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Post by Chris K. Hale on Jul 20, 2014 9:21:52 GMT -8
I just saw during the Hockenhiem F-1 coverage that actor and the star of Grand Prix and overall excellent road race driver James Garner has passed away this morning. R.I.P.... Chris
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Post by gwadagone on Jul 20, 2014 12:42:30 GMT -8
Remember the great '68 Corvettes AIR at Daytona...
 And one year after,always at Daytona with the Lola T70...
 the great actor of TV Movie "Maverick" & also a good boss manager of the AIR James Garner racing team in the late sixtees...
R.I.P. JAMES.
Greetings.
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Post by alterrenner on Jul 20, 2014 16:05:58 GMT -8
Whenever I talk about meeting Jimmy Clark around my wife, she usually brings up "I met Steve McQueen and James Garner". She met them (at different times) when she worked at Fisher's Restaurant in Sebring. Both were very polite, dirty from the track, and very friendly. She liked James Garner best because he was "funny". She was very sad to hear the news this morning. He left his mark on many different worlds, and will be missed by those in all of them. RIP doesn't say enough.
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Post by harron6 on Jul 22, 2014 16:26:38 GMT -8
Too true. McQueen was charismatic, like Garner, but moody and not always well mannered. Garner, women couldn't resist. He was a gentleman with a twinkle of enchantment in his eye. Garner was quite the man, fer sure and we'll all remember him from films and TV for as long as we live. Luv "Nichols" and the film "Support Your Local Sheriff." Many others too.
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Post by sandysixtysfan on Jul 23, 2014 8:35:35 GMT -8
What a class guy he was, great actor, serious car guy, family man and so on. Here's Spark's 1/43 Jim Garner AIR Lola I picked up some time ago-  |
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Post by dustymojave on Aug 1, 2014 9:15:34 GMT -8
I grew up around racing and near Hollywood, where there were often celebrities from motorsports, stage, screen and music around me. I personally met a great many such people. Perhaps due to that, I grew up considering celebrities to be regular people. Like anybody else, some were nice people, some were total jerks, some were brilliant at what they did, some were total fools who happened to have stepped in golden shit. Again, perhaps due to that environment, I was never a hero-worshipper, or a "fan" in general.
That said, I have been a fan of Jim Garner since I was a little kid. His on-screen persona in movies and on TV was always a guy I liked. While he was always a handsome, rugged, tough, intelligent, charming ladies man; he was also never a bully; was tough, yet showed that a tough guy can experience fear; was self-effacing, didn't claim to be the best, fastest, smartest, or whatever. Just a regular sort of a guy. While our paths crossed very close a number of times and I'm sure that we were in the same places at the same time, and I knew a number of people who knew him, I never actually met Jim Garner. Of all the people I encountered who DID have personal dealings with Mr. Garner, NOBODY has ever had a negative word to say about him to me. In my experience, that is mighty rare.
The highest praise I heard from one who dealt with Jim was from Bob Bondurant. Bob was a SoCal road racer who was tough to beat in C1 Corvettes, then moved on to the Shelby Cobra camp, with whom he achieved wins in the FIA Championship against Ferrari at places such as Targa Florio and was one of the drivers in the 1st win of the Ford GT40, at Daytona in '65, and he even drove on the Ferrari team in F1. He went on to create and head the most successful competitive driving school in the world. But in 1966, he was a very key figure in the creation of the movie Grand Prix, that Jim starred in. Bob was the camera car driver (Ford GT40 - sticking with F1 cars during actual races), lead consultant to the Producer and Director, stunt driver, and driving instructor to the actors. Shortly after returning to the SoCal road racing scene from working on the movie and before the Hollywood Premier of the movie, my father and I encountered Bob at a race. During the ensuing conversation, Bob raved about Jim Garner's driving talent. While Jim had never been in a race car prior to beginning work on Grand Prix, Bob said he felt strongly that if Jim chose to, he could have been a competitive F1 driver immediately were he to obtain a competitive ride. That was mighty praise from a very knowledgeable source. While Jim continued involvement with sports car racing, he also got deeply involved in off-road racing. Early on, he co-drove a fiberglass Manx buggy with SoCal road race regular Scooter Patrick. Then he had an Olds Cutlass, which has recently been restored and an SC/Rambler built for Baja racing, and a derivative of that production-based Cutlass, the Olds Cutlass fiberglass bodied tube framed Olds V8 powered Banshee.
He is definitely a guy I would like to have known personally in my life.
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