Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 1214 | Page 12

Top: In 1963, Penske entered the world of NASCAR
racing and took the checkered flag at the Riverside 250.
Right: Penske racing at the 1962 Grand Prix in Puerto Rico.

His first professional experience with cars came during his senior year of high
school in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
“I had been in a motorcycle accident the previous year and couldn’t play football, so I went to work for the local Jaguar dealer washing cars,” he says.
He started his first independent auto-related business in the late 1950s while
studying business administration at Lehigh University.
“I had a garage off campus in which I would buy cars, fix them up, and sell
them,” he recalls. “By then, the car business was in my blood.”
A year before earning his degree, having already cultivated a taste for speed,
Penske launched his racing career in 1958 at the age of twenty-one in SCCA (Sports
Car Club of America) modified events. He took home his first winner’s trophy the
following year at the SCCA Regional in Lime Rock, Connecticut, driving an FModified Porsche RS.

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Upon graduating from college, Penske sold aluminum
for Alcoa while honing his racing skills. In 1961, he won the
SCCA national title and was named SCCA Driver of the Year
by Sports Illustrated; the following year he was awarded Driver
of the Year honors by the New York Times.
Penske went on to win the USAC road racing championship, and finished first in the Riverside, Monterey and Puerto
Rico Grand Prix events aboard the famed Zerex Special, a Formula One car that had been modified as a two-seat racer. In
1963, he moved over to the NASCAR circuit and took the
checkered flag at both the Riverside 250 and Yankee 300.
After a highly successful but relatively short seven-year
career as a professional driver, Penske shocked the motorsports