JLR's Kim McCullough fulfills a dream
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May 22, 2017 01:00 AM

JLR's Kim McCullough fulfills a dream

Diana T. Kurylko
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    McCullough has participated in numerous endurance races for vintage cars, including the Copperstate 1000 in Arizona.

    A less than terrific driving performance at the Bob Bondurant Racing School in Arizona in 1992 prompted Kim McCullough, then Mazda's national advertising manager, to get serious about racing and to eventually compete in amateur race events.

    In the process, she met her husband, Mitch, a racing enthusiast who also worked for Mazda. Together, the McCulloughs have raced on Sports Car Club of America circuits and vintage road course events and, two years ago, in the Mille Miglia in Italy -- their big bucket list dream.

    McCullough, 56, is now vice president of marketing for Jaguar Land Rover North America. But she says she and Mitch, 59, did it all on their own.

    "I had no corporate sponsorships," she says. "I had to borrow things and learn a lot."

    In 1992 at the Bondurant school, McCullough and her Mazda colleagues were driving high-performance cars.

    "I did not do very well," she admits. "But I was determined, after that one bad experience, that I was going to turn it around. I wanted to learn to race."

    McCullough

    'A hoot'

    Mitch offered to help.

    In 1993, she borrowed a stock Miata, a Mazda Navajo SUV and a trailer and bought new tires for the Miata.

    "I collected all these things and showed up at Willow Springs," she says.

    The Sports Car Club of America ran Miata races at Willow Springs International Raceway near Rosamond, Calif., as part of its showroom stock series. McCullough also raced in Phoenix and the old Holtville Aerodrome International Raceway circuit near Holtville, Calif.

    She learned fast, finishing second in the Sports Car Club of America championship at Holtville in 1994.

    "I loved that track. It was a hoot," she says.

    Was she afraid? Not at all.

    "In an odd way, it was relaxing," she says. "You are out on the track and that is all you think about."

    Being one of the few women at the track didn't matter. McCullough says the racing community was extremely supportive.

    Kim and Mitch married in 1994, the same year she left Mazda. The pair moved around as McCullough took various advertising agency jobs and then went to Land Rover in Annapolis, Md., in 1997.

    By 2005, with Kim heading communications, advertising and marketing for Toyota Division in the U.S., the McCulloughs had returned to California and decided to get back into racing.

    This time, though, they chose to race vintage cars. They bought a silver 1956 Alfa Romeo 1900 CSS coupe and raced it for a few years in 1,000-mile, three-day vintage competitions. Their first race was in 2007, the California Mille, for cars built in 1957 or before.

    "The object was to finish," McCullough says. "When you have older cars there is victory in finishing."

    The husband-and-wife team took turns driving the route that started in San Francisco and wound through picturesque northern California. The McCulloughs completed three California Milles.

    In 2007, they competed in the Copperstate 1000 in Arizona, which allowed cars built as late as the mid-1970s. They raced a 1972 Alpine A100 and completed the first race. But in their second year in Arizona the car "finished on a flatbed -- we had a catastrophic failure," she says.

    "The first year we got an award for being the most willing participant with the most unwilling car," McCullough says. "The Alpine had so many problems but we always got it going again."

    The couple moved east again in 2011, when Kim became brand vice president for Land Rover. She says, "We set our sights on the Mille Miglia."

    In 2015, they entered the famous 1,000-mile race, which starts in Brescia, Italy, goes to Rome, and returns to Brescia.

    "That was a big undertaking," she says. "When you run an event overseas there are logistics involved and financial planning. It takes a bit of time and you want to save up and be prepared."

    Wonderful simplicity

    The McCulloughs' entry was self-funded. The couple bought a 1954 Jaguar XK120 roadster that had had one owner, who purchased it for $3,395 after returning from the Korean War. McCullough says: "I have the sales receipt and it looks like an old-fashioned diner receipt."

    The exterior of the roadster was untouched but the McCulloughs had the original 3.4-liter straight-six engine, transmission and brakes rebuilt and the exhaust replaced.

    The 2015 Mille Miglia had 84 timed stages -- points the participants had to reach within a specific time, with the average speed measured at each stop.

    "We have plenty of experience with sitting in old cars for long periods of time without such modern amenities as power steering and brakes that actually stop you," McCullough wrote in a race blog.

    They hit speeds as high as 125 mph on public roads.

    "I cannot imagine another country that would allow this to happen -- all of the traffic laws were mere suggestions," she says. "You got used to driving in a different way. If there was a stoplight, you'd pull around it and you would keep going. There were motorcycle officers that were encouraging this behavior. It was a lot of fun."

    McCullough says the Mille Miglia was far more intensive than U.S. vintage car rallies. People at home were rooting for them, even though the McCulloughs' car wasn't the Jaguar corporate entry. Jaguar chief designer Ian Callum ran that car. JLR North America CEO Joe Eberhardt often logged onto a website to follow McCullough's progress.

    McCullough loves the camaraderie in vintage car racing and enjoys that the cars are not as sophisticated as today's models.

    "There is a wonderful simplicity," she says.

    What's next? The McCulloughs are considering participating in the Le Mans Classic in France next year.

    But one thing is certain, Kim and Mitch, who works from home as an automotive journalist, won't stop looking for fun in the fast lane.

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