Famous Impala Returns to England to Finish What It Started
Piloted by legend Dan Gurney, stock 1961 Impala took on Jaguar in a single touring car race with only a rebuilt engine.
1961 was quite the happening year. John F. Kennedy takes the reins as the 35th President of the United States. The Beatles play their first-ever gig in Liverpool, England’s Cavern Club. Roger Maris hits his 61st home run, a new record set for the expanded regular baseball season. Barack Obama, Eddie Murphy, and James Gandolfini are born. Ernest Hemingway, Ty Cobb, and Dizzy Vance leave this world behind.
And motorsport legend Dan Gurney decided to challenge the Jaguars competing in the British Saloon Car Championship with a nearly stock 1961 Chevy Impala, rebuilding the engine to beat the pants of the big cats. Petrolicious has the story of this beast, which currently resides in England.
“When you’re driving on the road, I do occasionally think about the Dan Gurney connection,” says the Impala’s current owner, Ed Foster. “But actually when it was at its strongest was when I took to Silverstone to complete the two laps that Dan never managed… It was just a very surreal feeling.”
The Impala’s return to England began when Foster, a gearhead from childhood whose father was an amateur racer, was looking for a car to bring to the Goodwood Revival for a competition featuring cars from the Sixties when someone suggested a Chevrolet Impala. Foster’s confusion faded once he learned of Gurney’s car, leading him down the rabbit hole of its incredible story.
“Back in 1961, Dan Gurney was watching the British Saloon Car Championship, which at the time was filled with 3.8 Jags,” said Foster, “and they were really beating everyone… He decided that he could beat all of these guys with a stock Chevrolet Impala. He ordered one off the production line in police specs… he took it off the production line, stripped the engine, rebuilt it, and shipped it over to the U.K. and entered it into the May round of the British Saloon Car Championship at Silverstone.”
Gurney took the pole with the amped-up Impala, and had led every lap except for the final two, when one of the rear wheels broke. Gurney ordered a set of NASCAR wheels to try again at the next round at Silverstone, only to find a big roadblock erected by all of the Jaguar teams who were none too thrilled they nearly lost to a monster Chevy. Gurney sold the car to a friend in Australia, who raced it for a while before it became a tow car with an inline-six, then shipped it off to one Vern France of New Jersey to sell.
After calling every Vern France in the phone book, Foster finally found the one who had Gurney’s car. A couple of weeks later, a deal was made, and the car was shipped back to England. Alas, Foster says the deal was made “literally a week” after Gurney’s passing January 14, 2018. Foster adds that he has “since been in touch with his family, his widow, and his sons,” all of whom have thrown their support behind Foster’s new project.
“One of my big problems was that the car was in America, I was in the U.K., and I’m by no means an expert on classic cars, let alone [an] expert on the Chevrolet Impala,” said Foster. “The other big question was whether [it] was actually Dan Gurney’s car. Thankfully, there was a letter from Dan Gurney, signed on All American Racers-headed paper… saying ‘this is my car that I raced at Silverstone in ’61,” and it’s got Dan Gurney’s signature at the bottom, which is [a] really amazing thing to have.”
Foster planned to race the Impala at the Goodwood Revival in the aforementioned competition, though there was concern about whether to run it as-is, or to add a roll cage and chassis stiffening. The decision was made to restore the big Chevy to what it once was, down the bench seats, functioning radio, and the 6.7-liter 409 V8 making 450 horses and torque. A few months later, Foster took it to Silverstone to complete the two last laps, then to the Goodwood Revival to compete.
Foster invited Alex Gurney, one of Dan’s sons, to take the wheel of the Impala at the Revival, but Alex couldn’t make it. Foster now plans to bring the big Chevy back to the United States, where it’s loud-and-proud V8 will be heard wherever it goes.
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