Behind-the-Scenes Hero: Race-Car Fabricator Phil Remington [1921

If Car and Driver‘s plan to have Dan Gurney elected president had worked out, no doubt Phil Remington would have worked in the White House, quietly crafting something. He would have been in the background, not making a fuss, but his effect on the administration would have been unparalleled.

As it was, “Rem,” who passed away last week at the age of 92, left a legacy shaped in metal that likely will never be duplicated. In part that’s because, even a year ago, Remington was still going to work each week at Dan Gurney’s All American Racers in Santa Ana, California. Only a fall early last summer kept him from the shop, at which point Gurney put him on the payroll as a consultant. But surpassing the length of Remington’s service at AAR is the breadth of his work.

It started on the dry lakes of Rem’s native Southern California with hot rods. Later came work with Lance Reventlow and the landmark Scarab sports and Formula 1 cars. Carroll Shelby was next, Remington a crucial part of both the Cobra and GT40 programs. When that ended, Gurney, who had seen the man’s abilities firsthand, hired him to work on the AAR Eagles and Remington stayed on—for 45 seasons. In race-car years, that meant he was involved in everything from Indy-winning Eagles to the radical DeltaWing, which was fabricated in AAR’s shops.

To get perspective on Remington’s genius from those in his craft, we checked in with Phil Reilly, cornerstone of one of the most-respected vintage-race-car restoration shops in the country, Phil Reilly & Company. Reilly explained that Remington was “the world’s best racing fabricator. There was nobody [else] who could identify and solve a problem, make what you needed to fix it, and do to all by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. He was so fast he was amazing. The Shelby story would have been vastly different if Phil wasn’t there.”