Tuesday, May 02, 2023

Jim Wangers has passed away, he did more than most with the car manufacturing companies and in drag racing than most car guys will recall - and worked with some incredibly iconic people, including Hefner, Hurst, DeLorean, and JFK Jr




https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=wangers  if you didn't see these posts the 1st time around, his helping JFK Jr, helping AMC with the Hornet, helping Pontiac with the GTO, helped Hurst get the Pontiac contract in 1961, helped Needham get the Trans Ams for Smokey and the Bandit, and he won the 1960 Top Stock Eliminator at the nationals in 1960. That's some serious drag racing historic winning title, and I don't think anyone ever gave him his due respect for that.

He worked with Hefner at Esquire, I shit you not, before Heff went independent with Playboy, and Jim even owned a Chevy dealership in Milwaukee.

Since I've written several articles that cover all this before, if you want to read them, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=wangers  I won't re-write them here.  

Hard to believe, that someone as accomplished and well liked as Jim doesn't have a Wikipedia page. 

James Wangersheim was born on June 26, 1926, growing up on Chicago's north-side, and as a child, he clipped car ads out of magazines, and decorated his bedroom with these automotive images of mechanized motivation. 

Following graduation with the class of '42 from High School, a year of study at the University of Illinois was completed before Uncle Sam called him to duty, he went into the Navy.

From 1944 through 1946, Jim's wartime service in the Navy found him aboard the U.S.S. Bunker Hill as a Radioman 3rd Class. Shipboard, he wrote to all the carmakers for his own copies of their latest sales brochures. The highly decorated ship and crew found themselves knocked out of the war by Japanese kamikaze attacks while supporting the invasion of Okinawa in April of 1945

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