Cunningham - The passion, the cars, the legacy

Cunningham was a name which cropped-up in my earliest memories of Le Mans and as my interest in motor racing developed, I found the longer distance events for Sports Cars far more enticing that the increasingly shorterGrand Prix races. The Cunningham was just a car and I knew nothing about the man behind their existence until my knowledge expanded through an increasingly extensive library of motor racing books and magazines, of which I could never get enough. 

The Briggs Cunningham story gradually emerged and fascinated me, as he was part of the emergence of road racing in his country. The similar development of road racing in Europe had taken place years before my time and was already well-developed when y interest in the sport began. The stories behind the great European racesenthralled me, even though they were history, but in America the similar, often troubled beginnings of the sport, happened during my life-time. My thirst for more knowledge of these events was insatiable, but hampered by a severe lack of readily available information. In retrospect, the European press belittled American motor race events and considered them unimportant. Even the major motor races in the USA, some of which pre-dated many great European events, were virtually ignored.