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Some Names To Look For In This Newsletter:
President's Corner, Editorials, On my website we had a "Willie's Builds" topic where he'd do some welding or assembly or whatever - and show how to do it with photos and narrative, Early Road Runner hot rod innovator auto industry engineer Fran (Francisco) Hernandez passes January 5 2011, Vince Davis passed away recently according to a phone call from David Parks, I came across your name at Autobooks/Aerobooks in Burbank and thought I should bring to your attention my book review website, To Matthew Taylor: I did a little digging on the Sunbeam Tiger, Just like to let you all know my new web site is up and running, The 2011 B'ville NW Banquet will be held February 19 2011, The Mount Washington Hill climb known as the Climb to the Clouds was first run in 1904 and is one of America’s oldest motorsports events, Annual Road Runners Banquet, I am assisting a race team owner with her sponsorship marketing and need to get some information about the 200 MPH Club
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President's Corner:
Here is the info on the SCTA banquet: Date January 29, 2011.
4:30 Fellowship
6:00 Banquet room opens
7:00 Four Star Dinner
8:00 Video Presentation of El Mirage Season
8:30 Awards Presentation.
Location: Westminster Rose Center, 14140 All American Way, Westminster, CA 92683. Price- $33; Chicken Dijon or Vegetable Lasagna. Contact Jim Miller or your club rep asap to ensure that you get a ticket to the banquet.
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Editorial:
This issue of the newsletter has multiple obituaries. While it is somewhat depressing to have to share this news with you, sometimes it is the only reference or mention that we will ever receive about these men and women. They deserve better, but unfortunately there are so few reporters, researchers and volunteers willing to track down the news and send it in to the SLSRH. It is hit or miss for so many, which is why I run obituaries and bios from long ago up to the present. I want to make sure that we archive all the information that we can. We aren’t the only newsletter of course. There are also the SCTA News, The Bonneville Racing News, H.A.M.B, www.landracing.com, The American Hot Rod Foundation (AHRF) and other fine national and international publications and websites. I encourage you to sign up for all of them. Each in their own way adds to the history of straight-line racing and hot rodding. The men and women who work on and run these newsletters deserve your support. What you aren’t aware of though, is that each of you, our readers and members are the reporters for these publications. We (Jim Miller, Roger Rohrdanz, myself and many other SLSRH members) are not capable of finding ALL the history that has happened over the years, though we try and do our best.
It starts with each of you doing your biography, as long or as short as you desire to tell your story. The audience that wants to read your bio begins with your family and ends with us, where I will publish what you send me. Next, we want you to write your stories, which are different than bios. A story can focus on an event or an action in your life, like a race, a car show, a rally or some other activity. It can be humorous or serious. The next step is to caption your photographs. Buy some acid free peel-off adhesive stickers and PRINT on them; who, what, where, and when that the photo is representing and stick it on the back of the photograph. Do not write on the back or the front of the photo as it will damage the surface. If you can, scan the photographs and keep them on a disk. You can also ask Jim Miller to do that for you and he will copy the photos onto a disk and give you back your originals and a free disk for your use. In that case you will be asked to allow him to use the pictures on the AHRF and SLSRH websites; and it will take him a few months to complete the scanning and copying. Then when you have finished your bio, story and captioned photos, do the same for those who have passed on in your family or club so that their history will be saved for posterity. We can’t help it that we will lose our family members and friends, but at least we can save their history. We shouldn’t let anyone go to the “great dry lake in the sky” alone and unremembered.
The Grand National Roadster Show (GNRS), the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) Banquet, and the Celebration of Life for Rod Rider Vince Davis will be on the same weekend this year. The GNRS begins on the 28th of January and ends on the 30th. The SCTA Banquet and the Celebration of Life for Vince Davis will be on Saturday, the 29th of January. Believe it or not, you can go to all three of them and have a great time. Often only the winners and record setters show up for the GNRS or the SCTA Banquet; which is a great loss. Roger, Jim and I will be attending as many events this weekend as we can. We hope to have at least five articles and hundreds of photographs ready. The GNRS is owned and promoted by John Buck, a good friend of the family and a friend to all hot rodders. He and his wife and family work very hard to put on this show and they go the extra mile to provide a place for hot rodders and car guys to show off their cars. The venue site is the Los Angeles County Fairplex in Pomona, California and John will be renting about 8 buildings, including space outside the complex of buildings. It isn’t a cheap place to hold a car show, but it is probably one of the best venue sites anywhere in the country. It is centrally located in the Los Angeles basin and cars can be spread out so that the show is user friendly. John works very hard just to keep the show in the black and out of debt and we need to support him in any way that we can. The fees are reasonable when you consider the cost to rent the facilities. We also need to support the many vendors who come to the show and pay the rents that they do to help support the financial health of the show.
The SCTA Banquet runs around $33 or so; maybe a bit more for those who miss the cut-off deadline. As reunions and banquets go that is a reasonable price to pay. I know, I’ve promoted a lot of these reunions and events and I was always in the red. The losses came out of my own pocket, which is revenue that my good wife couldn’t use for her household expenses. Only a few of these types of car events break even and make money and they make very little. Some car shows, like the John Force Christmas show and Debbie Baker’s Cruisin’ For A Cure raise money to go towards charities or medical research. The people behind these events work on them as a labor of love and often at a financial loss. The reunions that I sponsored and produced took six months out of my life to run. You start planning for the next show a few hours after your show closes and you promote and advertise your event all year long. It is so important to show up and support these fine events and to spend a little money on food and some of those vendor products. It is also important to thank the sponsors of the shows. A kind word to groups like Justice Brothers Car Care Products, Edelbrock, Meguiar’s, HotRodHotLine and other sponsors goes a long ways to keeping these supporters coming back. Be generous with your praise and with your wallet. Also, don’t overlook the little guys, like Mark Brazeau and Howie Zechner, who film and create videos and make them available to the general public. I think Mark and Howie give away far more than they sell.
It isn’t only car shows and races where our presence and support is needed. There are also artists, car builders, collectible sellers, model builders, video makers, authors, photographers and other professionals who make their living bringing us their wares and crafts. If we stop supporting them they will go away and we will all be poorer for that. I review books, movies and magazines for www.hotrodhotline.com and you should check out the section there. If you are not adding to your library you are doing yourself a real disservice. Authors like Tom Madigan, Louise Ann Noeth, Don Montgomery and others need your support and the books that they produce are first class in all respects. Artists like Tom Fritz, James Ibusuki, Kenny Youngblood and others create works of art that are worth collecting. Model builders like Ugo Fadini create sculptures and die cast models of the race cars that have set the standards in our sport. Faith Granger and other movie makers have produced some of the finest films to play on our DVDs. These and other artists need our support. See you at the GNRS.
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On my website --- www.landracing.com --- We had a "Willie's Builds" topic where he'd do some welding, or assembly, or whatever - and show how to do it with photos and narrative. Have Richard take a look there for a bunch of Willie's work. I'd also, if you like, go through some of the Forum and look for posts that Willie made over the past few years. It'd take a while to read all of them and look for pearls of wisdom and Willie-ness, of course. Jon a/k/a Seldom Seen Slim Wennerberg
Heather, Jon, Sheri: I'm really sorry to hear about Willie Buchta's passing. It's never happy news to hear about another land speed racer leaving us. We've lost too many already and each one's passing leaves a big hole in our hearts to fill. But we will remember them. The way that I do that is to encourage each and every land speed racer and fan to write their biographies and caption and share their photographs. As I looked at Jon's great website, www.landracing.com, I can tell that it's not only a news publication, it is also a tribute to land speed racing past, present and future. It's very similar to our www.landspeedracing.com. Sometimes people ask me why there are two or three such sites and that they don't all combine into one. The answer is in the creativity of the people behind those sites and the fact that we can never have enough views and coverage. I hope every one of my readers will go over to Jon Wennerberg's website and make it one of their favorites. In that same thought, we can never have enough biographies or stories on a person. The more that we have the closer we get to their true character. I hope all those in land speed, drag racing and hot rodding will take the time to write their biography, caption their photographs and finally write down their stories. As a final tribute to a great man in land speed racing, find a young person to join the Gear Grinders and the SCTA. We can never replace Willie, but we can help the organization of land speeders to grow. Without such growth we eventually will see our sport fade away.
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It was still dark out when I fired up my Harley for a ride down to Anaheim with Willie Buchta. We were headed to the Gear Grinders 2010 May meeting and it was my first ride with the busy guru of Willie's Tube & Tin in Modesto. Mitchell's Harley-Davidson, of Modesto, provided a Road King with only nine miles on the odometer for Willie to ride. Willie's job was to break it in before it went on the rental line at the dealership. I rode my own '07 Softail Deluxe. I arrived at Willie's shop at exactly 7AM with foot pegs coming loose from the Harley’s good vibrations. I tightened them up and we were off and running down I-99. Willie did his own brand of break-in on a new Harley and it didn't have much to do with the owner's manual. He started out easy for about thirty miles with varied power settings and then cranked it up to freeway speeds, still varying the power settings. He sent me out in front so that I wouldn't be bothered with any of his fast/slow antics. It was darn cold on the way down to Anaheim. We pulled into the I-99 Betty Avenue exit in Goshen, California, for fuel and a visit to the Visalia Harley-Davidson dealership that offered free coffee.
Willie checked the parts department for one of those license plate frames the dealers bolt to every new bike they sell. I guess Willie has a ton of them from all over the globe. Back on the road we waved to a trucker hauling a load of live porkers, (Get it? Hogs...). Then it was on down to the Grapevine and a stop at Flying J for fuel and lousy food. The ride up and over the hill into the L.A. freeway maze was smoother than I thought it would be but tempers and temperatures went up considerably as we rolled down the Santa Ana Freeway during the 1PM rush. People tell me that L.A. traffic is lighter at mid-day, but that's a bunch of horse crap. Traffic is never light in the L.A. Basin. We were able to utilize the commuter HOV lanes, but whenever we locked into one, the normal lanes would speed up and fly faster than the HOV lane. Eric Ross had offered to put us up for the night so we stopped at his place first. Eric called around and managed to thumb a ride to the Gear Grinder meeting with Joe and Amanda Taylor because his Ducati Monster was still festooned with racing plates from a year ago, while Willie and I rode down to the meeting on our bikes. We impressed the locals by parking in the doorway so they'd trip over the kickstands when they exited the building.
After the meeting we met Eric back at his place to hang out for the night. When Willie threw a sleeping bag on the floor, Eric's savage dog, Spike, claimed it for his own. Now, Spike is a little Jack Russell breed and only weighs about 10 pounds, but it's the most vicious ten pounds of dog flesh I ever saw. When Willie politely asked Spike to move, Spike immediately leapt into action. Willie limped away from the encounter bearing flesh wounds on his leg and a pair of torn corduroy pants. Ah, but they were Eric's cords, on loan while Willie's leathers were out for emergency repair. I had no idea that Willie was such a good dancer, as evidenced by his high stepping moves to avoid Spike's canine incisors. Neither Eric nor I had the intestinal fortitude required to manhandle the mighty mutt. We resorted to yelling at him from a safe distance, while Spike interpreted the yelling as a call for more violence toward poor Willie. After a few seconds, that seemed like hours, Spike relented and sulked off with shards of corduroy still hanging from his fangs.
Willie and I were up at 7AM on Friday, off to breakfast by 8 and on the road by 9AM. We never even saw Eric, but Spike was up with us and growling at Willie for his doggie breakfast. We rolled back up the I-5 in miserable 9AM morning rush traffic and cruised over the Grapevine with a stop in Gorman for prohibitively expensive fuel. Then it was on to Bakersfield Harley-Davidson to search the parts counter for another valuable license plate frame (no luck) and then on to Bravo Farms in Goshen, California. The food was good and we topped off our tanks with more of that very expensive 91 octane liquid crack. We managed to survive the cold on the way down, heat on the way back and the homicidal drivers throughout the trip. I guess you don't always meet the nicest people when you're riding a Harley. All the same, what Gear Grinder member wouldn't agree that the fun we had at the meetings makes the 700 mile round trip worth every mile? Bill Lewis
Bill: Thanks for the short story about your trip. Send us more. (Click Images Below For Larger View)
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Fellow Gear Grinders: It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that Willie Buchta passed away at the hospital due to an infection from his last surgery. I will update you with any other information as I receive it. Please keep Sheri and the Buchta family in your thoughts and prayers. Heather Black
Heather and the Gear Grinders: I want to offer my condolences to Sheri, Willie's family and to the Gear Grinders. I want to thank all of you who have kept me informed, so that I can inform others. I would appreciate it if you could write a bio on Willie, or send me a story about what he was like. The SLSRH is not a blog. We rarely publish short sentences that tell us nothing new, such as, "He was a great person." But we do publish articles, bios and stories that tell us more about our history and heritage and the people who participated in straight line racing. So if you can write something, even if it is just one incident at one event that tells us something special and unique about Willie (and others), then send it to me and I will be grateful to put it in the next newsletter. If you want an example, go to www.landspeedracing.com and see how we handle the bios and obituaries. Lastly, it's really hard to do YOUR biography when you are gone. Jim Miller and I find it much easier to talk to you and get you to write your story when you are still with us. We have asked you to do your bios and caption your photographs even if you don't want them published. Because your families will want them and we want them too. I can't begin to tell you how much I have learned by helping LSR and hot rodders write their bios. If you don't leave a history behind then you have no history and that is tragic for the rest of us. So please, during the off season jot down some words and send them to us. We'll edit them and we won't publish until you are happy with "your story." Remember, bios are factually true, but "stories" can be completely true or even a bit "Ak Millerized."
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Until June of last year (2010) Willie Buchta was an acquaintance of mine - fellow Gear Grinder - motorcycle racer, fabricator of interesting and rapid equipment and a unique and interesting character. A man of many opinions and always willing to share. In June however, he became a friend and showed his true colors as a genuine nice guy. When I crashed and demolished my land speed bike on a test run at El Mirage it was Willie Buchta who volunteered to load up the oily, unmanageable junk and haul it from the lakebed to his place in Modesto so that I could rest up for a few days in Victorville and not have to retrieve the bike myself - a task that would have been near impossible for only me - with broken wrist - and my wife. I doubt that Willie considered that act of kindness to be a big deal, but it certainly was to us and I am grateful to this day. Thanks Willie - we'll miss you - RIP. Martin Doerfler
Martin: Thank you for the story about Willie. These types of historical stories add to our knowledge and heritage.
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Early Road Runner, hot rod innovator, auto industry engineer, Fran (Francisco) Hernandez passes, January 5, 2011. http://detnews.com/article/20110120/OBITUARIES/101200370/Natural-mechanic-led-race-car-division http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fran-Francisco-Hernandez/157884174258948 Jerry Cornelison
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Natural mechanic led race car division, by Mark Hicks of The Detroit News.
Fran Hernandez parlayed his love of tinkering with cars into a lengthy career that revolved around Ford Motor Company assembly lines and the national racing circuit. "His work was everything," said his son, Randy. "Cars, racing; he was just consumed by it. That was his passion." Hernandez died Wednesday, January 5, 2011, from natural causes. He was 88. Born February 8, 1922, in Chihuahua, Mexico, he grew up in California, where he began working on cars as a teen and pursued "hot rodding" on area dry lakes, relatives said. During World War II, Hernandez served in the Navy as a first class machinist mate. After his discharge, he became a machine shop owner with automotive engineer Fred Offenhauser and a foreman for the Edelbrock Equipment Company. In 1949, he won a drag race at a Santa Barbara (Goleta) airport with a 1932 Ford coupe he souped up by successfully using nitromethane in a four-cycle gasoline engine; which Hot Rod magazine called a first in the field. Hernandez also worked for car builder Bill Stroppe and Indianapolis 500 racer Peter DePaolo, through whom he became involved with Ford Motor Company racing. He later worked for Electric Auto-Lite Company, which was bought by Ford.
In the 1960s, he was charged with creating a performance racing program at its Lincoln-Mercury division. To keep Ford competitive on the national racing circuit, Hernandez and his team worked to improve its Mercury Comet. A private performance event in 1964 proved a model had a 100,000-mile durability run, he told Car Craft magazine in 1966. That year, his team launched the Mercury Comet Cyclone GT, which became popular in drag racing. When overseeing the assembling of the race cars, Hernandez had a singular vision. "He was a great engineer," said mechanic Bud Moore, whose South Carolina team Bud Moore Engineering built NASCAR race cars. "He understood what the drivers wanted. He was a real big help for all of us, because he knew what needed to be done. It was a great honor to have him working with us."
From 1969-70, Hernandez managed a Ford facility in Brighton, which produced the Boss 429, a Mustang variant. "He was very dynamic … one of the most talented and knowledgeable men I've ever worked with," said Ed Hull, a former Ford engineer who worked on the project. "He could do anything." Hernandez later managed a Ford fabrication and development section, which built and delivered presidential limousines for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, relatives and associates said. "He was a hands-on guy … the type of guy who was a doer, not a talker," said John Mulrine, a former Ford technician. "He was a hard-working guy. His reputation just followed him." Hernandez retired in the 1990s and worked in consulting. Other survivors include his wife of 68 years, Patricia; a son, Rick; a daughter, Nancy Hernandez; a brother, Luis; and seven grandchildren. From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110120/OBITUARIES/101200370/Natural-mechanic-led-race-car-division#ixzz1BkamVEQX.
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Vince Davis passed away recently according to a phone call from David Parks. Vince was a Rod Rider car club member in the Southern California Timing Association and the husband of member Karen “Nabee” Davis, and the brother of John (J. D.) Davis, also Rod Riders. Vince had been suffering from the effects of Parkinson’s disease for two decades or more, but still found the strength and will to participate in land speed racing and in the Rod Riders car club. Vince, J. D. and Karen were a team and I often saw them at Bonneville, El Mirage or other SCTA activities as they helped others or ran their own car. Always outgoing and friendly, they welcomed all the people that they met and introduced the newcomers into the Rod Riders club and the SCTA. I remember that one year my brother and niece went to visit them at their home in the mountains around Mount Baldy and a snowstorm stranded them on the road. Off they went in search of the Davis family and it was lucky for them that they were home.
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Here is the information for Vince's Celebration of Life next Saturday, January 29, 2011. Celebration of Life will be held on January 29, 2011 from 3 pm onward at 6693 Black Forest Drive, Eastvale (Corona), California 92880. Contact phone is Sherie at 951-279-4746. The family requests that friends of Vince write a remembrance to share. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to: The El Mirage Ladies Auxiliary, c/o Judy Sights, 5408 West 122nd Street, Hawthorne, CA 90250 or The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson Research, Church Street Station, P.O. Box 780, New York, NY 10008-0780.
Karen Davis
Karen: My sincerest condolences on the loss of your husband. I will pass this on to others and will look forward to a bio on Vince.
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I came across your name at Autobooks/Aerobooks in Burbank and thought I should bring to your attention my book review website, SpeedReaders.info (soon to be redesigned; test site at http://208.100.49.73/%7Ep25lh199/index1.html). Our book review service was started November 2009 as a scholarly, pro-bono, not for profit service and specifically seeks to draw attention to niche aspects in the transportation sector. The reason for contacting you is to offer you the opportunity to post book reviews on our site, thus drawing attention to your special field of interest and also to your organization. In the case of guest reviewers we always add a few words explaining the writer's affiliation. For example, see
http://speedreaders.info/blog/index.php?blog=2&title=bluebird_cn7_by_d_stevens&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
or
http://speedreaders.info/blog/index.php?blog=2&title=andre_lefebvre_by_g_p_berka_8232&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1.
If this is of interest, let me know. We get about 30,000 unique global hits a month, 60%+ of users are repeat visitors, we post a minimum of 3 new reviews a week, our core audience is [book] collectors and researchers. Too much important information is scattered in too many obscure places. SpeedReaders intends to, over time, become THE one-stop archival book review resource for years to come. To that end we review older and even out-of-print books. Surely our interests converge in this matter. Kind regards, Sabu Advani, Publisher/SpeedReaders.info Editor in Chief.
Sabu: The book reviews that I do are somewhere in the 1250 to 3000 word range and cover not only the material in the book, but the composition and quality of the book itself; spine, cover, book jacket, binding, paper quality, photographic quality, etc. You have a limitation around 500-800 words. The other problem that I have is that I have an exclusive arrangement with www.hotrodhotline.com and www.landspeedracing.com. You would have to arrange with the owners of the websites to release the book, magazine and movie reviews that I contract to do for them. Many of your reviewers are members of the Society of Automotive Historians, a group that I once belonged to and respect for their efforts to keep the history and heritage of the motor car alive. The idea for a centralized book review website is very interesting and I wish you success in that regard. While I can't join you at the present time, what I can do is publish any emails that you send me in my publication; the Society of Land Speed Racing Historians Newsletter. This is not a linkage of the two websites, but rather it is a notification to my readers that you have available a book review on your site that they can go to and read. Our interests are in straight-line racing (land speed and drag racing) and hot rodding.
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To Matthew Taylor: I did a little digging on the Sunbeam Tiger. It was entered at B-ville in '65 under the name of Autocourse, Inc. (Sandholt) out of Hayward, California. It had a 260" Ford in it. The car ran number 157. The Official Results had a Sandholt as the driver. The car's fastest speed was 144.46 mph. Rain cut short the meet to a couple of days. There is a picture of the car in the November '65 issue of Rod & Custom magazine on page 52. That's all I've got on the car. Jim Miller (American Hot Rod Foundation)
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Just like to let you all know my new web site is up and running. I still have more pic's and other things to add. Let me know what you think. www.jimmeyerenterprises.com. Jim Meyer
Jim: You have a great website and I encourage more of our readers who are in business to do the same thing. Your site has a bit of everything, including projects, history, photographs and news. These are the kind of websites that advance our knowledge of car builders and car events around the nation and world. Great site.
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The 2011 B'ville NW Banquet will be held FEBRUARY 19, 2011. Location; Shilo Inn Portland Airport, 11707 NE Airport Way, Portland 97220. See www.bonnevillenwreunion.com. Glenn Freudenberger, 425-422-6944
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The Mount Washington Hill climb, known as the Climb to the Clouds, was first run in 1904 and is one of America’s oldest motorsports events. In 2011 the Climb to the Clouds will return after a 10 year hiatus to help celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Mount Washington Auto Road. The 7.6 mile Mount Washington Auto Road is one of the ultimate challenges for driver and automobile, the serpentine tarmac and gravel road is lined with trees and dramatic drop-offs as it winds its way to the 6,288 foot summit of the Northeast’s tallest peak. Officials at Vermont SportsCar, organizers of the 2011 Mount Washington Hill climb planned for June 22-26, 2011 at the Mount Washington Auto Road in Pinkham Notch, Gorham, New Hampshire, announced today that the Sports Car Club of New Hampshire will serve as the sanctioning body for the return of this historic motorsports event which was first run in July of 1904. The 2011 Climb to the Clouds will be a 5-day festival of motorsports that hopes to attract a 70-car competition field filled with some of the best drivers from around the world competing for “King of the Hill” honors. See http://climbtotheclouds.com/entry-process-underway-for-the-2011-mt-washington-hillclimb/ Sent in by Dick Elliott
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Annual Road Runners Banquet: Lot's of fun and great raffle prizes from Westech Dyno time, racing fuel, racing seat belts, sand-blasting service, Lucas Oil products, machine tools, and much, much more, including items for the ladies. DEADLINE for paid RSVP's is February 8th (the next Road Runners meeting). Contact President Mike Ferguson or Treasurer Bill Harris. The Annual Road Runners Banquet is coming up on Saturday, March 5, 2011. This event will be held at the historic Flabob Airport in Riverside (Rubidoux) at the Airport Cafe. Cost is $10 for a Club member plus one guest and $15 for non member guests. The exact start time will be announced but it will begin in the late afternoon. There is ample room to bring your hot rod or race car to display if you like. Club and SCTA dues must be paid by January 31st. Dues for SCTA members are $75 and Associate Members $30. Failure to pay dues will result in loss of membership. To be reinstated, a person must submit an application for membership as a new member. Jerry Cornelison. Road Runners - SCTA (est. 1937) http://www.ussarcherfish.com/roadrunners.
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I am assisting a race team owner with her sponsorship marketing and need to get some information about the 200 MPH Club; the number of members, percentage of females, age of club, etc. Where would be the best source for this type of background? Thanks for your help. Eric Studer, Eureka Springs, Arkansas. See www.retreatatskyridge.com.
Eric: There are a number of 200 MPH clubs and one source is Jim Miller at the American Hot Rod Foundation. Another source is Greg Sharp, curator of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, in Pomona, California. I will resend your email to a select group of people who help me with the Society of Land Speed Racing Historians Newsletter, which is found at www.landspeedracing.com. The goal of reaching and setting a record of 200 MPH on land is one that has always entranced land speed and other car racers. Before that, in the 1930's, car clubs were founded with the goal of attaining 100 MPH and only a few cars ran that fast. By the late 1940's a good number of dry lakes cars were running over a 100 MPH and there was a need to find a better venue to race on than El Mirage in the Southern California desert. A trio of men went to Salt Lake City in 1948 and arranged for a lease with the Chamber of Commerce to run on the Bonneville Salt Flats. This allowed a longer and better course and the cars soon began running over 200 MPH. There had been a club for those cars going over 100 MPH and this inspired a group within the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) and the BNI to form an honorary society for all those going over 200 MPH AND setting a record doing so. That's the key to all these clubs; you have to set a record while exceeding 200 MPH. If you go 200+ MPH, but do not set the record in your class, you cannot join the 200 MPH Club. There is a 200 MPH Club at Bonneville, at El Mirage, at Muroc dry lake, at Maxton, at Goliad and other racing venue sites.
The reason that there isn't just ONE 200 MPH Club is that each racing venue has unique characteristics and the speeds cannot be equated. Maxton and Goliad are close to sea level and are paved surfaces. El Mirage and Muroc dry lakes are close together and composed of dried mud flats, but altitude, surface conditions and other factors change the speeds one is able to attain. Bonneville is up at 4400 feet of altitude and is composed of dried salt. Lake Gairdner in Australia is another Salt Bed. So there are multiple 200 MPH Clubs around the world and each of them have their own Board of Directors and rules; although they don't vary that much since the members often have set records in all the venue sites. I don't know the percentage of women who are members of the 200 MPH Club, but it seems to me that in the motorcycle category there are quite a few women record holders. Jim Miller might be able to tell you that.
Kenny Lyons ran a race team with the avowed interest in getting women into the two clubs. There are a lot of 200+ MPH women in drag racing, but again I can't tell you the percentage of men to women. As to ages, well that too is a difficult question because it just isn't brought up very often. It used to be that you couldn't race in Land Speed Racing until you were at least 21. That rule was often broken and today it isn't unusual to see 16 to 18 year olds who go racing and are very successful at it. It is also a sport that allows men and women in their 60's and up to go racing and to be successful at it. Most of the 2 Clubs have been around for some time. There are also 3 Clubs for records set over 300 MPH and a 4 Club. Only a handful of people could start a 5 Club and that drops lower with those men who have reached 600 MPH. There is only one man who has gone over 700 MPH in a car on land; Sir Andy Green. Google the SCTA 200 MPH Club and see if they have a history
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