The 30,000 acres of the salt flats seem to go on forever, and from the vantage point of the timing tower at mile marker four, you can see for close to two and a half miles in either direction. It’s otherworldly, like some barren white planet. Or maybe it just looks like 1949 all over again, as it does to 81-year-old Alex Xydias, founder of Pomona’s legendary So-Cal Speed Shop. In a belly tanker he made out of a spare P-38 airplane fuel tank, a big old V-8 and some major gumption, Xydias went 193 mph at the first-ever meet that year.
At Bonneville, getting your speed is a homegrown sport, borne out of people’s garages and their own engineering know-how, akin to the early days of NASCAR. It helps to have General Motors on your side, but that is an anomaly here in the land of the makeshift. Nowhere else in the world offers so much flat surface, so much freedom. That said, a lot of cars can go 200 miles an hour, but doing it at a 4,000-foot elevation in stressful weather in a straight line on a bed of slippery salt for six miles isn’t as simple as it looks. To set a record here — to paraphrase what Willie Stargell said about hitting Sandy Koufax’s fastball — is like trying to drink coffee with a fork. And even if you do get your speed, you’ve got to back it up on another run. And if you think that’s easy, just ask any of the gearheads who have tried and failed in the last 50 years.
Those people tend to keep coming back. More than a thousand showed up this year, some to work in the pits, some to drive and others just to watch these machines speed by at up to 400 miles an hour. It’s not exactly a spectator sport, though. In fact, it’s a lot like watching a tennis match in really, really slow motion. First you look to your right, then real slow-like you turn your head to the left. The car races past. Repeat every 7 to 10 minutes.
Unlike at the 2002 World Finals, when Nolan White’s chutes failed at 422 miles an hour, there were no fatalities this year. But there were records set in almost every category, including an electric streamliner built by Ohio State that went 257 mph, and Costella Yacoucci, who got the top speed of 315 in his streamliner (one of those really long cars). Jim Minneker hit 213.507 in his last run in the Ion, putting him in the coveted 200 Club and giving him the record.
I watched Minneker’s run with the previous record holder, Santa Ana–based John Thawley, driver of the world’s fastest Honda Civic. As reports of the new record came over the CB radio, Thawley said, “If I didn’t know those guys and wasn’t under strict orders from my team, I’d have hung Jim a huge B.A.” In the parlance of the gearhead, that would translate as “bare ass” — proving, if nothing else, that the down-home spirit of Bonneville lives on.
—Jon Alain Guzik
