Mormon Meteor

At dawn one morning last week, bronzed, begoggled Ab Jenkins, 50-year-old mayor of Salt Lake City, strapped a crash helmet under his grease-smeared jowls, stepped into his airplane-motored speed car, set out on his favorite tour: around a 12 1/2-mile circle on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats.

With only a few mechanics, timekeepers and the grim, grey mountains looking on, Mayor Jenkins coddled his thundering 2 1/2-ton Mormon Meteor once around the course. Then in a twinkling, the wooden markers (set at soft, intervals) became a picket fence, the flat track a gigantic bowl of salt. Round & round he whirred. In less than 15 minutes, a huge blackboard was raised outside the timekeeper's shack: "New World's Record for 50 kilometers--172.915 miles per hour." An eyeblink later, another board went up, marking a new record for 50 miles. Then, in quick succession, 100 kilometers, 100 miles, 200 kilometers, 200 miles, 500 kilometers.

At dawn next morning, when the mayor of Salt Lake City stepped out of his automobile, he (and his relief driver, Cliff Bergere) had traveled 3,858 miles, had broken 21 world's speed records. Average speed for the 24 hours: 161.18 m.p.h., almost 4 m.p.h. faster than the 24-hour world's record Jenkins set on the same course three years ago.*

Cracking records is nothing new to Ab Jenkins. Son of a Welsh master mechanic who went to the U. S. to supervise the construction of a Kansas steel mill (and settled in Utah because his wife had joined the Mormon Church), young Ab--christened David Abbott--was a bike racer in the early days of the Century, later raced motorcycles on half-mile dirt tracks. In 1921, when he was a successful building contractor, he won his first auto race--on a $250 bet that he could drive his Nash from Blackfoot, Idaho to Salt Lake City and back (at that time a four-day auto trip) between dawn and dusk.

Five years later, Speedster Jenkins won another bet: that he could drive from New York to San Francisco faster than he could travel by train. Although he had never been east of Cheyenne, Daredevil Jenkins scooted across the continent in 85 hr. 20 min. (train time: 100 hr.). So impressed was Studebaker Corp. it hired Jenkins to test its cars. So chagrined were the railroad companies (especially after a red-hot Hearstpaper ribbing), they put on faster transcontinental trains. But Jenkins embarrassed them again in 1931 when he drove a Studebaker, with a top speed of 90 m.p.h., from New York to San Francisco--observing speed laws through towns and stopping for every red light--in 51 hr. 10 min., faster than present Streamliner time (55 hr., not counting stopover in Chicago).

From then on, Ab Jenkins' hobby became his profession. Backed by manufacturers of tires, oil, gasoline, he began to build racing cars, drive them in endurance runs. In 1932 he "discovered" Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. On its marble-hard salt, 4,300 ft. above sea level, he set his first endurance record with a 24-hour grind at an average speed of 112 m.p.h. When he upped his speed in 1933 and 1934, British auto racers sat up and took notice. To Bonneville with their 6-ton monsters went Racers George Eyston and John Cobb.

For four years the Britons engaged in a record-smashing orgy that finally boosted the world's record to 368.9 m.p.h. (over a measured mile).

For mile racing Mayor Jenkins has no great fondness. Already holder of 153 speed records, Ab Jenkins--whose popularity with home-town folks made him mayor last November--has no intention of re tiring. His goal: 200 miles in one hour, 4,000 miles in 24 hours and--just to prove that he too can set a record over a straightaway mile--one mile at 400 m.p.h.

*Highest average in an Indianapolis 500-mile auto race: 117.2 m.p.h.

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