Dick Brannan raced during a great era in my opinion.
The race cars were cool, and somewhat attainable at your local dealerships, even if they were not tuned quite the same off the showroom floor.
The drivers, and teams, were approchable both in terms of literally walking up to talk and look, or thinking "I can do that too" because they were pretty regular people who just happened to race, rather than the singular purpose, multi-million dollar race teams and celebrity drivers we have today.
The innovations and alterations were unique in the realm of racing because, let's be honest, safety was not too great back then, so certain things were tried that would never be allowed today.
Some of the attempts had horrible results, some spectacular, but all of them were the product of racers and tuners who had an idea and they tried it because they could.
Lots of hard work, lots of fun, many of the things done were, at the time, just another day that eventually became legend in some manner.
Regardless of how you look at it these were likely some of the guys you watched and decided that looks like the path I'm gonna take too.
Dick Brannan, and many others of his era, were people just living their lives not knowing they would look back to see they have been written into the history books....and to me that is the epitome of cool.