Briggs Swift Cunningham: America’s Sportsman
Taking “Sportsman” to a whole new level!
This story was originally published in the July 2024 issue of Vette Vues Magazine.
“By building and sailing his own ships, and building and racing his own cars, he epitomized the definition of the American Sportsman.” – Sam Posey
America has been a nation of sportsmen for over 150 years. We love sports and invented professional sports. In the beginning, sports was simply “playing games in a competitive way”. In the early days of baseball, football, basketball, and boxing, it was a big deal when a participant was paid for playing. Today compensation for professional sports players is at levels never dreamed of in the beginning of organized sports.
Men have been racing horses and boats for centuries and started racing cars not long after the second car was built. But unlike sports that only require a ball and some simple protective gear, horses, boats and cars can cost a lot of sweat, busted knuckles, and money. Racing cars attracted three kinds of guys; the garage mechanics, small local businessmen, and the rich playboy class. Briggs Swift Cunningham was at the extreme end of the rich playboy class.
Meet Briggs Cunningham’s Family
F
irst, let’s sketch out the family Briggs was born into. Briggs Swift Cunningham was born on January 19, 1907, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Briggs’ grandfather was in the Mississippi River riverboat shipping business and later went into the meat packing business with his son, Briggs Swift Cunningham, Sr. Briggs’ father as “Evans, Lippencott & Cunningham”. Briggs Swift Cunningham, Sr was a big businessman, having founded Citizens National Bank, was a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and a financier of Proctor and Gamble. William Cooper Proctor was Briggs Jr’s godfather.
Brigg’s father died in 1912 when Briggs Jr. was only five years old. His father’s estate was set up so that his heirs would not get full control of their inheritance until the age of forty. Regardless, they all lived very well in America’s pre-income tax days.
Young Briggs had an interesting favorite uncle, Dr. Ashton Heyl, a man who had served with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Uncle Ashton also liked fast cars, and owned a sleeper Dodge Touring car powered by a Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine! Briggs’ uncle would often do a little street racing with his nephew in the passenger seat. This was arguably Briggs’ first taste of speed and power.
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Briggs Swift Cunningham goes to Yale, Makes Connections, and Gets Married
Briggs was an excellent student, attending the Groton School and then Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Upon graduation, Briggs attended Yale University where he became friends with the son of Chrysler President K.T. Keller. Briggs lived in a world of connections. Years later when he was building his own race cars, his Yale friend connection helped Briggs get one of Chrysler’s new Fire Power Hemi engines. While attending Yale, he became an excellent golfer, and tennis player, and as part of Yale’s Olympic Bobsled Team, Briggs was the bobsled breakman. Being “in competition” was in Briggs’ DNA.
Briggs very much enjoyed his college days. But at the mature age of twenty-two, it was time to be a married man. Briggs’ bride was Lucie Bedford, the granddaughter of E.T. Bedford, one of the co-founders of Standard Oil. People in high society always marry within their social status. This was the world of Briggs Swift Cunningham, a world of connections that can open doors and opportunities.
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The new Mr. & Mrs. Cunningham enjoyed an extended honeymoon traveling around Europe. Here’s a great example of Briggs’ connections. While enjoying the European high sociery, three-time European Driver’s Championship (equal to today’s Formula 1) racer, Rudolph Caracciola personally delivered to Briggs a brand new Mercedes Benz SS. The exotic new car helped Briggs score a concours show car award.
Briggs’ first taste of sports car racing, but has to settle for yacht racing
While on his honeymoon, Briggs attended the 1930 Monaco Grand Prix race, his first major road racing event. Briggs was good friends with the Collier Brothers, Miles and Sam, and had fun with their European sports cars. Another contemporary of Briggs’ crowd was the Collier Brothers automotive illustrator friend and future chief Corvette designer, Bill Mitchell. The Cunningham’s honeymoon sounds exciting, glamorous, and a little exhausting. Upon arriving home, Briggs and Lucie settled down in Long Island Sound.
Briggs was drawn to anything competitive, not just cars, but boats, and not just pleasure craft boats, but custom-built racing yachts. Auto racing back then was more of a daredevil sport that as its popularity grew, drivers were being killed weekly. “Racing cars” was for hooligans! It is written that Briggs’ mother did not like auto racing and it was her wish that he didn’t indulge, until after her death. But, racing yachts was acceptable, so that’s what Briggs did until the outbreak of WW-II.
Briggs passion for competition on the water went back to when he was seventeen years old and joined the Pequot Yacht Club so that he could race Star Class sailboats. Years later he said that it was his wife, Lucie, that really taught him how to sail. Two of Briggs’ custom-built sailboats were named, “Lucie”. In the decade that Briggs competed on the water, he won six world titles in the six-meter yacht class. Even during his racing time in the 1950s, Briggs was part of a group of investors that commissioned a twelve-meter sloop, the “Columbia” to enter into the first post-war America’s Cup race in 1958. The original commissioned skipper was Cornelius “Corny” Shields. Unfortunately for Corny, he had to drop out due to heart trouble. Briggs took over as skipped and won the 1958 America’s Cup Race.
Briggs serves in Nation, with his own planes
Briggs Swift Cunningham wasn’t just a playboy rich guy, he was also a patriot. When WW-II broke out, Briggs tried to enlist in the Navy, but was rejected for two reasons: first, he had a preexisting health condition, and second, at the age of thirty-three, he was deemed too old! So, he did the next best thing; he joined the Civil Air Patrol, but not like any regular patriot. For patrolling the east coast looking for German submarines, Briggs bought his own planes; two of them, actually; a Fairchild and then a Sikorski S39B Amphibious Plane.
Briggs was there at the beginning of the birth of organized sports car racing
In 1933 Briggs’ friends, Miles and Sam Collier launched the Automobile Racing Club of America, the “ARCA”. Then in 1944, ARCA was renamed, the Sports Car Club of America, the “SCCA”. Briggs was on the starting line for the very first SCCA racing event. After years of racing his own sailboats and winning championships, Briggs was more than ready for road racing. His was one of the few racing teams that arrived at the track in a big transporter. Yes, it was big bucks, but he could have just lived off the interest of his inheritance. Instead, he bought and built world-class, exotic racing sailboats and race cars.
One of Briggs’ first purpose-built race cars was called the “Bu-Merc” and used a 1939 Buick Century chassis, powertrain, and running gear. For better weight distribution, the big straight-eight Buick engine was moved back in the chassis and the body was from a wrecked Mercedes-Benz SSK. Miles Collier drove the car at the 1940 Worlds Fair Grand Prix at the New York Fairgrounds. The car was a DNF due to an accident.
Then in 1948, Briggs raced the Bu-Merc at the first Watkins Glenn race in 1948, finishing 2nd place. The following year, thanks to his friend Charles Chayne, Buick Vice President of Engineering, Briggs got an advanced version of the Straight-Eight, raced the car at Watkins Glen, and finished in 3rd place. Briggs was one of the most successful drivers of his time. So much so, he was a member of the by-invitation-only, “Road Racing Drivers Club” that honored drivers, officials, and journalists.
All-Out Racing in the 1950s – the BS Cunningham Company cars
There are two parts to Briggs’ racing efforts from 1950 to 1966 when he last raced. One part was his company’s purpose-built production sports racing cars. The other part was cars that he bought, modified, and raced. Let’s look at the cars made by the “BS Cunningham Company”.
To get started, Briggs bought the Frick-Tappet Motors business on Long Island and moved its operation to Palm Beach, Florida. The “Cunningham C-1” was powered by GM’s hot new 331 OHV Cadillac V8. The classic small-block Chevy was a simplified version of the Cadillac engine. Only one “C-1” was built.
The “C-2R” was similar to the “C-1”, but used Chrysler’s Fire Power Hemi V8 engine. Briggs raced this car at Le Mans. The “C-3” was a road car. Briggs had to make twenty-five cars to pass homologation as a “production car”. One production count was twenty-five coupes and five convertibles. The “C-4R was designed by G. Briggs Weaver. Two roadsters and one coupe were built. The C-4RK Coupe debuted at Le Mans in 1952. The 1953 “C-5R” was powered by a Chrysler Fire Power Hemi engine and debuted at Le Mans. The French nicknamed the car, “Le Requin Souriant”, translated, “The Smiling Shark”. Then in 1955, Briggs replaced the Chrysler Hemi with a four-cylinder Meyer & Drake Offenhauser torque-monster. Briggs was a racer first and had no loyalty to any company. He just wanted a fast, dependable road race car.
Cars that Briggs bought to race – Cadillacs at Le Mans?
Arguably the two most outrageous cars Briggs raced were his 1950 Cadillacs. Both cars had Cadillac’s powerful new 331-CID OHV V-8 engine. The cars were based on the 1950 Series 61 because it was the lightest of all of Cadillac’s cars. Racing enhancements were limited to brake ducts and a few other minor details. The other Cadillac was called, “Le Monstre” by the French. The running gear was similar to the Series 61 car, but it had a small aluminum body over a tube frame body structure that was added to the Cadillac’s frame. Both cars finished with the Series 61 car coming in 10th overall and Le Monstre coming in 11th. Briggs was thinking way ahead of his time.
Briggs’ more conventional sports racing cars
In the 1950s Briggs owned the following sports race cars: an MG J2; an MG K3 Magnette; a supercharged MG TC; a Ferrari 166 Spider Corsa; a 1954 O.S.C.A. MT4 (won Sebring in 1953); a 1955 Jaguar D-Type (won Sebring); a 1954 Ferrari 375 MM with experimental water-cooled brakes (DNF Le Mans 1954); a 1955 Maserati 300S (raced at Sebring); and a 1958 Lister-Costin (won SCCA C-Modified Championship; (same class as Bill Mitchell’s Stingray in 1961).
In the 1960s, Briggs raced the following cars: three 1960 Fuel Injected Corvettes (Class win at 1960 Le Mans); a 1960 Maserati Tipo 60 Birdcage (raced at 1961 Le Mans, 3rd class, 8th overall); two Stanguellini Formula Junior cars; one 750cc front-engine and one 1100cc rear-engine; a 1961 Cooper T53 (raced in U.S. Grand Prix and crashed, Roger Penske bought the chassis to build his Zerex Special, that later became Bruce McLaren’s first team car); a Fiat-Abarth 1000 Bialbero Coupe (Bruce McLaren won the 1961 3 Hours of Sebring 1-Liter Grand Touring Class); two 1962 Maserati Tipo 151 Coupes (raced at Le Mans); a 1962 Jaguar E-Type (also raced at Le Mans in 1962); a 1963 Jaguar E-Type Lightweight (raced at Le Mans to 9th overall in 1963); a 1964 Porsche 904 (co-owned and co-driven with Lake Underwood, won class at 1964, and a 1965 Porsche 904 2-Liter (class win and 9th overall).
Briggs Swift Cunningham – Racer First
We are talking about Briggs Swift Cunningham because of his 1960 Le Mans assault with Fuelie Corvettes that brought home Corvette’s first Class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Briggs was not a “Corvette guy”, he would race whatever kind of car he thought gave him an edge. Duntov knew everyone in the racing world and was happy to make sure Briggs got the best he could get from Chevrolet. And it worked! Briggs scored another Le Mans Class win, Duntov was thrilled but disappointed that he couldn’t drive,(he was too valuable to Chevrolet), and Corvette fans were thrilled.
What’s curious is that Briggs never again fielded a Corvette. Grady Davis used the same basic Duntov “Racer Kit” bundle of “Off Road” options to win the 1962 A/Production Championship! Davis stuck with Corvette to take advantage of the new 1963 Sting Ray with the Z06 “Racer Kit” package of options. Davis’ Gulf One Corvette was the most successful of the “Duntov assigned” Z06-equipped 1963 Corvettes.
Next month we will take a look at Briggs Swift Cunningham’s three 1960 Le Mans Corvettes that brought home Corvette’s first Le Mans Class win. Plus, the amazing story of what happened to the Cunningham Corvettes after Le Mans, and where they are today. – Scott
