DAN GURNEY

Dan Gurney—champion racecar driver, vehicle engineer, motorcyclist, and racing-car builder—died this year at age 86. He came to greatness at a time when American industry, innovation, and power were peaking. His father, retiring from New York City’s Metropolitan Opera in 1947, moved the family to Southern California. The gigantic U.S. aircraft industry—much of it located in that state—had just produced 302,000 military aircraft and 810,000 aircraft engines for World War II, and the plants, tooling, and people who accomplished that miracle remained active. Surplus outlets were bursting with rolling bearings, hydraulics, electronics, and more. A brand-new twin-engine P-38 fighter with full gas tanks was $1,200. Men got rich recovering the platinum electrodes from hundreds of thousands of surplus aircraft spark plugs. Technology in 1947 was almost free. Want trick aluminum or steel alloys? It was everywhere.

Americans had acquired a