Bob Bondurant, legendary racer and instructor, dies at 88

The reason the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving did so well for so long was that its championship-winning namesake was so good at showing students the techniques of winning driving. Since it was founded in February of 1968, the school says it has helped more than 500,000 students from around the world. They might all wish to tip their hats to the founder, Robert Lewis Bondurant, who died Nov. 12 in Paradise Valley, Ariz., at the age of 88.

Not long after he was born in Illinois in 1933, his parents moved to Westlake Village, Calif. He received his first taste of racing when he was 8 years old when his father took him to midget races. By the time Bondurant was 14 he had his first motorcycle and by 16 he was flat-tracking Indian and Harley-Davidson bikes.

His competition career on four wheels began at 23 years old in 1956 behind the wheel of a Morgan Plus 4. He would eventually enter fields racing against other SoCal pilots like Carroll Shelby, Dan Gurney, and Richie Ginther, but after three years of winning in Corvettes, he switched to racing for Shelby and driving the Cobra. As part of the migration of U.S. drivers to Europe in the mid-1960s, he claimed a class victory at Le Mans in 1964 driving Cobra Daytona Coupe with co-driver Dan Gurney, and in 1965, was part of the driving team that put the FIA International Manufacturer's Championship trophy in Ford's display case.