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Mopar Nats, day three
No major surprises today at the Mopar Nats, except, of course, the DEATH VAN: Okay, so nowhere on the van did I see that name, but it just fits. The workmanship, excellent; the taste, questionable. I’m...
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Bonneville!
I’m alive. The hotel in Wendover claimed it had free high-speed Internet, but I never found a jack anywhere. In SLC for photo shoots the next couple days, so I thought I’d get at least a few of the...
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Inbox miscellany
Man, you go away for a week and everybody decides to email you. Which is good. I like emails. I’m still going through Mopar Nats (days 1, 2, 3) and Bonneville photos, but thought I’d at least get some...
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the salt gets in you
Culled a few Bonneville photos from what we’ll run in our coverage in Hemmings Motor News in a coming month. I reserved a compact. Hertz gave me a Durango at the same price. I complained not one bit....
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inflating records
We posted about JCB Diesel‘s record attempts on the salt the other day, reporting that driver Andy Green lifted the record in AA/DS to 317.021 mph, putting Green in the 200 MPH Club and the 300 MPH...
View ArticleMore than 92 records set at Speedweek
Fast and smooth salt, along with record attendance, helped propel a number of entries into the record books last week at Speedweek at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The 200 MPH Club, which requires its...
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How fast is fast?
The annual Bonneville Speed Weeks may be about all-out speed, but speed is a relative thing when you’re talking about bikes that are better than 40 years old. Take William Paulovcin, for example. He...
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Muscle Car Masters
Steve Irwin wasn’t the only thing happening in Oz over the weekend. While vintage Trans Am racers made their way around the track at Lime Rock this past weekend (I didn’t go, but I know at least one of...
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envelope artwork
So while at Bonneville, I shot Mike Talcott’s custom roadster pickup hot rod: Look for a writeup in an upcoming issue of Hemmings Motor News. He has an incredible imagination, and he spared not a shred...
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Bonneville videos
Found a couple videos from this year’s Bonneville action (via). The first is a very well done primer on Speedweek. The second‘s kind of interesting. Almost completely taken from a mini-helicopter POV....
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NYTimes does Bonneville
Out of the “where have you been for the last 50 years” file: the New York Times covered Bonneville last weekend. More of a primer on Bonneville than expose, what with the author spending a few...
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photog at work
Well, I figure if TA wants to post those pictures of him at work, I should include the latest picture I’ve received of me at work, coincidentally arriving in my inbox the same day. This one came from...
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Gary Meadors should sue!
From the moment I saw the pictures of the recently introduced Mitsuoka Micro over at Jalopnik, I immediately thought of Gary Meadors‘s track roadster, which I saw at Bonneville this year. Actually,...
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bellytanker at El Mirage
Coop has some wonderful pictures of his buddy Bobby Green‘s big day out at El Mirage for the first time with his bellytank racer. Man, that guy lives the life. I don’t see how I could live in Southern...
View ArticleRains force World Finals cancellation
The heavy rains and flooding that has troubled the West over the last week canceled this week’s World Finals at Bonneville. Typically, the Southern California Timing Association’s World Finals falls...
View ArticleFinal El Mirage racing meet sees 15 new records set
Despite heavy winds that blew through El Mirage Nov. 11-12, the Southern California Timing Association managed to close out its 2006 land-speed racing season at the dry lake with 15 new records. The...
View ArticleDVD provides Bonneville experience for those who can’t make it
When it comes to videos of the modern-day Bonneville experience, you can either surf YouTube, or the half-dozen other video sites on the Internet, looking for three-minute clips or you can get yourself...
View ArticleSpeedweek to add third land-speed course
Officials for Bonneville’s Speedweek, the largest land-speed racing event in the United States, are expecting more than 500 entries for this year’s meet and have made at least one major change to...
View ArticleMore than 550 Speedweek entrants break 165 speed records
Another record-breaking number of entrants at Bonneville for this year’s Speedweek combined to break 165 speed records and send 12 more racers into the 200 MPH Club. Despite the last-minute relocation...
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Smoking the salt
The PowerStroke-powered Rocket Ranger ran 215.091 mph at Bonneville, setting a C/Diesel Truck class record Originally, the concept was for the Rocket Ranger to be a gasoline-powered record-setter, and...
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Electrobike breaks AMA land speed record
Kate Ingber rode an Electrobike into the land-speed record books this month, averaging 68.4 mph Electrobike established a new land speed record for electric motorcycles on the Bonneville Salt Flats...
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Four-Links – unearthed Bonneville photos, Black Mustang Club censored, the...
Ryan never rests on his laurels over at the Jalopy Journal, and just this morning he brought us all something terribly cool. Following up on an earlier post, a reader sent along some photos from...
View ArticleGoodwood Festival of Speed to feature early American dragsters
The only thing missing was the floating mountain, that landmark of the Bonneville Salt Flats that racers aim a little to one side of as they power past the bright orange mile-markers. Such was the...
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Bonneville Speedway Museum begins to take shape
Speed fiends have been traveling to a largely out-of-the-way barren piece of land in northwest Utah for nearly a century now in their quests to achieve velocities most other people can only dream...
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Racing Heroes – David Abbott “Ab” Jenkins
Ab Jenkins, refueling during a Bonneville pit stop. Still image from video below. Though names like Craig Breedlove, Art Arfons, Walt Arfons and Gary Gabelich are forever associated with land speed...
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Extra salt, please: the shrinking Bonneville Salt Flats
Photos by the author. The Bonneville Salt Flats are a pretty astounding place, as I mentioned in our recent story on the Grand National Roadster Show’s upcoming celebration of 100 years of land-speed...
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Hemmings Find of the Day – 2013 Superformance B-Class Lakester
Running at Bonneville sure seems like a lot of fun, but entails more than a few modifications to the family car. This 2013 Superformance B-Class Lakester for sale on Hemmings.com, however, has been...
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Craig Breedlove laying plans for new land speed record attempt
A rendering of the proposed Spirit of America design. Images courtesy Neil Roberts. It’s been 17 years since Craig Breedlove made a serious attempt at a land-speed record in a car named the Spirit of...
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Stirling Moss conquers Bonneville, 1957
The MG EX181 at speed. Still image from video. Sir Stirling Moss is most often associated with sports car and Formula One racing, but the English driver, considered by many to be the best of his day,...
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SCTA cancels 2014 Bonneville Speed Week
Danny Thompson with Challenger II at Bonneville, August 2014. Photo by Holly Martin/Peter Vincent, courtesy Thompson LSR. As any Bonneville Salt Flats racer can attest, building a car fast enough to...
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Danny Thompson and Challenger II to run for record at rescheduled Bonneville...
Danny Thompson and the Challenger II. Photo courtesy Thompson LSR. The 2014 Bonneville Speed Week, commemorating a century of racing on the salt, was supposed to take place from August 9-15, but...
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Show Season Spotlight: Amelia Island
With the new year well under way, chances are a number of you are already putting together a list of potential must-attend 2011 events. Here’s one you can add to that list: the 16th Annual Amelia...
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Four-Links – Old Red, Roy Repp, Salt Watch, American Graffiti
* A reader named Lindsay tipped us off to the story of “Old Red,” the Ford Falcon XY GT bought for cruising the Australian Outback that remains largely original, down to the thorough coating of red...
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Replica of Ab Jenkins record-setting Pierce-Arrow to cross the block
Photos courtesy Worldwide Auctioneers. Until the 1930s, the international racing community hardly considered the Bonneville Salt Flats a suitable location for high-speed record setting. Montlhery in...
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This day in history: Art Arfons sets his third land speed record at Bonneville
Art Arfons and the Green Monster. Still image from video below. Say the name Craig Breedlove and most with a passion for speed will be quick to point out that he’s a multiple-time land speed record...
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Bonneville: A Century of Speed
As we’ve discussed here before, the broad expanse of salt that makes Bonneville so unique is disappearing, and with it the black line that once seemed to stretch out to infinity, to this point a...
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Danny Thompson and the Challenger 2 return to the salt in 2015
Danny Thompson poses with the Challenger II. Photos by Holly Martin, courtesy of Thompson LSR, unless otherwise noted. It’s never easy following a legend, especially if the weather doesn’t cooperate....
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The softer side of Bonneville: Why it’s not always a good idea to drive on...
Photos by the author. [Editor’s Note: Contributor Mike Taylor’s summer cross-country trip included a stop at the famous Bonneville Salt Flats, where he learned that not every trip to the land-speed...
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Unsalted: Bonneville Speed Week canceled for second year straight
Photos by the author. The day when we will no longer see sanctioned racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats may soon be at hand after the Southern California Timing Association decided on Monday to cancel...
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Mojave Mile to host Bonneville racers after Speed Week cancellation
Image courtesy Google Maps. With hundreds of participants left hanging after the cancellation of this year’s Bonneville Speed Week, organizers of the event managed to secure another location for the...
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A Gathering of the Hopeful: Bonneville Speed Week 2015
Based 2,300 miles away in Greenfield Center, New York, the guys from Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop feel strongly enough about Bonneville’s importance that they once again drove their creations...
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Hemmings Sunday Cinema – racing at Bonneville in 1989, ride along with...
Ever wonder what it’s like to pilot a fuel streamliner at 256.9 MPH on the salt at Bonneville? Catch fire at 350 MPH? This ESPN coverage of racing at the salt flats in 1989 will give you some idea. *...
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Bonneville Speed Week cancellation spurs proposals for salt flats replenishment
Photos by the author. With the annual Bonneville Speed Week cancelled for the second year in a row—and with other racing events at the Bonneville Salt Flats already nixed or in jeopardy of not taking...
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A new day may be dawning for the Bonneville Salt Flats
Sunrise over the Salt Flats. While flooding of Bonneville is a natural part of its cycle that benefits the salt crust, increased rainfall and the shrinkage and degradation of the racing surface has...
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Bill Burke, hot rod pioneer, passes away at 97
Burke in 1941 while serving as Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Timing Association. Photo courtesy Geoff Hacker. “The Michael Jordan of Bonneville,” Ryan Cochran, proprietor of The Jalopy Journal...
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Utah legislators to Bureau of Land Management: Restore the Bonneville Salt Flats
Photo by loonyhiker. After months of meetings with land-speed racers, mining companies, and federal agencies, the Utah House of Representatives late last week passed a bill urging the Bureau of Land...
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Bonneville racers accuse BLM of dragging its feet after plans for further...
Photo by ceajaegirl. After Bureau of Land Management officials urged patience and recommended another study of the shrinking salt at last week’s Bonneville Salt Flats summit in Salt Lake City, racers...
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Bureau of Land Management investigating Bonneville Salt Flats vandals
Photo via High On Life SundayFundayz on Facebook. A group of Canadians who caused outrage last month after entering restricted spaces at Yellowstone have come under fire again after a stunt of theirs...
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Danny Thompson drives Challenger II to SCTA AA/FS class record at Bonneville
Danny Thompson with the Challenger II in 2014. Photo by Holly Martin; all photos courtesy Thompson LSR. Danny Thompson, son of American racing legend Mickey Thompson, has been trying since 2014 to set...
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Danny Thompson and Challenger II return to Bonneville one last time
The Challenger II at Bonneville in August 2016. Photo by Holly Martin, courtesy Thompson LSR. Last month, Danny Thompson drove the Challenger II streamliner to an SCTA two-way average speed of 406.769...
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