Dan Gurney was the rare figure who could out-think engineers on a drawing board one day and out-drive world champions the next. From the backyard hot-rod culture of post-war California to the champagne-soaked podiums of Spa and Le Mans, he rewrote what an American racer-inventor could be-quietly riveting a strip of scrap aluminum to a rear wing and watching the aerospace world take notes.

Told in a single, fact-rich narrative voice, this book follows Gurney through four decades of boundary-shifting firsts: the only Grand Prix victory for Porsche, the birth of the Eagle marque, the founding of All American Racers, the creation of the Gurney flap, and the safety reforms that still save lives. Equal parts biography, engineering detective story, and motorsport chronicle, Dan Gurney: The American Original reveals how modest curiosity, collaborative rigor, and moral conviction can echo far beyond any chequered flag.