The first Eagles were developed after AAR entered a Goodyear-backed Lotus 38 in the 1965 Indianapolis 500 and Gurney hired former Lotus designer Len Terry to develop their own car for 1966. The resulting Ford-powered Eagle T2G was co-developed with the Eagle T1G for Formula 1. The company also built the Ben Bowlby-designed DeltaWing that was run by Highcroft Racing at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Eagle T1G, initially powered by a Coventry Climax engine, debuted at the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix and scored its first points with a fifth place three weeks later at the French Grand Prix. For the 1967 season, Richie Ginther was signed as a second driver. The Climax engine was replaced by a new 3-liter Weslake V12 engine designed by Aubrey Woods and built in Great Britain by Weslake.
At the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, Gurney achieved the first all-American victory in a Grand Prix since Jimmy Murphy's triumph with Duesenberg at the 1921 French Grand Prix. Excluding the Indianapolis 500, this remains the only win for a USA-built car, as well as one of only two wins by an American-licensed constructor in Formula One — the other being Penske's triumph at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix.
During the USAC years the Eagle chassis was very successful in the late 1960s and 1970s. Eagles won 51 Champ Car races, including the 1968 and 1975 Indianapolis 500s won by Bobby Unser and the 1973 race won by Gordon Johncock. Bobby Unser joined AAR as the sole driver and also claimed 22 wins and 52 podiums with Eagle cars. After Unser's departure to Team Penske, AAR began to lose their edge in IndyCar competition. Mike Mosley won a few races before being dismissed at the end of 1982. By 1984, AAR merged with Mike Curb's team to form Curb-All American Racers. After a two-year partnership, Gurney and Curb parted ways, marking the beginning of the end of AAR's time in IndyCar.
The team was inactive in single-seaters from 1987 to 1995 and returned in 1996 building their own chassis and using new Toyota engines. This effort never won a race, collecting only occasional top-tens, and the team ceased active racing after the 1999 CART season.
AAR created a special Trans-Am Series version of the Plymouth Barracuda, running in the 1970 season with drivers Dan Gurney and Swede Savage. A homologation special production edition was offered in 1970.
Gurney's team was contracted by Toyota in 1983 to enter the IMSA GT Championship with specially-modified Toyota Celicas. In 1988, the team moved up to the GTP category with two chassis: a modified Toyota 88C Group C car and a team-designed Eagle HF89 purpose-built for IMSA competition.
AAR's greatest IMSA success came with the Eagle MkIII, introduced in 1991. Powered by a turbocharged 2.1-liter Toyota inline-4 developing up to 800 horsepower and generating 10,000 pounds of downforce at 200 mph, the MkIII won 21 of the 27 races in which it was entered — a record so dominant that it has been cited as a factor in the collapse of the GTP series.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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