Brawner in his great book Indy 500 Mechanic) barely able to make it to the finish in 1969. He apparently used all the family’s luck in 1969, and the “Andretti curse” at Indianapolis is well-known to race fans.
It’s worth noting that modern race cars are FAR more reliable than they used to be: Four cars finished on the lead lap in 1969, and fifth place was three laps down. Modern racing is a lot closer; maybe it has to be, since people seem to expect nonstop action at all times to be entertained.
Even if the race itself isn’t quite the universal attention-grabber it once was, there is still a lot of great auto racing out there today. Memorial Day is coming up soon, so remember our fallen soldiers, and tune in to one of the greatest days of the year for race fans.
Note: My race day information came from Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s website, which chronicles the results of every 500 back to 1911.
Great pics! I remember well when the teams spent the entire month of May in Indy, with four days of qualifying over two weekends, and listening to the radio broadcast on race day, because the only live visuals were on a closed-circuit broadcast in movie theaters. Over-the-air TV was on ABC’s Wide World of Sports a few weeks later (at some point it went to a same-day broadcast in the evening). I guess all of these make me old lol.
I remember listening as a kid on the radio when my parents had to go somewhere and I couldn’t be near the TV on race day. 🙂
I was lucky to snag a back issue of Collectable Automobile magazine (June 1997) that featured all the Indy Pace Cars to date. Love to pull it out of my collection every now and then – like this morning – to browse the photos, the back story of the pace car and driver, and the winning Indy car of the year.
I have a book (published perhaps by Consumer Guide?) that has pictures and descriptions of all the pace cars up until the turn of the century or so. As much as I like GM performance vehicles, I miss the days when finding out what the pace car was going to be involved a little suspense. In 1986, I remember the new Corvette Roadster being a big deal.
This was my first Indy 500, age 7.
Part of the reason for the big difference in laps finished is that these cars are handbuilt in garages on tiny budgets by modern standards. Financially, it made more sense to build another car and hire another driver than to put the same effort into making a car bulletproof reliable.
Not only was George Follmer the Can Am and Trans Am champion driver in 1972, he’d won an Indy car race in March 1969 at the Phoenix oval in the same Gilbert chassis (with SB Chevy power at Phoenix instead of the 4-cam Indy Ford). The Gilbert is one of many copies and evolutions of the one-off 1964 Brabham BT12 chassis, including the Brawner Hawk that Mario used to win the 1965 and 1966 USAC National Championship (auctioned by Mecum in Indy this weekend) and the Brawner Hawk that Mario used to win the 1969 Indy 500.
I forgot that Follmer also won the Can Am championship driving for Penske!
Outstanding pictures and story! What a treasure to look at these.
I’m thinking the other man in the OJ Simpson / Kirk Douglas car is basketball player Oscar Robertson (who played for the Cincinnati Royals at the time). There are some sources that cite him as being one of the athlete celebrities at the event, and your photo does look like him.
Below is a photo I found at Getty Images (taken by a Sports Illustrated photographer) of the same car… different angle:
I’ll bet you are right about Oscar Robertson. He was an Indianapolis native and a key member of the 1955 Crispus Attucks High School basketball team that was the first all black team (and the first team from Indianapolis) to win the Indiana state basketball championship. That would have been the year after the season that was the basis for the movie Hoosiers, in which a tiny school in Milan Indiana won the 1954 title. Attucks won again in 1956 to finish an undefeated season. So Oscar would have had plenty of hometown VIP cred at that time.
Thanks guys – I knew someone would figure it out.
I love the pictures! I just hope he wasn’t in the press stand with the rest of the photographers in 1971 when the Dodge Challenger pace car mowed into it.
Race tickets used to be a huge deal here, with many families subscribing for decades and slowly improving the location of their seats as better ones became available. Even now, I get asked multiple times every May “Are you going to the race?”
I wonder if there is a more famous and more popular Indy pace car than the white/orange 69 Camaro. They built a ton of them that year, and a fellow I used to work with remembered owning one as a youth.
The Collectable Automobile I refer to above says of the ’69 Camaro pace car: “Chevrolet built 3675 replicas, all of them SS convertibles, but buyers had a choice of 350- or 396-cid V-8s.” The 1970 pace car was an Olds 442: “Of the 2933 4-4-2 convertibles sold, 269 were pace car replicas.” In 1971 “Only 167 Challenger convertibles were built … About 50 of those were pace car replicas, painted bright ‘hemi orange’ … Dodge dealers could order Indy 500 decal sets to provide with the cars.” 1972 was the Hurst/Olds: “Oldsmobile built about 130 convertibles and 499 coupe replicas. There was also 50 Delta 88 Royale convertibles with pace car graphics that were used as parade cars.” (I wonder where these are today?). 1974 again Hurst/Olds: “Only 380 pace cars built … the Indy 500 decals were furnished separately, so all street versions didn’t wear the ‘Official Pace Car’ stickers”. 1975 Buick Century Custom: “1800 pace car replicas built.” In 1978 “Chevrolet planned to build 2500 pace car replicas, but by race day there were already 6500 orders. In all Chevy built about 7000 replicas at a price of $13,653.21 per unit.”
In 1979 “Ford manufactured three pace cars, all three were used on the parade lap. In addition Ford sold over 11,000 Mustang pace car replicas as a mid-year addition to the vehicle line. This is probably the largest run of pace cars in Indy history and, as a result of the popularity of the replica, Ford introduced the Mustang Cobra.”
CA is way off on those numbers for the Challenger. Their figure is for Challenger convertibles equipped with the big block 383. Total Challenger convertible production was 1,857, including 83 with the slant six.
There were no actual pace car replicas of the Challenger, at least in the normal sense. The Challenger pace car was purely a joint effort of four Indianapolis Dodge dealers after no manufacturer stepped up to provide one – the only time this has happened since at least 1946.
The paint color was actually Ceramic Red and the dealers scrounged up around 50 of them, which was the number necessary for promotional activities. In addition to an actual pace car (and at least one backup), 33 are required for the Festival Parade, one for each driver in the race, plus more for race officials (these are called “parade cars”). They came with a variety of engine, transmission and trim options because they were random production units grabbed from other dealers.
Dodge dealer Eldon Palmer owned the actual pace car used in the race, and the rest were sold off. Most of them probably lost their decals soon after, but a handful kept them – marked pace car replicas are always popular in Indianapolis. Any decal sets would have come from the dealers, as Chrysler Corporation had nothing to do with these cars.
We have an 8 part CC Indy Pace Car series that covers 1946-84 and accessible under the site index for Automotive Histories.
The Challengers were ordered from the factory by the four Indianapolis Dodge dealers on their own floorplan for the 500 Festival, not randomly collected for the event. The VINs are in batches. The dealers were financially responsible for buying/financing the cars when delivered by the factory and selling the cars after the race.
The difference in specification was deliberate. Most of the Festival loaner cars were low option 318s. This is different from typical factory-backed pace car programs, which usually were all high option cars.
The dealer principals ordered high option 340s and 393s for their personal use, and there was a car like that for Dodge’s Bob McCurry. The actual pace car and backup were hipo 383s.
Interesting about the direct factory orders – I had not come across that info when I researched this a number of years ago.
There is a period ad out there where those 4 dealers were promoting a big sale on those parade convertibles, so your information would make sense. The one thing that doesn’t make sense is why a special ordered pace car to be used for starting the race would be spec’d for 4 wheel drum brakes. But maybe there was some quirk in availability or Chrysler’s ordering system.
I know that the actual pace car belonged to Eldon Palmer, and I believe he kept it (in wrecked condition) for quite a number of years before it was eventually restored.
Grandpa took a picture of the Challenger in ’71, and nobody in the family ever mentioned his being in the press stand during that unfortunate incident.
I don’t know why the disc brake option wasn’t specified. But that didn’t matter to the accident AFAIK. Palmer flat blew past his braking point.
Thanks for sharing these terrific photos. I would have loved to be there.
Thanks, as always, for giving me a place to talk about them!
Great pictures of racing history, but even more meaningful to you as family memories, I’m sure.
Three of my four grandparents died decades before I was born, and I only met my maternal grandfather once, when I was three years old. So I treasure, and have digitized, many old family photographs going back to 1910 (the pictures, not me!).
I have spent many hours scanning and archiving photos and slides, and was able to restore many of them to their original glory.
That’s why I spent a few minutes on a few of your pictures to see if I could undo some of the fading that occurred over time. Hope you enjoy the results.
#2
#3
#4
FYI: I have simply ‘fixed’ the levels using the Image>Adjust>Auto levels in my 20-year old copy of Photoshop. Most image editing programs will have a similar function.
Those are great, Louis! I’ve never worked with Photoshop before, but I use Photoscape on my computer. Your work looks better than mine… 🙂
What a collection! Thanks.
You’re welcome!
Openwheel.com has the Indycar liveries for each year, and, at least in the ‘60s, uses the starting line publicity photos to show each car. For 1969, Mario Andretti’s #2 car has Aldo at the wheel, all bundled up in his helmet and balaclava, rather than without his helmet and sitting up on the roll bar, as was the pose for the rest of the drivers.
It was back in the early 1990’s that I had a co worker who would subscribe to the Indianapolis newspaper during the month of the race. He was a real fan and would attend the race every few years. He was dedicated, since we lived in the SF Bay Area.