3 Racing Icons Who Will Forever Be Associated with Their Famous Cars

Racing legends center around famous names, all-conquering machines, and heroic drives. They don’t always include all three categories and are often fleeting, lasting only a race or a season. Sometimes, though, the feats are so mighty that the wheelman and the race car become inextricably linked. Presented here are three cases where the mere suggestion of either half of the relationship immediately brings to mind the other.

Stirling Moss & the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR

A mighty race car driven at unbelievable speed cemented the Brit’s legacy.

By Jethro Bovingdon

How did the late Sir Stirling Moss remember the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR? “Overall the SLR was an enormously fast car with inferior brakes.”

He did have nicer things to say too. But this quote, given to Doug Nye for Motor Sport magazine in 2005, says much for the British driver’s matter-of-fact character.

This story originally appeared in Volume 36 of Road & Track.

Moss drove everything, winning over 40 percent of the races he entered, 212 victories in all. But he will always be known best for his triumph at the 1955 Mille Miglia, the incredible 300SLR beneath him and motorsport journalist Denis “Jenks” Jenkinson at his side. The now-iconic red 722 emblazoned on the side represented their start time from Brescia: 7:22 a.m.

That year marked Mercedes-Benz’s first postwar factory effort in the Mille Miglia since it re­-­entered grand prix racing, and it had a dream team of drivers: Juan Manuel Fangio, Hans Herr­mann (who went on to claim Porsche’s first Le Mans victory, in 1970 with Richard Attwood), Karl Kling (the first German to score a podium in Formula 1), and Moss. The car wasn’t too shabby either. The 300SLR—­originally described by Mercedes as Super Leicht Rennsport—was essentially a fully dressed version of the dominant W196 single-­seater that raced in F1, but the aluminum-­block straight-eight was bored and stroked to 3.0 liters (from 2.5). On normal pump gas, it produced 296 hp at 7500 rpm, Moss’s usual shift point. But with no rev limit imposed, he saw 8200 rpm in one section.

The 300SLR had an extremely soft long-travel suspension to cope with the rough public roads of the Mille Miglia. Moss called the car “bulletproof,” and Jenkinson recalled in detail Moss’s ability to slide it from corner entry to exit with perfect precision. Helped, of course, by Jenks’s pace notes famously delivered via hand signals.

They weren’t perfect. “On one straight, lined with trees, we had marked down a hump in the road as being ‘flatout’ only if the road was dry,” Jenkinson wrote in his brilliant account published in Motor Sport that year. “We had made an error in our estimation of the severity of the hump. For a measurable amount of time the vibro-massage that you get sitting in a 300SLR at that speed suddenly ceased, and there was time for us to look at each other with raised eyebrows before we landed again.” They also clipped hay bales in Padova, smashed clean through others and onto the sidewalk in Pescara, and spun into a ditch descending the Radicofani Pass. But the car soaked it up, and Moss’s furious pace was unabated. “This masterly handling was no fluke, he was doing it deliberately, his extra special senses and reflexes allowing him to go that much closer to the absolute limit than the average racing driver and way beyond the possibilities of normal mortals like you or me,” Jenkinson wrote.

Moss and Jenkinson completed the race in 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds at an average speed of just under 98 mph. Moss and the SLR were now soulmates. “But it was never easy to drive,” Moss told Nye. “You really had to apply yourself to the SLR, consciously adapt to its mass and its awkward gearbox.”

How did he concentrate for so long? “I think the easiest way, frankly, is to realize if you make a mistake you could die. And that gets your attention.” Pharmaceuticals (a common aid at the time) provided by Fangio probably helped too. Moss celebrated the victory, left Brescia just after midnight, and drove through the night to Munich for breakfast and then on to Stuttgart for lunch and to have new seats fitted to his Mercedes 220 road car. Job done, he continued to Cologne, arriving at 9:15 p.m. In his diary after the race, he noted, “Fangio’s pills are fantastic!”

Tommi Mäkinen & the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo

Mitsubishi’s rallying success largely rests on the shoulders of one driver.

by Michael Teo Van Runkle

One team and one driver dominated the World Rally Championship in the late Nineties. Behind the wheel of several iterations of the Ralliart Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Tommi Mäkinen racked up four drivers’ titles in a row. He took 22 of his 24 rally wins in a Mitsubishi, nearly two-thirds of the brand’s 34 overall WRC victories. His formidable pace cemented the Lancer Evo’s legendary status. Looking back on those years today, Mäkinen can pinpoint when it all started: driving tractors on his family farm as a kid in central Finland.

“We had all different—it sounds a bit stupid, but it’s true—agricultural equipment we operated in very difficult conditions,” he says. “You need to find the best way to go forward.” Nearby, the 1000 Lakes Rally (and local hero Timo Mäkinen, no relation) fostered a dream of one day competing at the heights of motorsport. “Growing up,” Mäkinen recalls, “to see those big heroes, it was always my dream to one day be there.”

Mitsubishi’s rallying history stretches further back, to factory efforts as early as 1967 before it officially joined the WRC for the inaugural season in ’73. But varying race cars based on the Colt, the Galant, the Lancer, and the Starion never truly battled for top positions.

In the Eighties, while the Japanese brand was still getting its footing in the WRC, Mäkinen began trying to break into rallying’s top tier. His first WRC win came on his home turf, in the ’94 running of the 1000 Lakes Rally in a Ford Escort RS Cosworth. The effort caught the eye of Mitsubishi’s team management, but things didn’t immediately go as planned once Mitsu­bishi offered Mäkinen a seat in the Lancer Evo.

“Driving at Sanremo with the Evolution II was quite a high-and-low event,” remembers engineer and eventual team manager Derek Dauncey. The first stage was Mäkinen’s quickest, and then the suspension broke. “He just ditch-dropped too much and ripped the actual wishbone right in half,” Dauncey says.

Fittingly, every generation of the Lancer Evolution evolved. Mäkinen went on to capture Mitsu­bishi’s first drivers’ championship in 1996 and took the next three from ’97 to ’99, contributing to the brand’s ’98 manufacturers’ title.

The Finnish driver’s pace, however, ran the cars and Ralliart’s small crew ragged. For the grueling ’96 Safari Rally in Kenya, the team realized the best chance for the Lancer to survive was to swap out the suspension at each service stop, where a pair of mechanics at each corner got the job done inside the 20-minute window.

Mäkinen also credits other teams and drivers with providing the pressure to justify driving flat out all the time: a stacked field that included teammate Richard Burns (who returned to Su­-baru in ’99), Carlos Sainz Sr. in Ford and Toyota machinery, and, of course, Colin McRae in the iconic blue Subaru Impreza and Ford Focus RS.

The Lancer Evolution was a carryover from earlier Group A regulations in the WRC. When Mitsu­bishi’s new World Rally Car finally arrived in late 2001, it proved uncompetitive. Mäkinen read the writing on the wall and moved to Prodrive’s 555 Subaru World Rally Team for ’02 and won on debut at Monaco. Achieving only middling results after that, he retired from driver duties at the end of the ’03 season. Mitsubishi’s WRC record nearly mirrored its most successful driver’s, with zero wins following Mäkinen’s departure. It left WRC after 2005.

Every car needs the right driver as much as every driver needs the right car. For Mitsubishi and Mäkinen, peaking at the right time ensured neither would ever be known quite as well without the other.

Dale Earnhardt & the No. 3 Goodwrench Chevy

The Winston Cup champion leaned into the antihero image with a black paint job.

by John Pearley Huffman

Dale Earnhardt Sr. was the 1979 Winston Cup rookie of the year in Rod Osterlund’s Chevys, wearing yellow and blue. He was Winston Cup champion in ’80 in those hues and kept them as Wrangler Jeans came aboard late that season. When Richard Childress hired Earnhardt to drive the No. 3 in ’81, the colors came with him. Wrangler went with Earnhardt as he moved to Bud Moore’s No. 15 Fords in ’82. When he moved back to Richard Childress Racing (RCR) for ’84, Wrangler was there.

Then the jeans market stalled. In 1986, Wrangler’s parent company, the North Carolina–­based Blue Bell, was sold to Pennsylvania’s VF Corporation (maker of Lee jeans) as its sponsorship of Earnhardt and RCR was ending. Wrangler lasted through ’87, but the new owners didn’t renew.

Earnhardt had a reputation for being “One Tough Customer,” as the Wrangler tagline went. Especially in ’87, his most dominant season. He initiated shoves, never feared contact, pushed always, and hardly ever apologized. That season is best remembered for the infamous “pass in the grass” at the Winston during a contentious battle for the lead with Bill Elliott. But Earnhardt didn’t single out anyone in particular; he elbowed and shoved anybody in his way. Even the TV commentators of the era celebrated Earnhardt’s frequent on-track contacts and iron will. And so, Earnhardt’s true character was fully expressed when his cars went black starting in ’88.

“Goodwrench was already on the car as an associate sponsor,” Childress recalls. “‘Why don’t we take the whole car?’ they told us. So, we went up there and made a deal.”

GM’s Service and Parts Operations supported two brands: Black and silver Mr. Goodwrench paint schemes for the NHRA Pro Stock Oldsmobile campaigned by Warren Johnson, the mid-engine Corvette GTPs running in IMSA, and Earnhardt’s own No. 8 Busch Grand National machines. And blue and white for ­ACDelco parts.

“I covered a car with blue duct tape on one side,” Childress says, “and the other side with black. I showed them how the blue would just blend into the track. I convinced them to go with the black car. I just didn’t like the blue and white.”

Earnhardt’s ’88 Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupe, black with only a hint of silver, was immediately embraced by fans. “Dale loved it,” Childress recalls, “even though he didn’t have much to do with it.” The combination of Earnhardt and black Chevrolets became indelible. Whether it was kismet or corporate dollars at work—or that black was the true shade of Earnhardt’s competitive soul—the two together became legend.

It was Earnhardt’s 1990 and ’91 championships in Chevy Luminas that cemented the iconography. He took the Cup again in ’93, and in ’94, he earned his seventh and final championship. He was the Intimidator, the Man in Black, and Ironhead. His black car starkly contrasted the DuPont “rainbow warrior” paint on the Hendrick Chevys of upstart Jeff Gordon.

Earnhardt remained a tough customer. He finished the 1997 Daytona 500 after rolling his Monte Carlo and then, finally, won that race in ’98. He punted Terry Labonte out of the way to win at Bristol in ’99. Typical.

He was the antihero. The driver fans either loved to hate or loved because everyone else hated him. And his popularity burst past motorsport and into popular culture at large.

Earnhardt’s fatal crash at Daytona in 2001 elevated his legend beyond mortal status. A full generation of NASCAR drivers has tried to adopt Earnhardt’s no-holds-barred style, but none have replicated it or come close to replicating his spirit or intimidating forcefulness. And it isn’t the same without that black No. 3 Chevy.