Special: The Large Economy Size In Gold Cups

After attending General Motors Institute of Technology, he went to Rollins College in Florida and majored in business administration, with an eye to becoming an automobile dealer. There he met his dark-haired Kit (now a competitive racing sailor under canvas), courted her on a motorcycle, married her, honeymooned on a cruiser and settled in Detroit, where he began working for his father.

During the Korean War, Muncey achieved the rating of corporal and led a 22-piece Army orchestra in the U.S. and Europe. On his discharge he went back to work for his father, but kept racing hydroplanes of all sizes. Then, to his surprise, he was summoned to Seattle by Wil-lard Rhodes, a big wheel in Associated Grocers, to drive the Ted Jones-designed Miss Thrift way in the Gold Cup race on Lake Washington.

Ted Jones, one of the world's foremost designers of three-point hydroplanes and one of Seattle's major heroes, began experimenting with hydros back in the '20s. In 1942 he introduced himself to Stanley Sayres, a well-to-do Chrysler dealer, and offered to design a hydroplane for nothing if Sayres would back him in competition. Slo-Mo-Shun IV was the result and, with Jones at the wheel, it revolutionized unlimited racing. Then Jones broke with Sayres and designed a boat for Rhodes, recommending that Muncey be the driver. Muncey, who talks almost as well as he drives, was signed on as a public relations man with Associated Grocers, Inc. and began making speeches (as many as 300 a year) before civic groups and clubs, winning races and friends for the supermarkets. "I talk about my experiences in racing and how anybody, with dedication, can be a good unlimited driver," Muncey says. "I don't peddle prunes. It's a soft sell."

In his first Gold Cup race Muncey was declared the winner, only to find out an hour later (after being chucked in the lake) that a recount of point scores put him in second place. The boat that won—Gale V, out of Detroit—finished second in the first two heats and third in the last one. Muncey had two firsts and a third, but Gale V picked up extra points for completing the fastest overall time for the three heats. Seattle fans, however, agreed solidly on two things: Detroit had won only a statistical victory, and Bill Muncey took corners better than any hydro racer alive.

In the 1956 race in Detroit an even bigger brouhaha took place. Muncey won, with Detroit's Miss Pepsi second. Then it was charged that Muncey had knocked over a buoy. Enraged, Muncey hollered that he had not knocked over a buoy. Rhodes claimed he had 200 witnesses to prove his driver had not hit the buoy. Detroit produced witnesses who said they had seen him hit the buoy. Films showed that Muncey was right, and his Seattle boosters gave up drinking Pepsi-Cola. Months later, when all the legal tangles were ironed out, Muncey was awarded his first Gold Cup. The following year he won his second Gold Cup without dispute, and ever since Seattle has increased its lead in unlimiteds over Detroit, with the Detroit slogan being a wistful "Beat Muncey."

Each year this becomes more difficult, and that is just the way Bill Muncey wants it.

"People tell me it's a mistake to expect to win every race," he says. "But I tell them if you accept the responsibility to put on a good performance, dedicate yourself and prepare yourself mentally—why, there's no reason you can't win every time out. "I didn't come here to lose,' I tell them."

Besides being an artist at turning corners and at hiding behind an opponent's rooster tail to cut inside him when he least expects it, Muncey wins races by psychology. He decides, after considerable study, how fast he must go to beat the best drivers and best boats in a race, and he does not exceed that speed. "If my estimate is accurate," says Muncey, who has a stopwatch brain, "the boats that try to stay ahead of me or try to catch me will blow."

Muncey, who smokes a lot but does not drink—"I just don't like booze"—would much rather race against experienced drivers than hot dogs. He feels that emotion has no place in unlimited racing. "When a driver gets emotional, he gets dangerous," he says.

Bill Muncey has had his share of danger over the years. In the 1956 President's Cup in Washington, D.C. he struck a wall of water, which instantly sheared 12 feet off the port side of Miss Thriftway. In 1957 his boat caught a swell in the Governor's Cup and, soaring 10 feet into the air, blew up like a clay pigeon hit by an expert shot. Muncey was thrown out of the boat and landed in the water 50 feet away. He suffered severe kidney injuries.