Actor, race car driver, entrepreneur, philanthropist

 

Perhaps one of the most famous Triumph drivers was Academy Award winning actor, Paul Newman, who launched a second career when he picked up the racing bug filming the 1969 Indy 500 drama "Winning." During the 1970s Newman earned four SCCA national titles, the first in 1976 when he took the D-Production class championship in a Triumph TR-6 once owned by racer Bob Tullius. And in 1979 Newman became the oldest driver to compete on a winning team in a major sanctioned race, the 24 Hours of Daytona, at the age of 70.

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Late in the summer [of 2008], at the age of 83, Newman's de facto home track of Lime Rock Park in Connecticut closed for an afternoon to let the gravely ill actor-driver make a few last turns around the newly repaved course. He lost his battle with lung cancer just one month later.

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In addition to his acting and racing successes, Newman was a film director and producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. In 1982, with friend and neighbor A.E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman’s Own, a line of food products, and established a policy that all proceeds, after taxes, would be donated to charity. One beneficiary of his philanthropy is the Hole in The Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children that Newman founded in 1988. Located in Ashford, Connecticut, the Hole In The Wall Camp serves thousands of children every year – free of charge.