A man and his cars

 Comes now the word that Parnelli Jones has died, and here's where I lose an old debate with my best friend. I knew it had to happen sooner or later.

See, my best friend and I have known one another since we were in what was then called nursery school, and for almost as long we've had this running quasi-debate about motorsports. I say race drivers are athletes; my friend says they're not. And the reason he says they're not is because most of racing is about the cars.

I no longer have a rebuttal, now that Parnelli is gone. Because for me, it was about the cars with him.

Initially it was about one of those gorgeous Offenhauser front-engine roadsters, which Parnelli flogged around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day in May of 1962 at an iconic speed. He ran four laps at a 150.370, officially becoming the first man in history to crack the 150-mph mark in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500.

He didn't win the race that year, but the next year, when he again won the pole, he held off Jimmy Clark to become a 500 winner. By that time, the gorgeous old Offy was iconic itself; built by A.J. Watson and owned by J.C. Agajanian, it bore Agajanian's signature number -- 98 -- and a nickname: Calhoun.

Calhoun was my first race car crush. Part of it was because Parnelli drove the wheels off it; part of it was because it was just so damn beautiful. All those old roadsters are -- even if,  I've been told, they were not exactly a comfortable ride.

Fast forward four years.

It's 1967 now, and Parnelli is driving for Andy Granatelli. His ride is no longer No. 98; now it's No. 40. And it's like no ride Indy has seen before or since.

That's because No. 40 was powered by a Pratt and Whitney turbine engine, and if it wasn't the first turbine-powered car to show up at Indy, it was the first that was actually competitive. Squattier than your average Indy car, it had four-wheel drive, so all the tires were the same size. And just to make it stand out even more, Granatelli had it painted Day-Glo orange, so when it whooshed around the track on gray days it glowed like a Monument Valley sunset.

And when I say "whooshed," I mean "whooshed." Didn't blare, didn't scream, but just cruised quietly around, leaving a sort of ruffling sound in its wake.

And I fell irredeemably in love with Indy because of it.

I was 12 years old in '67, see, and the first time I went to the Speedway was on the second weekend of qualifying that year. Parnelli had already put the Whooshmobile on the outside of Row 2 on Pole Day, running in race trim. But that afternoon he rolled out No. 40 for a brief shakedown cruise, and I was hooked.

I immediately decided it was the coolest car ever, and Parnelli the coolest driver ever, and IMS the coolest place ever. Nothing that's happened since -- including 40 years covering the 500 as a sportswriter -- has changed my mind.

So, yeah, Parnelli is responsible for all that. Peripherally, at least.

He didn't win the 500 in the Whooshmobile, of course. After dominating the race, a six-dollar bearing failed in No. 40 with three laps to run, and Parnelli was done. A.J. Foyt inherited the lead and the win in a standard internal combustion engine.

That made every other driver happy but Parnelli, because the combusties hated the turbine. Taking the hint, in due course USAC legislated it into oblivion.

Dumbest move any motorsports body ever made.

Of course, you can still see both Calhoun and No. 40 today, if you make a pilgrimage to the Speedway Museum. And every so often I do when my eyes get hungry and I need to let them feast on something exquisite.

As for Parnelli, he only raced in seven 500s and only won the one before retiring to become a successful team owner. But he led 492 laps in those seven starts, which I believe works out to an average of 70.2 laps per. That's putting your mark on a thing.

He also saved Foyt's life once when Foyt got upside-down in a stock car in Riverside, Calif. But that's another story for another day.

Today, it's all about another member of American racing's greatest generation going to his reward. 

And those cars, of course. Always the cars.