Cameron Argetsinger, 87, Road Racing Pioneer, Dies

[DaveITB1]

For those that missed it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/sp...ns+Glen&st=nyt

Cameron Argetsinger, whose love of speed cultivated on country roads led him to help revive road racing in postwar America and establish Watkins Glen, N.Y., as a stop on the Formula One circuit, died last Tuesday at his home in Burdett, N.Y. He was 87.
Skip to next paragraph Adrian Ketchum
Cameron Argetsinger brought Grand Prix racing to New York.



The cause was complications of a stroke, his daughter, Louise Kanaly, said.
For two decades, the world’s best drivers and fastest, most maneuverable cars — those that meet the strict set of engineering requirements that define Formula One — descended on a village on the southern tip of Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes. Watkins Glen offered the sport’s richest purse, blazing autumnal foliage and a legendary starter in a lavender suit with a big cigar who jumped in the air to wave flags to start and end the race.


The village, with a population of less than 3,000, three times beat out Monte Carlo and other glamorous Formula One stops to be named the best-organized Grand Prix event of the season. Sports Illustrated described the charm of the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen as “courage and cornpone, sophistication with straw in its teeth.”


Site selection owed something to Mr. Argetsinger’s family’s periodic residence since the early 19th century and something to his love of the twisting, undulating lanes winding among the scenic lakes. His father taught him to drive at 12 on these rural byways, and he later relished driving as fast as minimum safety, liberally defined, permitted.
As a World War II veteran and college student, he dreamed of resuscitating the sport of racing sports cars on real roads, called road racing, which had lapsed before the war. Part of his motivation came from his excitement in reading about the Vanderbilt Cup races on Long Island in the early years of the 20th century and briefly in the 1930s, he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1998.


But that was just part of the story.
“It’s been said, and it’s not entirely wrong, that I did it because I had an MG-TC and didn’t have a place to race it,” he told The Times. That first race in Watkins Glen in 1948, which involved 23 cars, followed a route that Mr. Argetsinger laboriously concocted on his living room floor during the winter holidays of 1947, according to Philippe Defechereux in “Watkins Glen 1948-1952” (1998). Mr. Argetsinger lined up magazines to represent roads.


Cameron Reynolds Argetsinger was born March 1, 1921, in Youngstown, Ohio. His father, J. C., was a steel-company executive who collected classic Packards.
“He always had fast cars and he liked to drive them fast,” Cameron said. “I inherited it, I guess.”


By the time Mr. Argetsinger was 20, he was part-owner of a Packard dealership in Warren, Ohio, Brad Herzog wrote in the Cornell Alumni Magazine in 1998. He served in the Army in World War II. After his discharge, he bought the MG-TC, which had 19-inch wheels, leather upholstery, an elaborate instrument panel and four forward speeds. In 1947, he joined the Sports Car Club of America, for which ownership of a sports car was required.


He entered Youngstown University, from which he graduated in 1951, and thought more and more about the racing potential of Watkins Glen on visits to the family’s nearby cottage. After he developed a route, he beguiled the local Chamber of Commerce with his vision of gallant goggle-wearing drivers with scarves snapping in the breeze.
Next, he had to win approval from nine government agencies, as well as the New York Central Railroad, whose tracks the route crossed. The day of the race, Oct. 2, 1948, became known as the Day the Trains Stopped. Mr. Argetsinger finished ninth.
“The country roads of upstate New York he called home had become the streets of Le Mans, a biscuit reincarnated as a brioche,” Mr. Herzog wrote.


By 1950, the event was drawing 100,000 spectators; in 1956, a permanent course was built. In 1958, the not-for-profit Grand Prix Corporation, which Mr. Argetsinger helped establish, was attracting international drivers for Formula Libre races, which allow a wide variety of cars. In 1961, the town’s bold bid for a Formula One race was accepted.
Mr. Argetsinger, who graduated from Cornell Law School in 1954, had various top executive positions in the corporation running the event until 1969. Then his attempt to buy it was rebuffed, and he resigned.


He worked in various industry positions, including executive director of the Sports Car Club of America. He also practiced law, and with his wife he started a research library dedicated to motor sports in Watkins Glen.


Mr. Argetsinger is survived by his wife, the former Jean Souse; his sons J. C., of Montour Falls, N.Y.; Michael, of Chicago; Peter, of Sebring, Fla.; Robert, of Sunset Beach, Calif.; Sam, of Burdett, N.Y.; and Philip, of Phoenix; his daughters Louise Kanaly, of Rochester; Marya Smith, of Elizabeth, Ill.; and Margretta Argetsinger, an actress known as Getchie, of Manhattan; 15 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.


In 1974, as the head of the sports car association, Mr. Argetsinger tried for an even greater triumph than he had achieved in Watkins Glen: he proposed a Grand Prix race in Central Park, promising it would be bigger than Indianapolis.

[Robert Zecca]

I would like to express my condolences to the Argetsinger family. I never met Cameron but I am sure he was a great man and inspiration amongst the auto racing community. I have known his son Peter for years and again I would just like to tell Peter and the Argetsinger family that I am very sorry for your loss.

Sincerely,
Bob Zecca