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 a copy of Bonneville: Wide Open.
Though released in 2004, the stories of the men and women involved in land-speed racing remain timeless, and that’s exactly what the DVD focuses on — the people who come together once a year at a long stretch of salty expanse to plant their right foot.
What the video lacks in technical information (details of the engines and the classes that the racers run in aren’t given much, if any, air time), it makes up for in personalities, tracking the progress of two different teams as they prepare their entries — one a motorcycle streamliner, the other a hot rod roadster with an enormously force-fed engine. When the teams actually make it to the salt, the video gives a good feel of the processes involved, from sitting through tech, to waiting in line, to the actual run itself, to impound and to the scene in the pits.
The video sells for $25 through the Web site that producers Benn Karne and Steve Davy set up: www.bonnevillewideopen.com
(This post originally appeared in the November 30, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)