Repeat After Me: Andy Granatelli!
Go on, Say it. Andy Granatelli. I can’t hear you. ANDY GRANATELLI! It’s fun to say Andy Granatelli. I have never figured out exactly who Andy Granatelli was, or is, but I still walk around yelling ANDY GRANATELLI every chance I get.
I was alive in 1967. Of course I was a still a bit of a noseminer, and I didn’t know what a turban engine was. It sounded cool, though. I was disappointed to see the driver wearing a regular old helmet instead of a turban. There was no truth in advertising, even back then. And no one seemed to be drinking STP. If the stuff was so great, why was everyone drinking Pepsi? I loved that the pit crew were wearing STP pajamas. I watched the Indianapolis 500 in my pajamas, too, while I colored, mostly outside the lines.
ANDY GRANATELLI! Go on, yell it to the rooftops. And don’t get me started on MARIO ANDRETTI!
3 thoughts on “Repeat After Me: Andy Granatelli!”
Effectively banning the turbine engine and banning four wheel drive turned me off Indy racing to this day. They let Andy race his Novi cars as long as he wasn’t winning.
Hi Fred- Thanks for reading and commenting. We always try to joke around here on the BSBFB, but it’s telling that all these years later I remember that car and Andy Granatelli. It was a truly innovative design, and the powers that be hated it.
Andy Granatelli was the inventor of STP Oil Treatment, an engine oil thickening substance that worked great for old or blowout engines. The FTC almost bankrupted STP in the early ’70s, because all it did was thicken engine oil (that’s all it claimed to do). Granatelli spent gigantic sums on trying to design a turbine-only engine (not an internal combustion engine), but the technology was not there. He was a real colorful character.