Team Penske owner Roger Penske is NASCAR’s richest owner today. According to Forbes, his net worth is a staggering 3.8 billion USD. The 86-year-old Hall of Famer is perhaps one of the most successful automobile collectors and businessmen in motorsports. But did you know that the NASCAR veteran was once a mere car washer?
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In an episode of Cars and Culture with Jason Stein, the billionaire team owner took a trip down memory lane and recalled the days when he was fresh out of high school, working at a Jaguar showroom in Cleveland. He said, “I would wash the cars. I’d clean them, put the license plates on but what I got to do was drive them around the block.”
For a 15-year-old Penske, driving soon-to-be-delivered, brand-new Jaguars for free was indeed a thrilling experience. And the best part was that he could do that every day. “I was kind of an all-round guy and the store was very close to my house. I could walk there from where I lived and that was my taste of automobiles.” He concluded by mentioning that even before his gig at Jaguar, he used to work at a gas station. He was just 13 back then.
Roger Penske’s experience with cars is unparalleled
Penske’s early days were spent buying, racing, and selling off cars. For a decade, he bought 32 cars including age-old beasts like MG TD, MG TC, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Corvette, Porsche, Jaguar Cooper, Maserati, and the Zerex Special, raced them, and sold them for a profit. Penske became so obsessed with racing that he sold off his newly purchased RS Porsche only a year after buying it because he came to know that it was outdated.
In 1960, Penske emerged victorious in the F Modified and not long after that, he bought a Cooper and a Maserati. He managed to land a deal with Zerex as a sponsor and won three consecutive nationals, with the first one coming at Vineland in a Maserati Telar Special. He also recorded a never-seen-before speed when he won a race at Road America. But he wasn’t racing professionally even then.
Fast forward to 1962, Penske forged a custom-built Cooper-Climax with an aluminum body and drove Monaco with that car. Just the following year, he won a lump sum amount of more than $20,000 and with that, became a D Modified champion. However, 1964 was arguably Penske’s best year as a driver.
He won the Nassau Tourist Trophy holding off legendary drivers like Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, and A. J. Foyt. He also beat Foyt in the Governor’s Trophy Race. But by then, he was getting slowly involved in the business side of racing. And with that, just when everyone thought Penske would shine as a driver, his racing career ended at the young age of 28.
