This guy had bigger huevos than all of us put together. Who else here would be willing to buckle into a non-caged, stock interior C5 Corvette with a twin turbo LS1 and go 226mph around a test track that had no guard rails?
In Chevy folklore, he's on the same pedestal with Zora Arkus-Duntov, Smokey Yunick, Grumpy Jenkins, David Reher and Buddy Morrison (of the famed Reher-Morrison team), and many others.
John pretty much wrote the book on how to squeeze maximum power out of a Chevrolet motor, and he accomplished this across several generations of small blocks (including the latest LS1).
This is really sad news.
-Deano