He was a quiet man, one whose name has faded with the passing years, yet sports-car racing would not be what it is today were it not for Cameron Argetsinger.
It is entirely possible the sport would not exist were it not for he and his friends whose interest led to the establishment of a road-course movement in the years following World War II.
Argetsinger, who died this past week at his home in upstate New York, near Watkins Glen, was part of a group of wealthy sportsmen that expanded the oval-track-oriented motorsports community to include the kind of “left-right,” natural terrain competition that was the foundation for racing almost everywhere else around the globe, except for the United States.
In 1948, his efforts resulted in the transformation of the streets and roads in and around Watkins Glen into a challenging road course that put the tiny Finger Lakes community on the map as a racing epicenter for European-bred MG, Jaguar and Ferrari sports cars that were being imported by his competitive friends, whose desire to race them burned brightly.
The success of the Glen, and its contemporary venues like Bridgehampton, Palm Beach, Torrey Pines, etc., produced the foundation for today’s Rolex Grand American and American Le Mans Series championships.
In fact, Argetsinger’s enthusiasm inspired the interest of a young man named John Bishop, whose artistic talents have given us a sense of intensity of the competition that took over those upstate roads, and who, more importantly, later transformed the sport when he founded the International Motor Sport Ass’n at the end of the 1960s.
Perhaps, though, Argetsinger’s most significant contribution was to take the tragic death of a spectator in the 1952 Glen Grand Prix and use it to turn road racing away from the dangerous temporary tracks of the time toward safer permanent facilities like the Glen’s own hilltop track.
Even so, one can make a case for the fact that Argetsinger’s most important contribution to what road racing fans now enjoy is the influence he exerted over men such as Bishop, helping to change the sport from a haven for the wealthy amateurs that governed it through the early 1960s to the professionally based exercise it now is.
The Can-Am, Trans-Am, Camel GT and others have, to one extent or another, been influenced by Argetsinger’s thoughts.
Interestingly, although his ties with Bishop and IMSA were strong, in the early 1970s Argetsinger found himself on the other side of the fence, as he became head of the Sports Car Club of America’s Professional Racing department. At the time, the SCCA and IMSA were involved in something of a state of undeclared war, one of which casualties was the Trans-Am, the SCCA sedan title chase that had prospered during Detroit’s “Pony Car era,”  but which had been reduced in stature to such an extent in 1975 that few thought it would be around for the 1976 season. That is until Porsche’s North American racing maven Josef Hoppen came to Argetsinger with a proposition.
Hoppen wanted Bishop to let the German manufacturer run its 911-based 934 turbo coupes in the Camel GT series. However, at the last minute the deal fell apart, leaving Hoppen with around a dozen 934s on his hands and no place to race them.
When Hoppen proposed to Argetsinger that he allow the Porsche to compete in the Trans-Am, along with other IMSA Camel GT entries, the pro racing director readily agreed. This not only saved Trans-Am, but also set the stage for a change of heart by Bishop that saw the turbocharged cars carry his own championship to new heights during the remainder of the ’70s and into the 1980s.
Cameron Argetsinger will always be known as one of the fathers of a sport that might not have ever existed without his vision for it.