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GREG LONBERGER. 1/1/2014. Greg was one of a dozen Cobra restorers in the countryworthy of the name. He was always interested in Fords and his shop outside of Chicagohad 427 engines and hard-to-find parts everywhere you looked. He had a soft spot in hisheart for 427 Galaxies and was known to play with Boss 429s. But Cobras really spun hisgears. In the late 1960s he bought a CSX3181 which had been crashed and needed prettymuch everything. He began working on it himself, and his workmanship and attention todetail led other Cobra owners to him with their cars. The car was completed, less paint,and Lonberger started vintage racing it from 1982 through 1989 when he decided it wastoo valuable to put at risk. The car was also used by Monogram as the model for its 1/24scale model kit. In 1978 he purchased GT40 prototype GT/104 which had been raced byFord in 1964 and Shelby in 1965. In the early 1970s it was driven on the street and expe-rienced an engine fire. Lonberger bought it and began a long term restoration back to theway it was raced at Daytona in February 1965. After high school he joined the army, servingfrom 1968 through 1971. In Vietnam he was assigned to the 75th Ranger Battalion wherehe conducted long range reconnaissance patrols. It was there that he came into contact

with the toxic defoliant Agent Orange, which remained dor-mant in his body for twenty-five years. He was diagnosedwith multiple sclerosis which, in later years, increasinglyreduced his mobility. He was determined to finish restoringhis GT40 and although he could no longer walk, used awheeled stool to move around his shop. He wasn’t able tocomplete the restoration and sold the car unfinished. Heeventually moved into an assisted-care facility in Kenosha,Wisconsin where he passed away on New Year’s Day. Hewas 63. He was an early SAAC member and also a memberof the Paralyzed Veterans of America. He was opinionatedand had a hard shell, but beneath it was a heart of gold.

ERNEST M. RIEMENSCHNEIDER. 1/21/2014. Known to his friends as “Mike” or“Remo,” he was a very early SAAC member and FoMoCo engineer. He lived in Plymouth,Michigan and was a spark plug in the SAAC Motor City Region and the Mustang Owner’sClub of South East Michigan. He was legendary for his knowledge of Holley carburetors,distributors and other black arts like Paxton superchargers that made average ownersfeel like they were in a mechanical wasteland. In fact, Mike had a microfiche machine inhis basement and a full set of Ford Parts and Service microfiche cards that enabled him

to look up parts and specifica-tions for any Ford product builtfrom 1949 through the 1990s. Healso had a Sun distributor ma-chine and was able to curve adistributor to factory specifica-tions, which he happily did for

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SAAC-MCR members. He could also disassemble, rebuild andreassemble any Holley or Autolite carburetor blindfolded. Inthe early 1970s he had a Grabber Blue 302 Maverick on whichhe installed a Paxton supercharger. When he sold the Maver-ick in the early 1980s he transferred the Paxton onto his 5-liter Fox-bodied Mercury Capri. He also had a ‘68 Mustangcoupe powered by a 428 Cobra Jet that was an AHRA recordholder and at one time he owned a ‘67 GT350. But he was bestknown for his Acapulco Blue GT500 KR convertible. He drovethe car to every East Coast convention and every SAAC-MCRevent and it ran like a well-oiled watch. He passed away dueto complications from Parkinson’s. He was 74.

JOHN “JEAN” STUCKI. 3/16/2014. John was born in Montreaux, Switzerland. In the early1960s he relocated to Southern California and became partners with Ken Miles. They openeda sports car repair shop, first in the San Fernando Valley and later in Hollywood. When theyclosed the business they both went to work for Shelby American. John was a race mechanicand specialized in Cobras. He had a hand in building the Daytona Coupes and his first racewith the team was at Sebring in 1964. As a former European, it was logical that he go to Eu-rope with the Cobra team in 1965. Following the 24 Hours of LeMans the Ford team’s poorshowing resulted in almost all of the team’s mechanics being fired. John subsequently wentto work as a technician for Estes Mercedes Benz, and then Simonsen Porsche in SouthernCalifornia. He eventually opened his own shop in Hollywood called, appropriately, Stucki Au-tomotive. He specialized in Mercedes and Porsche. He closed his shop in 1998 and retired, butstill found time to work as an arbitrator for Toyota lemon law cases. He enjoyed attendingCobra-related events. He lived in Malibu and went to a health club every day to work out. Hewas getting dressed after a session when he had a heart attack and died. He was 80.

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ED HULL. 3/15/2014. Ed was one of the unsung heros of Ford’s engineering pro-gram. In 1961 he was working on the Mustang I project. When the GT40 programcame along he was a natural for that. In fact, he was so interested that on his owniniriative he designed the Ford GT MK II transaxle on his own, at a drafting table inhis basement. When the higher-ups discovered he was “moonlighting” they immedi-ately transferred him to Kar-Kraft where he became one of the head engineers onthe J-car program, which eventually became the GT40 MK IV. The special projectskept coming at him: the Can-Am MK IV-based open car with Dihedral wing poweredby the 427 Calliope engine, the Mach II prototype and Mickey Thimpson’s “ChallengerII” land speed record car powered by a pair of 427 SOHC engines. He also worked ona unique rear-engined Boss 429 Mustang, Ford’s Boss 302 Trans-Am racers, a LincolnPresidential Limousine and the NASCAR Torino King Cobra. He was the recipientof numerous awards, incliding The Henry Ford Technology Award for early side im-pact protection designs. After his retirement from Ford, following 38 years of service,Hull was active in organizing reunions of his fellow retired engineers he called “Moon-lighters” because most of them worked on racing projects after everyone else had leftthe office.

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JOHN BISHOP. 6/5/2014. He was the executive director of the Sports CarClub of America in 1964 when he was informed by a representative of theFord Motor Company that they intended to enter their new Mustang in SCCAcompetition as a production sports car. Bishop curtly told them the car didnot fit their requirements as a sports car, so they turned to their residentsports car specialist, Carroll Shelby. He was friends with Bishop and calledhim. Instead of using Ford’s tact of telling the small, fiercely independentsanctioning body what they had to do, Shelby asked what it would take to getthe Mustang accepted as a sports car. Bishop said it would have to have twoseats, could have a modified engine or suspension but not both, and a mini-mum of 100 would have to be built. Bishop was not thinking about helpingFord or Shelby; instead he was considering how a Mustang versus Corvetterivalry would increase the popularity of SCCA events. The rest was, as theysay, history. In 1969 Bishop received a cold call from Bill France Sr., askinghim if he would like to join France in putting together a professional sportscar racing association. Both agreed that the SCCA was having trouble movingfrom amateur events to professional ones, but France was nevertheless afraid that the SCCA was making inroads into hisNASCAR empire. He wanted to eliminate the threat with a preemptive strike. The timing was right for Bishop because he sawthe future of professional road racing and it was at odds with the SCCA concept of professional amateurs. Rather than buttheads with the other SCCA directors, most of who remained committed to amateur, Olympic style competition. In 1969 Bishopresigned from the SCCA and with his wife Peggy, launched the International Motor Sports Association. They debuted the IMSAGT Championship and succeeded in bringing major sponsors and manufacturers on board. IMSA successfully integrated thetwo prestige sports car endurance races in this country, Daytona and Sebring, into the new series which attracted top manu-facturers and talented drivers from the U.S., Europe and Australia. The events received television coverage which only increasedtheir popularity. Bishop built the organization through the 1980s and, facing healthy issues, sold the organization in 1989 tothe organizers of the St. Petersburg race. The series eventually merged with the American LeMans Series into the UnitedSp[orts Car Championship which presently runs under the IMSA banner. John Bishop was 87 when he died at his home inSan Rafael, California.

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Garner got a non-speaking role in theBroadway version of “The Caine MutinyCourt Martial” which led to a contractfrom Warner Bros. in 1956. He madeover fifty films during his career andnever stopped working. He was, how-ever, best known for the two televisionseries he starred in, “Maverick” (1957-1960) and “The Rockford Files” (1974-1980). Both roles had him playing agood-natured con man who was quick-

witted enough to avoid physical conflicts. Bret Maverick was a gambler who movedfrom town to town, usually becoming involved in situations where he kept his gunin his holster and outfoxed the villains before hastily leaving town. Jim Rockfordwas much the same character, but was cast as a modern Los Angeles private inves-tigator who was also an ex-con (unjustly convicted). Both characters were likablerogues and Garner was the perfect actor to play them. When most actors went fromthe small screen to the big screen they thought it was a come-down to go back. Notso, Garner. He was something of a rarity in Hollywood, moving easily between tele-vision and movies for his entire career. In 2006 he received the Screen Actors Guild’slifetime achievement award, saying, “I’m not at all sure how I got here.” During thefilming of “Grand Prix,” several of the Formula 1 drivers used in the movie, includingGraham Hill, commented on Garner’s natural driving skills. If he had not chosenacting, they were sure he had what it took to become a professional race driver.

JAMES GARNER. 7/19/2014. Best known for his two televisionseries, “Maverick” and “The Rockford Files,” James Garner passedaway from natural causes at his home in Brentwood, California.He was 86. His starring role in the film “Grand Prix” was originallyoffered to Steve McQueen who turned it down because he was try-ing to put together a racing movie deal of his own (“Day of theChampion”) which never got made. The film introduced Garner toracing. He attended the Carroll Shelby School of High PerformanceDriving prior to the filming and became friends with Bob Bon-durant who was one of the drivers in the film. He enjoyed drivingso much that he did most of his own driving during the filming.After the movie he teamed up with Bondurant and Dick Guld-strand (who also drove in the movie) to form American Interna-tional Racing. The team fielded L88 Corvettes and Lola T70s atday Daytona, Sebring and LeMans. AIR also sponsored a Formula5000 entry in late 1969 driven by John Surtees. Garner’s actingcommitments prevented him racing buthe did get behind the wheel of a four-wheel drive Olds 442 in the 1969 Baja1000 off-road race. He was born JamesBumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma andmoved with his family to California butwhen his father remarried he movedback to Oklahoma. When he was 16 helied about his age and joined the Mer-chant Marine, serving during the lastyear of WWII. In 1950 he was draftedand sent to Korea where he spent four-teen months as an infantryman, Heserved with the 24th Infantry Divisionand was wounded twice. The first timehe received shrapnel in the face andhand. On April 23, 1951 we was hit inthe hindquarters by shrapnel from aU.S. fighter-bomber. The second PurpleHeart never caught up with him until itwas finally awarded in 1983.

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