Some may also remember Jim behind the wheel of a former Ken Brenn Sr owned yellow coupe (previously #24), that Jimmy bought, renumbered it #37,  and drove in the Sportsman division at Flemington around 1975.

A great driver, and a real ambassador for our sport, and if you ever get a chance to say hello to Jim, ask him how he got the nickname of "Magoo!"

Comment:

In 1961, Jim was 18 years old and was running his first year with URC and on this particular night, he was running at 5 Mile Point.  Bobby Courtright and Earl Haliquist were in a fierce fight for the championship.

We'll, Jimmy was running a roadster that was really an asphalt car, but had been set up to run the dirt.  Up until this point, most of Jim's experience had come from running the asphalt tracks in New England.

In the late stages of the race, Bobby Courtright was leading with Earl Haliquist right behind.  As the 2 leaders came up to put a lap on young Jim, Jim saw the move over flag and quickly moved to the low side of the track to let the leaders go by on the outside (which was always the case when running the asphalt of New England!). 

Only one problem...  on that night, they were running the dirt of 5 Mile Point and when one received the move over flag, they were suppossed to move to the outside of the track.  As the two leaders attempted to get by Jim, leader Bobby Courtright had to hit his breaks and made contact with Jim's car.  He was able to gather it back up and keep going, but it was just enough to allow Earl Haliquist to sneak by on the outside.  Earl went on to win that event.

After the race, Bobby Courtright payed a visit to young Jim.   As he approached, he asked, "What's your name?". 

Jim replied "Maguire".

Bobby thought about it for a while and then said:   "Maguire huh...     "...You don't seem to know where you're going on the racetrack.  You're like that Magoo guy.....  We're going to call you Magoo because you can't see where you're going!  You get in the way - From now on, your name is Magoo."

(As a side note, Courtright and Haliquist ended up tied at the end of the year for 1st place in the points.  This means that had Jim not moved down and cost Bob the race, Bob would have won the championship outright for the year...)

As it turned out, Jim learned a lesson.. and soon enough, he earned the respect of Bobby Courtright and Earl Haliquist... along with all the other competitors on the tough URC circuit.  Both Bob and Earl took Jim under their wing and taught him a lot about how to run the dirt since as mentioned, most of Jim's experience at that time had been on asphalt.)

It wasn't until Jimmy started finishing ahead of Bob and Earl on a regular basis that they both declared, "SCHOOL'S OUT."