The 10 Best Race Cars in American History

America's motorsports history is as rich and diversified as any, and filled with world-class innovation. With international motorsports getting underway in earnest across the globe this weekend, we took a look back at the best race cars in the history of our country. We limited the list to ten, and there are some truly iconic classics that didn't make the cut, like the Parnelli Jones Boss Mustang. Sound off in the comments below and tell us what you think we should've included.

10.Cunningham C4-R
Briggs Cunningham built the C4-R for one purpose: to win the Legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans outright. The best the C4-R managed was third overall, but that doesn’t diminish its contribution. It was the first American car to race internationally using America’s racing colors with full-length stripes. If it looks familiar, Shelby inverted it for the Cobra.

9.L88 Corvette
The L88 Corvette was a legend. It was originally built as a street legal race car that GM sort of buried in the options list. It bore the Stars and Stripes to rep the U.S. at Le Mans. It nearly won the Tour de France (not the bike race), and was so fast and so tough that one chassis competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans six consecutive times — a record that still stands to this day.

8.Hudson Hornet
In the earliest days of NASCAR, guys used to race around in cars that were actually stock, hence the term stock car racing. The Hudson Hornet was so utterly dominant that if you wanted to win, you really only had one choice. That it was forever immortalized by Paul Newman in Cars simply adds to the legend.

7.Eagle Mk I
Dan Gurney’s All American Racers built this car, and he won the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix at the legendary Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Only three drivers in Formula 1’s long history have ever won in a car they actually built, and to date, only one American-built car has ever won a race in Formula 1. It’s also one of the most gorgeous cars of the most gorgeous era of grand prix racing, which helps.

6.Howmet TX
Cars powered by jet engines were more than a novelty in the 1960s; they were a burgeoning area of research. Whereas STP nearly won the Indy 500 with a turbine-powered car, the Howmet TX — Turbine Experimental — was the first to ever win races. It even set a host of land speed records for acceleration. If that’s not enough, put your headphones in, turn up the volume, watch this video, and say it’s not the creepiest/most awesome sounding race car you’ve ever heard.

*Note: Richard Crawford has a ton of really amazing pics. You should check out his work, here.

5.Offenhauser Engines
The Offy (as it was commonly known) would be much, much higher on this list if it were a whole car. As is, it’s just an engine, though one so utterly dominant for such a long period of time that no list of American racing legends would be complete without it. Specially constructed to be supremely reliable but also pretty damn powerful, it was so dominant that literally every single podium position at the Indy 500 was powered by an Offenhauser for the duration of the 1950s. It was competitive in motorsports from the Great Depression to the Oil Crisis.

4.Chaparral 2J
Chaparral was a small outfit based out of Texas known for inventive aerodynamic solutions. You may have heard of something called a wing. The 2J was the infamous “sucker car" and it utilized a snowmobile engine to drive a fan, creating a vacuum underneath the car and literally sucking it to the ground. It revolutionized the way people think about a car’s relationship with the air beneath it. Every time you see a diffuser or a side skirt on a car, it owes its lineage to this car.

3.Corvette C5-R
It won… well, basically everything in its class and more. It won Sebring, it won Le Mans by 34 laps over its nearest competitor, it even beat the prototype classes and won the 24 Hours of Daytona outright. More importantly, the C5-R marked a return to top-tier international racing for GM, and for America as a whole.

2.Ford GT40 Mk IV
Many still consider the GT40 Mk I to be the most beautiful race car of all time, but a good chunk of it was British. The Mk IV, however, was an American chassis with an American engine and American drivers, and it kicked butt all over Europe, defeating the rest of the best carmakers in the world in their own backyard. We haven’t done it since with such a thoroughly American package, and until we do, the GT40 Mk IV’s place remains secure.

1b.Shelby FIA Cobra
The original Cobra was an amazing car in its own right, and on shorter tracks, it was nearly unbeatable, but it had a fatal flaw when it came to international competition. Its top speed was so limited aerodynamically that it simply couldn’t keep up with slicker European cars on the longer tracks of Europe.

1a.Shelby Daytona Coupe
To rectify the Cobra's aerodynamics issue, Carroll Shelby got together with his team, who applied some WWII-era aero research and boom: the Cobra-based Shelby Daytona won at Sebring, Daytona, Le Mans, and all over Europe. Shelby became the first American manufacturer to win the FIA World Sportscar Championship by alternating between the Cobra and Daytona. The couple dozen speed records that the Daytona set at Bonneville were pretty much just for the hell of it.


Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He undergoes track withdrawal symptoms on a regular basis. Follow the race tracks of his mind on Twitter.