Peter Bryant, designer of several of the most radical race cars to take the track, died on Tuesday. Bryant was the designer of both the first and second Autocoast TI-22 Can-Am cars. After leaving that for Shadow, Bryant did a bunch to make the "tiny tire" Shadow competitive, and designed several of their later Can-Am cars. A great, maverick designer.
Autoweek obit
Mac Miller and I just had dinner with Peter on March 7th in California. Once he got started we were treated to a nearly 3 hour story session where the topics ran the gamut of nearly every type of auto racing (and some incredibly interesting personality stories as well) of the last 50 years. He was a great designer and a very interesting guy. Two weeks ago he sent me one of his books and wrote a note about how much he enjoyed our meeting. This guy was a real racer who worked his way up through the racing ranks to actually build his own Can-Am car back when they were the most powerful and spectacular cars around. Peter will be greatly missed by anyone who ever came into contact with him. He just had that kind of winning personality.
I last spoke with Peter at the Monterey Historics last August. He wrote a nice message in my copy of his book which I will treasure forever along with that last conversation. I really regret not going the Riverside film festival now more then ever as I would have seen him there.
Old racers never die. They just go faster.
"The IRL's future should be good, but it can't be the grass-roots series Tony George envisioned. That was a wet dream." - Bobby Unser
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