Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 1014 | Page 16

The Lotus 19 took him to Watkins Glen
for the 1961 United States Grand Prix. It was
his first and only exposure to F1 racing, and if
he didn’t set the world on fire, he didn’t embarrass himself either. After qualifying last on the
grid, he worked his way up to 11th before a
magneto drive failed. In 1963 he took the Lotus 18 to a USAC race at Trenton, where he put
it on the pole, much to the consternation of the
roadster drivers present. In the race he was battling for the lead with A.J. Foyt when the fragile
Lotus gearbox let him down.
Ruby’s performances in the Maseratis
brought him to the attention of yet another
Texan, Carroll Shelby, who was gathering a
driving team for the Ford GT effort. He needed a teammate for the brilliant but prickly Ken
Miles. Team members called them “the odd

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couple,” as Ruby was a laid-back and affable as
Miles was intense and sarcastic. Much to everyone’s surprise, the two of them hit it off both
on the track and off, becoming close friends as
well as a formidable driving team. “We liked
the car set up the same way,” says Ruby, “The
only thing I told him was, if it starts raining,
get your helmet! I didn’t like rain, and he could
run faster than anyone in the rain.” The payoff
came in 1965, when they captured the Daytona
2000km race in a Ford GT-40.
The next season they were back in the new
427-powered Mk.II, and Miles and Ruby again
conquered Daytona (now a 24-hour race) then
squeaked into a win at Sebring in the one-off
Ford GT-40 X-1 roadster. The death of Miles
in a testing accident was a blow to Ruby, who
still speaks in reverential terms of his former codriver. In 1967 Ruby paired with Foyt to take
second at Sebring, but at Daytona the Mk.II he

shared with Dennis Hulme fell victim to gearbox woes.
At Le Mans he and Hulme were in
a new Mk.IV, but an accident put them out.
Ruby was not sorry to have it over. “Of all the
tracks I have run on, Le Mans was my least
favorite. You’re going down that long straight,
we were hitting 220 mph, and you run into a
fog bank and you can’t see a damn thing. And
about half the field is little cars that won’t go
100 mph and you’re afraid you’re going to hit
one of them in the fog, but if you lift someone
is going to get you in the rear.”
Although Ruby was spending most of
his time on his Champ Car program, in 1968
he drove a Mercury Cougar to victory in the
Paul Revere 250, a USAC road racing event at
Daytona. At Sebring that year he was teamed
with Al Unser in Smokey Yunicks’ “Camaro.”
This silhouette racer had been declared vehicle