“I love cars. I used to take them apart at home. Most kids were doing something else on Saturdays, I had the engines apart in the wash tub,” is how Roger Penske summarised his youth growing up in Ohio in the Forties. His father, Julius Penske, was the vice-president of a prosperous business making metal warehousing. When Roger was 14, his father took him to see the 1951 Indianapolis 500, which set the stage for his interest in racing. When he was 16, he started buying and fixing up used cars: “This probably led to my interest in the retail business,” he said, years later. “I’d buy these cars on some of the lots on Euclid Avenue downtown, plus, I was working in the body shop at the Oldsmobile dealership in Shaker Heights.”
In 1961, he rebuilt a wrecked Cooper sports car and he won his class, D Modified, in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America). He stuffed a Buick 215cu in V8 engine into it and did so well that he was selected Sports Illustrated Magazine’s Sports Car Driver of the Year. In 1962 came more wins; in fact, he set a record for
