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PATRONS | Fall 2015 25 A s far back as he can remember, Rufus Parnell Jones has always felt the need for speed. "You know how when you pull up to a stop sign, you have the instinct to be first? I just took that to another level," he says. His first taste came in the mid-1940s as a youth in Torrance. At age 11, he started his first job breaking quarter horses. Torrance was still part of the Wild West, consisting of miles of prairie, farmland and dairies. He saved enough money to buy his own horse and began riding in amateur races in Carson. By 13, he had grown too tall to be a jockey, so he traded his horse in for a hotrod. "I had a track roadster 23 T-Bucket with a (Ford) Model A engine and no fenders on it. I was always getting caught speeding down the hill on PCH," he says. "All of the cops in Torrance and Redondo knew me. We would take off across the flower fields to get away." At 17, under the name Parnelli Jones, he entered his first professional race—a jalopy race at Carrell Speedway in Gardena. Childhood friend Billy Calder had given him the nickname "Parnelli," hoping the Jones family would not discover their son was racing cars as a minor. From there he quickly developed his skills, racing in many different classes in the 1950s. "I was at an age where I could have easily turned in the wrong direction," he says. "A lot of my friends went to jail. Racing helped keep me out of trouble." Jones' first major championship was the Midwest Region Sprint Car Title in 1960. During that race, promoter J.C. Agajanian spotted his talent and became his sponsor. He made his debut at Indianapolis in 1961. In his first Indy 500 race, he led early and ran among the leaders until being hit with engine problems and a flying stone from the track. e blow bloodied his face and blurred his vision. e combination slowed him to a 12th-place finish. However, his skill didn't go unnoticed. He was honored with the title "Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year," along with Bobby Marshman. In 1962, Jones became the first driver to qualify at the Indy 500 at over 150 mph. He repeated the feat in 1963 and dominated the race to win the 500 by a comfortable margin. After his Indy 500 win, opinions back home in Torrance shifted about the former drag racer. City officials awarded him the key to the city at a special recognition dinner. "Back in high school I had dated a girl, and her mother hated me because she thought I was trouble," he says. "Her dad worked for the Torrance Parks and Recreation Department. When I saw him at the dinner, let's just say I felt vindicated." In a span of seven years at Indy, Jones led a total of 492 laps—almost twice that of any other driver that period. He won six additional Indy car races. He also took the USAC Stock Car Championship title in 1964. In 1967 at age 34, he attempted to win the 500 a third time. He led for the majority of the race, until the transmission bearing failed with just eight miles to go. "I had the lap lead, when I starting thinking about how winning was not going to be as great as it had been the first time," he says. "It was sad to lose, but later I was thinking, 'If it's not that great of a feeling to win, what am I doing it for?'" Around that same time, Jones began testing Firestone racing tires at Indianapolis, where he became close friends with the Firestone family. He and long-time friend Vel Miletich decided to rent space at a Ford car dealership in Torrance and begin selling retail tires for Firestone Tire Company. One day while working at Vel's Ford, a petite blonde named Judy wandered into the dealership after she had crashed her car. While both deny it was "love at first sight," Jones invited her to eat lunch at the dealership's café. "I didn't like her very much at first," Jones says. In spite of that, the two began to date and married the next year—his last year of racing Indy. "My future looked like it was in the tire business. It was the year (1967) I decided to get married, quit smoking and quit open-cockpit racing. I changed my whole life." Miletich and Jones would eventually buy the dealership, renaming it Vel's Ford. e tire business expanded to 47 retail Parnelli Jones Tire Centers in four states. In addition, he and Miletich founded Parnelli Jones Enterprises, a chain of Firestone Racing Tires, in 14 Western United States, along with Parnelli Jones Wholesale, a reseller that sold and distributed shock absorbers, passenger car tires and other automotive products to retail tire dealers. After getting married, the Joneses moved to the Rolling Hills home where they still live today, making good on Parnelli's promise to "never live east of Denver." e birth of their sons, P.J. and Page, followed. "I spent the rest of my years with him," Judy says. To that Parnelli replies with a tongue-in- cheek grin, "She took the best years of my life." Judy continues, "Athletes are very focused, and he is not an easy cookie." >> A View from THE DASH Auto racing legend puts pedal to the metal to support hometown hospital. WRITTEN BY COLLEEN FARRELL | PHOTOGRAPHED BY SHANE O'DONNELL