American road racing star Jim Jeffords has passed away at the age of 87. Jeffords was a Wisconsinite who started racing at the age of 27, driving his own Jaguars. In 1956 he heard that Chevrolet was organizing a Corvette racing team, and contacted GM’s Ed Cole to see if he might be able to be part of it. Although he was initially rejected, an impressive performance at Lime Rock, where he ran away from the Corvettes with his Jag until it failed late in the race, meant that by Sebring the following Spring he was a member of the Corvette team.
For 1958 he was retained by Chicago’s Stephani brothers to lead their Nickey Chevrolet team racing Harley Earl’s 1956 SR-2 Corvette. Ronnie Kaplan was hired as crew chief for the effort, and with the car named the Purple People Eater after a popular song of the day, Jeffords won consecutive SCCA B Production National Championships in 1958 and ’59. In the midst of those successes, he also won a pair of Tourist Trophy races during Speed Week in Nassau, the first American driver ever to do so in an American car.
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