Biography
John Cordts came to Canada from Sweden
in the early 1950s, when he was 18, and settled in North Bay, Ont., a
place he still considers to be his home town. Thoroughly familiar with
machinery from the time he was very young, he started racing, as many
Canadians do - on the ice, in winter. From there he moved to a brand-new
MGA and soon made his presence known in amateur road racing. He was
spotted by Dave Billes of Performance Engineering, who offered him a
seat in the company Corvette. He won the Canadian Championship for big
bore sports cars in 1965 against some pretty stiff competition. This
convinced Billes that Cordts had the Right Stuff (in spades: in 1968, he
set a track record of 101.8 mph at Harewood Acres that stood until the
track closed in 1970) and the two of them went racing in 1966 in the
famous Can-Am series with a McLaren. Now money, although not exactly
scarce, was not in plentiful supply and Cordts' skill at keeping ailing
Can-Am cars on the track and in the money became legendary. A Road &
Track magazine correspondent once wrote: "If I had a Can-Am car, I
would want John Cordts to drive it.'' In 1969, Cordts was offered a
once-in-a-lifetime ride, a seat in a Brabham-Climax Formula One car for
that year's Grand Prix of Canada at Mosport. Only five Canadian drivers
made the field for the Canadian GP in the Sixties and John Cordts was
one of them - Eppie Weitzes, George Eaton, Al Pease and Bill Brack being
the others. After a spin in the original Trans-Am series for BF
Goodrich in the early 1970s, John Cordts left motorsport and retired to
Vancouver Island.