Briggs Swift Cunningham, Jr.
1907 – 2003
By John Fitch, Tim Considine, and Pete Lyons
Remembering Briggs Cunningham
By John Fitch
“Briggs Cunningham, my boss, companion, mentor and, most of all, my friend, has passed on and, even though his last years were pretty much spent apart from all of us, the world seems just a bit emptier today. I don’t need to belabor his life and careers – those statistics of his various endeavors will be found elsewhere as the world pauses a moment to consider just who he was. I would rather think of our times together, stretching back to the very early days of postwar motor racing in this country, our great campaigns with the cars that bore his name so proudly, the long talks, the common pursuit of speed and all the other things that characterized our times together.”
Cunningham
By Tim Considine
“They came from near and far to honor him, some of them legends in their own right, race-car drivers, builders, and engineers whose names adorn the pages of America’s automobile racing history – John Fitch, Sherwood Johnston, Dan Gurney, Bill Stroppe, John von Neumann, ‘Kas’ Kastner, Warren Olsen, Bill Devin, and Augie Pabst, just to name a few. The occasion was a surprise party to celebrate the 85th birthday of the patron of American sports car racing, one Briggs Swift (how appropriate!) Cunningham.”
Mr. C – Briggs Cunningham
By Pete Lyons
“Fifty years ago, in 1953, an American-made Cunningham sports racing car won the second-ever Sebring 12 Hour race. Then Briggs Swift Cunningham’s team carried the blue-and-white competition colors of the USA to the 21st 24 Hours of Le Mans, earning 3rd place overall and 1st in class. ‘Mr. C’ died this July. We don’t have space here for all the things that should be said about him, but I do want to acknowledge his racing achievements and also his manner of going racing. These things were foundation stones for my own enthusiasm.”
Briggs Swift Cunningham, Jr.
N.Y. Times Obituary
CUNNINGHAM-Briggs Swift II. America’s Cup Winner and motorsports legend dies at 96. Briggs Swift Cunningham II, who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lived the majority of his life in Westport, Connecticut, died in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 2, 2003. Mr. Cunningham was the son of a Cincinnati financier and businessman who funded the start-up of Proctor & Gamble. While attending Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, Briggs developed a love of yacht-racing, which lead him to international recognition when he skippered the Columbia to victory in the 1958 America’s Cup yacht race. In the 1930s Mr. Cunningham and two friends formed the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) to promote racing in the New York area. In 1940 he began designing and building his own cars. After World War II, Briggs founded the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and competed in his first race at Watkins Glen, New York driving his “BuMerc”-a hybrid Buick/Mercedes of his own creation.
Briggs Cunningham
Wikipedia
Briggs Swift Cunningham II (January 19, 1907 – July 2, 2003) was an American entrepreneur and sportsman, who raced automobiles and yachts. Born into a wealthy family, he became a racing car constructor, driver, and team owner as well as a sports car manufacturer and automobile collector. He skippered the first victorious 12-metre yacht Columbia in the 1958 America’s Cup race, and invented the eponymous device, the Cunningham, to increase the speed of racing sailboats. He was featured on the April 26, 1954 cover of Time magazine, with three of his Cunningham racing cars. The caption reads: Road Racer Briggs Cunningham: Horsepower, Endurance, Sportsmanship. He became an early member of the Road Racing Drivers Club (RRDC), an invitation-only club formed to honor notable road racing drivers.
Website Disclaimer
Please read the disclaimer prior to entering this website. You may access it by clicking here.