Even when they're not soaring at Road America, Dan Gurney's Eagle race cars are a sight to behold

ELKHART LAKE – As a mist hung over Road America, Dan Gurney’s cars were grounded.

While these Eagles were meant to race, many now live in museums, three, four and five-plus decades after they competed. In some cases the owners had no intention they’d hit high gear at the WeatherTech International Challenge. Others were to take part in the “demonstration session.”

But Gurney’s legacy was built on the track, not in a gravel trap and not in a heap. So under the tent two dozen examples of All American Racers’ finest work sat Friday.

George Bruggenthies, the vintage racing enthusiast who spent 20 years as Road America’s president, was making small talk:

“Well, what do you think?”

It’s hard to think of these cars or the event as anything but special, even when your feet are getting damp.

Earlier Bruggenthies’ successor, Mike Kertcher, had been talking up expectations. This weekend is going to be bigger than ever, he predicted. Although a departure from the cutthroat competition of the IndyCar weekend five weeks ago, NASCAR two weeks ago or IMSA the first weekend of August, the International Challenge has always been popular. There’s an appetite for nostalgia.

In this paddock, Bobby Unser lives on in the autograph he signed five years ago on an Eagle he drove on and off for three seasons. The 1967 car originally belonged to Leader Card Racers. Now it’s in the hands of music industry executive Scott Borchetta, who races a ’71 Corvette in vintage events and a modern Ford Mustang in Trans Am’s TA2 class.

A few steps away, American racing history endures in the car that won the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. Constructed and driven by Gurney, it was the first American-built car to win a grand prix and he was the second American driver to do so. It and the Jorgensen Eagle in which Unser won the 1975 Indianapolis 500 are part of the Miles Collier Collection and usually are kept at the Revs Institute, a museum and archive in Naples, Florida.

Other All American Racers-built cars on site were driven by Rick Mears, Mark Donohue, Mike Mosley, Lloyd Ruby, Al Unser Jr. and Johnny Parsons Jr., to name a few, and prepared by any number of teams however famous or obscure. Nine of them carry the number 48. And a younger crowd may remember watching the MSA GTP Toyota once shared by P.J. Jones and Juan Manuel Fango II on these 4 miles in the early ’90s.

There’s never been a reunion like this one, pointed out Bruggenthies, now a senior consultant to Road America.

Whereas Can-Am cars are often the premier draw of one of the country’s most extensive vintage racing weekends, this time the Eagles are, even when they’re parked.

They’re far from the only cars. The track was anticipating some 400 entries, everything from a 1929 Ford Model A Speedster to a Porsche and an Audi from 2018, from Trans Am cars of the late ’60s to the ’97 Formula One cars driven by the father/son duo of Brian and James French.

Action was fairly light for qualifying sessions Friday, although that didn’t stop a few drivers from pushing – and exceeding – the limits of their machinery and skills under questionable conditions.

Blue skies throughout the weekend should produce more action by the time the featured races begin Sunday morning. And what looks better against a brilliant blue backdrop than an eagle? Or an Eagle?

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Dan Gurney's Eagle race cars grace Elkhart Lake's Road America