When You're born Into Money... [PIC]

You can be all you want to be. Briggs Cunningham (1907-2003) was one of those lucky guys. Bequeathed wealth in railroads, utilities and real estate, he only added to his wealth by investing in up and coming Proctor & Gamble. It also didn't him when in 1929, he married the granddaughter of the cofounder and director of Standard Oil. always the sportsman. While honeymooning in Europe, he won a concours event in a Mercedes SS that was delivered to him personally by Rudolf Caracciola. He also attended the 1930 Monaco Grand Prix while he was there. In WWll, he was declared 4F so he joined the Civil Air Patrol flying submarine patrols in a Fairchild and a Sikorski flying boat, both paid for by himself.  Sailing was another passion. At 17 he joined a yacht club, and later as he progresses to larger racing yachts, both buying and building, he confessed that it was his wide that taught him winning ways. His high point was winning the 1958 America's Cup in his yacht, the Columbia.

As to his automotive passion, he began racing international in 1930. He and his college friends established the Automobile Racing Club of America which later morphed into the SCCA in 1944. In 1951, he raced a very rare (1 of 1?) Aston Martin DB2 Vantage at the first ever race at the Sebring Airport race track and finished the 6 hour race third in class. He had always been modifying various cars for the track, but now he went all out with the eponymous Cunningham which was to be both a street and race car. For homologation, he built 25 cars with 20 coupes and 5 of the C-2 cabriolet. The were powered by Chrysler's 331 OHV "FirePower" V8 that could be race tuned to over 235 HP giving the light weight car 0-60 in 6.9 sec and a top speed of up to 250 mph. Crazy performance for that era. He stopped building in 1955 when the special deal the IRS gave to low volume car builders expired. He continued international racing until 1963 when he dissolved his Le Mans team. 1966 was the last year of racing when he drove a Porsche 904 at Sebring.

These Cunninghams were bodied by the Italian coachbuilder Vignale.