Racing Heroes - Lance Reventlow

Lance Reventlow. Photo courtesy Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum.

If Lance Reventlow's life were a work of fiction, readers would find the details of his story too fantastic to believe. Born into a family of enormous wealth with ties to nobility, Reventlow would go on to success as a racing driver, race car constructor and entrepreneur. For all his achievements, Reventlow's life was marked by a series of failed personal relationships, and it would end in tragedy at the bottom of a Colorado canyon. While most fans of motorsport know of the story behind the Scarab sports racer, the story behind its creator is even more fascinating.

Born to Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton and Danish Count von Haughwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow in February of 1936, Lance Reventlow never knew a normal family life. Raised in a London mansion known as Winfield House (now home to the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom), Reventlow was witness to his father's violent outbursts as well as his mother's increasing drug and alcohol dependency. In 1938, the couple divorced, which lead to a bitter custody battle over young Lance. Hutton ultimately triumphed, and perhaps realizing that she was hardly a mother-of-the-year candidate, soon packed her son off to a series of boarding schools.

Hutton's next marriage, in 1942, was to actor Cary Grant, and though this union would last just three years, it had something of a stabilizing effect on Reventlow, who would remain close to Grant for the rest of his life. It was Hutton's following marriage, to Russian Prince Igor Troubetzkoy in 1947, which would forever shape Lance Reventlow's destiny by exposing him to the world of Grand Prix racing. Troubetzkoy would go on to fame as the first Grand Prix driver to compete in a Ferrari, and would later capture victory in the 1948 Targa Florio. The glamor and excitement of professional motor racing stuck with Reventlow, and by his late teens he was already competing in club racing events near his Hollywood, California, home. Among his circle of friends was actor and fellow racer James Dean, and Reventlow was said to be among the last to speak with Dean before his tragic death in 1955.

Lance Reventlow drives the Scarab F1 car at Riverside, 1960.

Perhaps seeking more prestige or merely more speed, Reventlow abandoned the California sunshine for a season racing a rented Cooper Formula 2 car in Britain. Though he wasn't successful enough to draw the attention of Formula One teams, the experience inspired Reventlow to return to the United States and begin producing a sports racer of his own, picking up where Briggs Cunningham had left off. Reventlow Automobile Incorporated soon occupied a small industrial space in Venice, California, where with the help of chief engineer Phil Remington and designers/builders Tom Barnes and Dick Troutman, the company produced a (very) limited number of sports racers that Reventlow called Scarabs.

The first Scarab, dubbed the Mk I, made its competition debut in early 1958, and by mid-season Reventlow was already racking up wins. The Scarab Mk II, driven by hired gun Chuck Daigh, followed later in the season and posted a win in just its second outing. Over the following year, the drivers recording race wins behind the Scarab Mk II's wheel reads like a "who's who" of late 1950s and early 1960s sports car racing, including names like Augie Pabst, Carroll Shelby, Jim Jeffords and Harry Heuer.

Perhaps satisfied with his success as a sports car constructor, Reventlow turned his attention towards creating America's first Formula One car with the help of engine designer Leo Goossen. The Offenhauser-inspired four-cylinder proved too fragile and complex for the team to manage, particularly with limited pre-season testing, and during Reventlow Automobile's 1960 effort, the squad's lone finish was a 10th place at the United States Grand Prix, delivered by Daigh. Mechanical troubles aside, the Scarab F1 effort utilized a front-engine design at a time when the racing world was witnessing the dominance of rear-engine cars; it was, essentially, obsolete before its first competitive outing.

1958 Scarab Mk II. Photo by Neil Rashba, courtesy Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance.

The Reventlow Automobiles team lacked direction for the 1961 season, with Daigh racing the third car originally built for the team's F1 effort in lesser European series instead of Formula One. Daigh posted a pair of top 10 finishes in the Scarab before destroying it in a racing crash in England, where the car was essentially abandoned. For 1962, the team prepared a Buick-powered rear-engine Formula car, but FIA rule changes made the car illegal in European competition. It was raced once in Australia (where Daigh finished fourth, after battling with Sterling Moss for much of the race), but by then Reventlow had had enough of his efforts to field a successful racing team. A final car, the eighth Scarab constructed, was converted to street use by Reventlow (and even licensed in California), but later sold to John Mecom. Under Mecom's ownership, the Scarab Mk IV would go on to great racing success with drivers A.J. Foyt, Augie Pabst and Walt Hansgen.

Shuttering his operation for the same tax-inspired reason that closed Cunningham's doors, Reventlow leased the building to Carroll Shelby, who also hired Phil Remington to help build Cobras. Reventlow's focus on constructing a winning Formula One car had not only burned through a noticeable portion of his wealth, it had cost him his marriage to actress Jill St. John. By the end of 1962, Reventlow's passion for the sport of racing had dimmed as well, and he turned his attention to other interests such as flying, sailing, skiing and polo.

Two years later, in 1964, the 28-year old Reventlow married 19-year old Cheryl Holdridge, a former Mouseketeer and child actress. Though Holdridge never requested it, the union saw Reventlow hang up his driving gloves for good, and for a while the couple appeared to share a semi-normal married life, largely out of the media's spotlight. As the 1960s came to an end, however, Lance and Cheryl were spending an increasing amount of time apart, with Reventlow spending the bulk of his time in Aspen, Colorado, while Holdridge remained at the couple's house in California. In 1972, while scouting real estate in a canyon outside of Aspen, the plane that Reventlow was flying in as a passenger crashed while cutting a tight turn at low altitude, killing all aboard.

Though Reventlow enjoyed success as a driver, he lacked the focus necessary to become one of the sport's true greats. The same can be said of his efforts building the Scarab sports racer, which was ultimately hampered by its low production volume. "Some people are born with brown eyes; I was born with money," Reventlow once quipped to an interviewer. Perhaps it was that abundance of resource that ultimately proved to be Reventlow's undoing.