Bob Bondurant, Motorsport Champion & Legendary Driving Instructor, Dies

Bob Bondurant, a former champion race-car driver who opened a high-performance driving school in 1968 and taught numerous A-list actors for their movie roles, has died. He was 88.

Bob Bondurant raced for the Shelby American, Ferrari, and Eagle teams.

He was one of the most famous drivers to emerge from the Southern California road racing scene in the 1950s and achieved success in North America and in Europe.

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His Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving has been responsible for training generations of American racing drivers.

According to his family and the Bondurant Racing School website, Bondurant died Friday in Paradise Valley. No cause of death was released.

Bondurant taught stunt driving, competition driving, police pursuit driving, evasive driving for chauffeurs and bodyguards, plus other skills, according to the website. His school has had over 500,000 graduates, it said.

Among the celebrities Bondurant instructed in road course driving for their movie roles were Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Nicolas Cage, Robert Wagner, Tim Allen and Christian Bale, according to the website.

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Born in Evanston, Illinois, Bondurant and his family moved to California when he was 2.

He raced motorcycles on dirt tracks as a teenager before switching to cars in 1958 and racing for the Shelby American, Ferrari and Eagle teams.

Actor James Coburn with Bob Bondurant in 1972

Bondurant won 30 of 32 races in Corvettes from 1961-63, and he won the GT class at Le Mans in 1964, co-driving with fellow American Dan Gurney.

Badly injured in a 1967 crash at the racetrack in Watkins Glen, New York, Bondurant drafted an idea for a high-performance driving school while recuperating.