Salt Dust in Utah

The average U.S. car-owner has a definite and jaundiced image of a hot-rod: a souped-up old jalopy driven by some wild-eyed youngster, usually seen bulling through traffic, fenders flapping and exhaust stacks rumbling. But last week, on Utah's Bonneville salt flats, a superior sort of hot-rod was in evidence: handsome, beautifully tuned machines built by safety-conscious young men who could talk intelligent shop with any engineer in Detroit.

The occasion was the Fifth Annual National Hot-Rod Time Trials, and some 250 drivers from 19 states were entered.

Each one drove a car hand-built from standard stock parts and revamped for racing, had spent uncounted hours and up to $7,000 on the finished product. Some drove souped-up Ford sedans with the tops chopped, i.e., lowered, others built bullet-shaped racers from aircraft tanks, called them "Lakesters" for the dry lakes they race on. The engines gleamed like platinum; for fuel some burned an explosive mixture of methyl alcohol and nitromethane. "Fuel?" snorted an oil-company observer. "It belongs in the class with dynamite."

Whipping over the flats, kicking up big rooster tails of salt dust, the racers looked more like shuttling ants than cars. A tiny Class "O" (91 cu. in. of cylinder space, the smallest classification) Lakester buzzed along at 111.46 m.p.h., a bigger version got up to 188.08 m.p.h., a sleek streamliner with two V-8 engines churning 600 h.p. reached 255.41 m.p.h. By the time the Nationals were over, U.S. records in 15 classes had been smashed, and the hot-rodders were just getting started.

After the others had left, six cars, all sleek streamliners, stayed behind to take a crack at International speed records. Like their smaller brothers, the streamliners were put together from stock parts. But there the resemblance ended. Their teardrop bodies were made of sleek Fiberglas or hammered aluminum, their stock engines retooled and refitted for at least twice the ordinary horsepower. One car flipped over at 240 m.p.h.; the driver, protected by safety belts and rollover bars, got out with a broken leg. But the others, whistling eerily over the 14-mile course, shattered records in three International classes, some that had stood since the late 1930s, when four of Nazi Germany's biggest automakers spent huge sums on a series of super-racers to help glorify Hitler. The new record-holders:

P: LeRoy Neumayer, 23, a Compton. Calif, mechanic, who drove a 300-plus h.p. Class B (305 to 488 cu. in.) streamliner owned by auto supply shop operator Chet Herbert, 25, who used to race hotrods himself until he was stricken with polio. The records: a blazing 233.31 m.p.h. for five miles, 230.53 m.p.h. over a ten-kilometer distance.

P: Dana L. Fuller Jr., 26, a California trucker, whose supercharged red and yellow diesel went to 168.98 m.p.h. for one kilometer, 199.32 m.p.h. over the mile.

P: Mai Hooper, 25, a Los Angeles telephone-company lineman, who drove a shiny streamliner with a Class C (up to 300 cu. in.) V-8 engine over the cement-hard flats to six new International records, hitting more than 230 m.p.h. at distances from one kilometer to ten kilometers.

There was no whooping over the records. As serious as pilots testing new jets, the hot-rodders think speed is only part of their task. They feel they are helping Detroit's engineers by trying out new ideas such as magnesium wheels and "spot brakes" that are less likely to freeze since they grab only at selected spots instead of all around the drum. Besides, it's the builder, not the driver, who counts. Said Diesel Champion Fuller: "You just open her up. If she has it, she'll go. If she hasn't, she won't."

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