Thrust SSC moments before a Mach 1 attempt

by Cole Coonce

(This story originally ran in Drag Racing Monthly in 1998. Excerpted from TOP FUEL WORMHOLE: The Cole Coonce Drag Strip Reader, Vol. 1.  The piece was later expanded into the feature-length book, Infinity Over Zero.)

In the Northwest corner of Nevada, in the shadow of Granite Peak on the Black Rock Mountain Range, there dwells a valley whose innards are the desiccated bowels of a prehistoric lakebed that stretches nearly 80 miles longitudinally.

One gets the feeling that this here prehistoric lakebed has seen its share of paradigm shifts—and weathered them all. It is a very cynical landscape: A cracked, upturned seabed that is mostly gypsum and lithium and is surrounded by abandoned mining claims etched into gargantuan lava rock whose elements make up half of the periodic table. It is hard to fuck with.

And this charred chunk of alkali has a history that resonates both spiritually and in a secular fashion: 100,000 years ago when the Ice Age melted into the Stone Age, the condensation yielded the leviathan Lake Lahontan, a body of water with a mass greater than most sovereign states in the Northeast of the US of A. This wonder of nature eventually evaporated into playa dust, not too long before the local Pauite Injuns were pulverized by “Superior Caucasian Forces” from Virginia City, forces who understood that the Black Rock desert was a strategic fork in the road, both for Bible-totin’ homesteaders who could bear right into the Oregon territories and for till-the-wheels-fall-off 49ers who could hang a louie, follow the Truckee River into Donner Pass and do some righteous prospectin’ in Gold Country out California way. Parenthetically, this intersection’s dusty tributary is known as Nobles’ Trail, named after a golddiggin’ trailblazer.

All of this went down on a lakebed that is so uninhabitable only scorpions would call it home. Yet in the presence of all that history in the American Outback, you get the feeling that time is completely still—a notion reinforced by the service in the local coffee shop—or that the universe is expanding at a velocity us mortals can’t fathom. Either way, you realize this is the perfect tableau for humanity’s attempt at emulating a supernova via traversing land faster than the speed of sound…

And although ol’ Nobles has been picked-over coyote meat for over a century now, the terrain that bears his name is still a launch pad into unchartered territory, most recently for two teams of Land Speed Record crusaders, one from across the pond in the United Kingdom and the other hailing from the far side of the Donner Pass. The trail these folks set out to blaze had a mother lode somewhat more esoteric than Nobles’ cache. For the teams of Thrust SSC (UK) and the Spirit of America, paydirt was thus: the honor of traveling at the Speed of Sound. Mach 1. On Land.

Ironically, the point man for the UK operation answers to the name of Noble, and is an honest-to-goodness Order of the British Knight, christened by God and the Queen as Richard Noble, OBE. Noble and his minions were here to make history and, in many ways, they were also here to observe tradition—the tradition of seizing one’s destiny, a tradition perfected by other folks passing through these parts such as Nobles, Kit Carson and, more recently, Spencer Tracy.

What all the aforementioned have in common besides the Black Rock desert is adversity: Nobles had the elements, Carson had the wily Pauite Indians, and Spencer Tracy had Lee Marvin (cf. Bad Day at Black Rock, probably rentable at your local video emporium). Likewise, for adversity, the Thrust SSC and the Spirit of America teams not only had each other, they also had to endure a plethora of seemingly insurmountable elements (floods, lack of venture capital, sandstorms, lack of venture capital, fod (foreign object damage), lack of venture capital, etc.).

This is the story of how Richard Noble and a band of compatriots not only overcame adversity but actually stared it down whilst engaged in a shootout the likes of which Washoe County, NV hadn’t seen since wily ol’ Chief Winnemucca and his scrappy Paiutes nearly staved off genocide.

*****

In 1983 Richard Noble turned 633 mph at Black Rock and reclaimed the LSR for Great Britain in his Thrust 2 jet car, taking it away from the late Gary Gabelich, a California drag racer and Rockwell test pilot who clocked a 2-way speed average of 622 mph in a hydrogen-peroxide powered rocket in 1970. Noble’s conquest struck a raw nerve in Craig Breedlove’s craw—and in his sense of patriotism.  Breedlove was the 5-time holder of the LSR in the 1960s, as well as the conqueror of many barriers — 400, 500, and 600 mph—in his Spirit of America jet cars. As Noble had tea and crumpets with the Queen, Breedlove immediately began drawing eyelid diagrams of a third-generation Spirit of America that he felt was sleek enough not only to enable him to procure the LSR but also to slip through the last great barrier: Mach 1.

But to sell his dream to America and to his sponsors, Craig needed an adversary like Ike needed Khrushchev. So he approached the then-LSR record holder, Noble, and confided in him his aspirations towards conquering the Sound Barrier. Noble took the bait. Immediately both men jettisoned their relatively prosaic lives—Breedlove was now a realtor, Noble was now marketing  recreational aircraft—and focused all of their energies toward their new goal.

A funny thing happened en route to the epochal “Duel In the Desert ‘97” in the Great American Southwest, however…

You see, both Breedlove and Noble had ambition but were lacking three other elements critical to his success: 1) Venture capital. 2) A crew. 3) A design for a vehicle that would somehow subvert the laws of physics and aerodynamics as applied to the turbulence inherent in supersonic travel—forces which would most likely launch and/or shred the vehicle and its driver. For in a motorcar traveling at that speed some of the pressure and  shock waves which would envelop the vehicle would have no way to diffuse themselves as they hit the floor and then reverberated UNDER the vehicle, acting like a 750 mph catapult. As Noble himself described it, “At Mach 1, you’re either on the ground or you’re ten miles in the air at a force of 40 g’s.” Blimey.

So, yeah, Noble sets off to meet the esteemed Ken Norris, designer of both Sir Malcolm Campbell and his kid Donald Campbell’s revolutionary LSR machines, to explain his plight, i.e. that he had the “want to’s” real bad but no design team nor plan. And in a crucial and profound stroke of luck, Norris’s earlier appointment, Ron Ayers (a retired guided missile designer from the Brit military-industrial complex who is as renowned in his field as Noble and Norris are in theirs), is caught in cross-town traffic and arrives at Norris’s digs the same moment as Noble.

Before the chance encounter with Noble, Ayers had no desire to design a Mach 1 motorcar (and very little interest in motorsports in general). “My immediate reaction was to distance myself from the project,” is how the elderly, erudite, avuncular aerodynamicist recalls the moment that Noble pitched him the project. “To drive at supersonic speeds would clearly be extremely dangerous, and indeed, it could well be impossible. I pointed out to Richard that even keeping the car on the ground would be extraordinarily difficult.” But Noble knew fresh meat when he saw it, and commenced to dog-and-pony-showing his way into Ayers id and sense of purpose. Suffice it to say, Ayers became the “Thrust SuperSonic Car’s” first conscript—and its prime architect.

Indeed, the next day Ayers went into his garden, got out a pad and pencil and began free associating… “How can we keep a motorcar stable as it passes from the transonic to supersonic speeds…” Ayers continued to sketch and the Thrust began to take shape. “…It will need two jet engines, not for thrust but for weight, drag and downforce…they will have to live on either side of the cockpit…” His approach to cannonballing through the turbulence of Mach 1 was an aerodynamic application tantamount to the bigger hammer method. “…We will not finesse this per se, but punch through the sonic barrier…the center of gravity must be forward, but not so fore that it actually burrows into the desert floor and resurfaces in Eurasia…”  “Everything that isn’t lift is downforce…” The only logical shape this beast could assume was the bastard, mutant spawn of the Batmobile and Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird spy plane—i.e., the gnarliest, baddest contraption to attack the jet stream since the Cold War ended. It was gorgeous.

And for all its designed inefficiency, it was practical. Richard Noble concurred emphatically with Ayers’ take on attacking Mach 1. “The key thing in this is stability,” he told me out on the playa. “Anybody can stick a jet engine on a chassis and light the fuse. Ron and I sketched out something and we thought, ‘My God, this is really rather good. This could work very well. Right: twin-engines, aluminum wheels’ and then Ken (Norris) says, ‘There is no room for steering’—and it started to build from there.”

(You can imagine the conversation amongst the SSC design team: “Yeah, Ron it’s bitchin’—but where do we put the torsion bars?” In an epiphany, SSC Chief Mechanical Designer Glynne Bowsher—one of a succession of aerospace hitters hornswoggled by Noble and intrigued by the notion of breaking the sound barrier on land—concluded that in order to shoehorn a steering system between the framerails, the SSC must turn by the two in-line rear wheels. Talk about form follows function…)

The Thrust SSC was housed and fabricated in a spare hangar in Farnborough, UK, the locale of what, in essence, is the British Skunk Works (in other words, the hangars for her Royal Majesty’s stealth and supersonic aerospace programs). Suffice it to say, the bulk of the SSC engineers who became intoxicated with Noble’s dream already knew where Farnborough’s commissary was well before Noble approached them for help…

As the design came to life at Farnborough Airfield, Noble canvassed the breadth of the Jolly ‘Ol, banging on boardroom doors for financial support and hosting seminars at campuses and air shows in order to recruit a pit crew. Interestingly, his stirring pitches appealed to the hoi polloi more than the suits in the corridors of power. The hoi polloi formed the Mach 1 club—“give us a few quid, drop what you’re doing and come with us to America to break the sound barrier”—and became another indispensable element to the Thrust SSC’s eventual success.

And finally, another crucial element was in place. That is, Nobles’ choice for a shoe: A soft-spoken-yet-buff, dashing, Royal Air Force pilot named Andy Green whose physique, psyche, and demeanor were ideal for the project. Indeed, Andy Green could have been culled straight outta’ Central Casting. The team was in place.

And after some CFD data and rocket-sled testing confirmed Ayers’ theories on supersonic travel, the vehicle was completed. But before the conquering of Mach 1 in America was to commence, the team trudged off to an RAF air base in the Al Jafr desert in Jordan during November of ‘96 for some shakedown runs, with the blessing of ol’ King Hussein. Testing the synergy of all systems on this technological marvel commenced: Computerized suspension, telemetry, satellite uplinks, communications, aluminum wheels, rear wheel steer, twin Spey 202 turbofan engine, support vehicles, etc.

All systems seemed to be speaking to each other, but a full dress rehearsal for the upcoming mission in the Black Rock desert would have to wait, for then came the prerequisite trial, error, and anguish that, if you study your motorsports history, seems to accompany all LSR efforts. In a Middle Eastern desert that is dryer than microwaved kitty litter, it rained. And rained. And flooded.

Indeed, as Ron Ayers related in retrospect: “According to the weather statistics, November should have the ideal combination of moderate temperature, low wind, low precipitation, and few dust storms.” It was, in fact, quite the antithesis. The Thrust SSCer’s arrival at this arid Middle Eastern desert was akin to fording a river:  At the air base where Thrust was stationed the flooding was moving so fast that it appeared to be pushing stones ahead of it. Finally, Glynne Bowsher pointed out that the stones were actually floating camel droppings…

Meanwhile: Concurrent to the SSC frantically evacuating the flooded desert in Jordan, days before a provisional Bureau of Land Management permit at Black Rock expired, Breedlove caught a crosswind at 675 mph as his Spirit of America streamliner “Wrong Way” Corrigan-ed and assumed the attitude of a traffic circle. It was the fastest U-turn in history.

“I didn’t know that I had the side wind,” said Breedlove. “I was confused. I wouldn’t have run had I known what the wind was.”

In fact, it was one of those moments when a bad case of “Go! Fever” short-circuited logic. With the permit dwindling and bad weather encroaching, Craig knew his window for making history was finite. As he was strapped into the car early that ill-fated morning for his record run, Craig had requested a wind profile. It came back, “Crosswind One-point-five mph.” When the SOA crew fired the J-79, it developed a fluid leak and was shut down. As the crew tightened some fittings with their wrenches, a cloud cover blew in over the playa, obscuring Breedlove’s vision. He continued to wait, and kept his game face on while still strapped into the cockpit. Finally, the clouds lifted and Craig could see the 13-mile black stripe that was his sole guidance system down the course. Finally, four hours after the original time of departure, all systems were go and Craig requested another wind profile. The response over the radio was “Crosswind at One-Five mph.” Knowing that the SOA could only withstand a crosswind of 5 mph or less, in his zeal to go 700 mph Craig inserted a decimal point in the wind profile… He interpreted the transmission as “1.5” not “15” mph.

When the car tipped up on its side and went into a skid, “I had dirt in the windshield, and I really couldn’t see what was happening,” he said. “I thought I’d probably had it, that this was going to be it.”

The next available permit for speed trials would be in September, 1997.

*****

On the eve of the press conferences in Reno that will hail the Mach 1 attempts, I arrive at the Reno Airport after spending the flight engaging in heavy and heated discourse with a geeky film buff about the aforementioned Spencer Tracy movie. I am heavily mythologizing not only the flick, but also the actual location of Black Rock itself. He’s not buying it.

“Yeah,” I said with authority, “there is a coffee shop called ‘Bruno’s’ that is right across the street from the train station used in Bad Day at Black Rock. It has to be the same diner coffee shop where Spencer Tracy—with his only good arm—karate-chopped Ernest Borgnine in the throat.”

“Well that can’t be,” the geek in the seat next to me sniffs, as he ramps his bifocals up the bridge of his nose. “I have the laserdisc in my library and on one of the Second Audio Programs the director, John Sturges, explains at length how they used these abandoned railroad tracks they found in Bishop, California for the train scenes. That fictitious coffee shop was actually a set on a back lot in Burbank.”

“I’m telling you they shot this film in Gerlach, Nevada. I’ve been there AND I’ve seen the movie. Spencer Tracy gets off the friggin’ train in Gerlach.”

“That sir is empirically impossible,” the geek bleats. “The production never set foot in Nevada. Rent the laserdisc.”

“Laserdiscs are Satanic.”

When the plane lands, en route to scoring a rent-a-car I go to the Information Booth in hopes of procuring a map of the Gerlach area—I’ve been there before, but this is the kind of terrain where you just don’t want to get lost. There is a kindly, slightly senilitic Chamber of Commerce croater behind the counter who asks me where I am headed. I tell him, “Black Rock,” so he says, “Lovelock, it’s right here, “ and he points to the town of Lovelock  on the map.

“No,” I say, “ummm, Black Rock, out by Gerlach.”

“Ohhh; Tomahawk, it’s right here, just take I-80 east past…”

“No, no, no,” I interrupt and point to my destination on his map, crinkling it a little bit. “Black Rock, out by Gerlach.”

“O-h-h-h, Black Rock. That’s easy: Just take I-80 east to Fernley and take 447 north to  Gerlach. It’ll take you right to the station where Spencer Tracy got off the train.”

“Actually,” I pipe up, “that movie was shot in Bishop, California and on a back lot in Burbank.”

“You have a nice drive, sir.”

****

“Ladies, gentlemen, and members of the press, we are here to go Mach 1. Getting the record back does not interest us. Going 700 mph does not interest us. We are here to go Mach 1.”

Thus sayeth Richard Noble hisself from the podium at a press conference in a downtown Reno casino a couple of days after Labor Day, 1997. His audience was a motley mix of motorsports journalists, a couple of local betacam crews, some curious tourists (who strolled away from the keno girls after gazing through the tinted casino windows at what looked to be a phallic-shaped 10-ton spaceship that had landed by the valet parking), and some local street people who were intrigued by the commotion and had sniffed out the prospect of free Danishes and coffee.

Noble’s “No Sleep ‘till Supersonic” gauntlet was throw down just hours after his exhausted troops had arrived in Nevada on a blitzkrieg rock-and-roll-180 flight from the Farnborough hangar, jet lagged, sleep deprived and immaculately clad in matching green uniforms.

Cut to: the SOA press conference at a casino across town. Craig Breedlove was nonplussed by Noble’s earlier speech and retaliated by saying, “I spoke to Richard early on in his design process and he’d said that he’d decided they needed a twin-engine design and that was where we differed.

“I said, ‘Well, I really don’t think you need two,’ and he said, ‘All land speed record cars have always underperformed.’ I said, ‘I really haven’t found that to be true—I had a J-47 that I really think I could have reached 600 mph with. Maybe you experienced a lot higher drag numbers than I have.’ In any case, that was their philosophy: Really screw the car down, just suck it down with a lot of ground effects. Just power it through—(and) it’s a very stable way to do it.” But not the SOA way.

“The problem I saw at Black Rock early on in this design concept with Richard was sinking in,” Breedlove continued. “I went to Ken Norris and asked what their (SSC) ground loadings were and he told me they were at 13,000 lbs. (of downforce). I asked how they were distributed and he said, ‘No, that’s on the front wheels.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re aware that you guys are going to have so much rolling drag that you guys are never going to get the record.’ He said they’d been discussing that and the only thing is that Richard is very reluctant to point the car up any because of the flying problem.”

Conversely, for his Mach 1 endeavors, Breedlove in essence eyeball-aeroed a projectile in the shape of an arrow. Using a hot-rodded J-79 General Electric jet engine from a Navy F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft for motivation, Craig visualized a sleek, narrow dart that would partake of the J-79’s 22,650 pounds of thrust (45,000 horsepower) and finesse the shockwaves that emanate when a vehicle climbs through  a transonic slipstream into—BOOM—a supersonic slipstream.

“When we ran Sonic 1 at 600 mph (1965) we had no weight on the front end. I’m not saying that’s a prudent way to do it, but that’s just the fact of the matter. Somewhere between 13,000 lbs. and zero is the speed record.”

****

After seven years of research and development as well as “dancing-as-fast-as-I-can” cajoling of corporations, the match was finally on: A quintessential California hot rodder arm wrestling a permutation of the British military industrial complex.

But although the match was on, there were still many obstacles in the path of both teams, not the least of which was negative cash flow. To facilitate the arrival of the Brits from Farnborough into Reno Int’l Airport—keep in mind it required 250,00 gallons of jet fuel to top off an Antonov AN-124 Russian cargo plane (the only vehicle in existence with enough trunk space to transport the Thrust’s 80-ton portable skunk works)—Noble appealed for alms via the London Daily Telegraph and the Internet. The vox populi responded with a vengeance. Thrust SSC got its jet fuel.

Ultimately, 20 percent of the funding for the Thrust effort came from Noble shaking the virtual bushes of cyberspace. Amazing.

*****

“My best wishes to all involved in Thrust SSC’s attempt to be the first through the sound barrier on land. This project is a graphic illustration of British enterprise and engineering at its best.  Good luck. The whole country is behind you.”—Tony Blair, British Prime Minister.

“It’s all about beating the British system. If there were any British government involvement (in Thrust SSC) we would end up with somebody on our board, okay? And this has to be a little organization that is very flexible and can dance and weave. The last thing we want is that sort of person on the board.”—Richard Noble.

*****

In May of ‘97 the Brits had made a return trip to Jordan for more shakedown runs—they managed to get the SSC up to 540 mph, which was apparently all that patchy surface could handle—and they were treated like royalty. Pomp and circumstance is not much in evidence in Gerlach, NV when the Thrust SSC mates first arrive. The Brits are homeless. Gerlach is a town of 300—counting the scorpions—and lodging is sketchy. There is one motel, “Bruno’s,” which is also the name of the bar and the coffee shop, all of which are named eponymously for the town czar, a lanky, bent elderly Italian with the kind of disposition only slightly surlier than that of Benito Mussolini’s. Despite Thrust SSC’s scout team undertaking a reconnaissance trip in April to secure the permits and lodging crucial to their mission, it has all turned to shit: Bruno double-booked all the available lodging and ultimately rented his rooms to the highest bidder: the SOA contingent.

Right then, the Brits are boycotting that turncoat Bruno.  They  adjourn to the bar next door, The Miners Club, and discuss Plan B. After enjoining Bev, the barkeep, to “Give us a fag, wouldya’ love?” (Loosely translated, “I’d like to purchase a package of cigarettes”), the affable Brits begin making friends with the locals, particularly Bev.

So picture this: Richard Noble and his lads (20 clamoring Brits clad in matching RAF-green) are hoisting Coors in a dusty, desert Dew-Do-Drop-Inn (this about as bizarre as it gets, in my book) when one of Noble’s crew members shushes the entire bar. The local teevee news is reporting on that morning’s press conference (“Going 700 mph does not interest us. We are here to go Mach 1…”) at the casino in Reno. Suddenly the videotape cuts to the chipper studio humanoid broadcaster who closes the report with this coda, “Noble and his team are taking Saturday off in observance of Princess Di’s funeral.”

Simultaneously Richard Noble, OBE does a “say wot??” double-take while his overworked and underpaid entourage cheer and Bev pours more drinks.

They didn’t get the day off. Nor did they care, really. All of which underscores this question: What is it about Noble that inspires his troops, his lads, to persevere in high-desert heat to erect a portable self-contained military-industrial complex that meets the criteria for the digital era’s standard for data gathering, all on a dry lakebed that time forgot?

The answer is that is it is not explainable by the notion of “technological enthusiasm,” a phrase that has recently come to explain everything from hot rodding to the Apollo moon shot. The answer is deeper, more atavistic and completely primeval. The answer has roots that extend into the quintessence of matter: The universe is expanding. By extrapolation, consciousness is expanding, constantly encroaching into realms of the unknown. The technological enthusiast must go THERE, the technological enthusiast will devour and outmaneuver whatever is his or her way: Pauites, the laws of aerodynamics, Newtonian physics, whatever.

Thus you have some of the finest minds of our lifetime sleeping on other people’s couches, on their hands and knees picking up pebbles off the desert floor, all so they can have their moon shot.

Nobody exemplifies this “technological enthusiasm” more than Ron Ayers. Although retired and in the twilight of his stay here on Planet Earth, Ayers was as active as any of the fresh-faced Mach 1 Clubbers on holiday from the university.

Nearly a month after the Thrusters had arrived and were continuing to creep into the transonic speed range, I eavesdropped on Ayers as he was explaining his theories on supersonic travel in a motorcar to a bewildered and besotted patron in the Miner’s Club. Ayers was using a shot glass as a prop that represented the Thrust SSC and was gingerly gliding it along the surface of the bar to illustrate his theories about subsonic, trans-sonic, and supersonic pressure waves and how they would affect the handing of the Thrust SSC.

The guy at the bar was asking Ayers why don’t you Brits just put the hammer down and go Mach 1 and be done with it?

Ayers explained the SSC design teams rationale for chipping away at ever-increasing speeds: “The aerodynamic forces would be simply enormous, enough to lift the car and throw it around like an autumn leaf in a gale,” he said. “The crux of the problem is knowing how the flow would behave underneath the car at sonic speeds and what would happen to shockwaves in that region.”

The guy on the bar stool next nodded as if he comprehended Ayers’ riff.

“The most important thing,” he concluded as Bev the bartender repossessed the shot glass and put it to less theoretical use, “is that we don’t obliterate Andy.”

*****

And so it went at Black Rock: It was a month replete with sandstorms, rain, and incessant fod. Early on, Breedlove had “fodded” his engine when he sucked a bolt into the combustion chamber. At times it was like Waiting for Godot. It was a month of hurry-up-and-wait, hey maybe tomorrow is the day. It was an exercise in endurance. Occasionally sandstorms would kick in and nullify the very thorough “de-fodding” (removing debris from the 13 mile courses) that took place during the day. In addition to the capricious, recalcitrant weather that made a mockery of the Mach 1 club’s perpetual de-fodding efforts, the Brits were plagued with a malfunctioning on-board computer that would sense non-existing turbulence and kill both engines at 400 mph. The SSC software phreaks would chase after the jet car at 180 mph in a hot-rodded XJ12  Jaguar and blow some fresh code out off a laptop into the onboard computer’s SCSI port.

Through all of this both Bruno’s and the Miner’s Club in Gerlach became like Algonquin Rooms for the LSR maniacs who gathered on the playa in search of the Big Bang. The conversation was always good. It was during these nights that I engaged Noble in a dialogue about overcoming obstacles. He insisted that the two forays into Jordan prepared the Thrust team for any possible catastrophic eventuality.

“The problem with Jordan,” he said, “is that we built a car that was extremely unconventional and very complex. We took it out there with a very green crew, so we had the problems of sorting out the crew, sorting out the car and, even worse, sorting out the desert. It hammered the hell out of the car…(after) we cleared 170 miles of stone. And a lot of that was on our hands and knees.”

Another night I got a similar recollection from Andy Green. “We had gone out there with a car with a lot of features that people said couldn’t work: rear-wheel steering, twin engines, the computers,” he said. “We went out there and we had a lot of problems with rear-wheel steer. And the engineering fixed it out there in the desert—we got the car to work right out there in Jordan. Everything that could have gone wrong with everything we had did—and we fixed all of it. The only thing we couldn’t fix was the weather.”

“The biggest obstacle wasn’t the fod or the weather,” said Simon Rogers, one of the Thrust SSC microlight pilots whose job description was to patrol the desert looking for fod. “Some days we would have to abandon a run because I would spot camels straggling across the track or Iranians rampaging across the desert smuggling massive amounts of petrol in a lorry (tanker truck).”

But perhaps the finest quote I was able to extricate from the Brits came from Green when I asked him what possessed him to be the first driver of an automobile to burst through the Sound Barrier. He said, “Nobody knows what’s there because nobody has ever been there.”

It was a haiku for the technological enthusiast.

*****

I asked Andy Green to describe the differences in handling a Tornado fight plane and the Thrust SSC. “The car has a lot more acceleration than a jet fighter,” he said. “It has two jet fighter engines with half the weight of a jet fighter—tremendous acceleration.” He said he enjoyed his “holiday” from the RAF while he was moonlighting with the Thrust team. “You only run when the weather is nice, everything is good for you and the vehicle is perfectly sensible.”

*****

Einstein proved that space and time both bend. Empirical confirmation of this phenomena existed at Black Rock on the day the Brits went supersonic. There is a parallax of cones that delineate the boundary of the race course, from the shut down area through the “measured mile” speed trap all the way to the launch pad. With the human eye, the cones gradually meld into the floor of the lakebed itself.  Off on the horizon, a puff of dusty exhaust blossoms like Teutonic smoke signals as the crewmembers spin the Thrust SSC’s turbines and purge the afterburners of its Spey 202s. But this dervish of pyrotechnical activity transpires approximately 45 degrees off axis of the parallax view. Space bends. You are witnessing the curvature of the Earth.

“Thrust SSC is rolling,” the radio hums. For the first mile of the record run, the machine is merely cruising at speeds that would not bat the eye of a highway patrolman in Montana. This is precautionary, to avoid creating a vacuum in the 202’s intake which would suck pebbles and arrowheads off the lakebed and into the motor. At the Mile 1 marker Green stomps on the loud pedal. Instantaneously, copious amounts of thrust sock the RAF hero in the solar plexus and he’s blazing across the lakebed with a rooster-tail of dust and exhaust in his wake as tall as Noble’s phone bill. The trajectory of the vehicle appears to be bending on an exponential curve, even though it is straight as a Southern Baptist. Everything is strangely silent, despite the fact that the machine must be making prodigious thunder in its wake. (Isn’t it?). Suddenly, the trajectory appears to change and is completely linear… it is absolutely boogeying… Thrust SSC enters the measured mile and… silence… a mushroom cloud begins to manifest itself in the wake of the vehicle and then WHHHOOOOSSSSHHH…. fuck that is loud! The sound of two fighter plane engines with turbines spinning at warp speed rattles the playa and the schoolhouse in Gerlach. Time bends.

*****

On October 13, 1997, one day before the 50^th anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s supersonic rocket ride in the Bell X-1 airplane, Andy Green broke the sound barrier on land. He recorded speeds of 764.168 and 758.102 mph, at Mach numbers of 1.007 and 1.000. The timekeepers at the United States Auto Club could not confirm these numbers as an official FIA record as the prerequisite “back-up” run missed the one-hour window by 43 seconds.  Two days later, Green again performed back-to-back supersonic runs—this time within the allotted hour—at speeds of 759.333 (Mach 1.015) and 766.609 mph (Mach 1.020), with an official two-way average of 763.035 mph.

As his crew packed up the SSC portable skunk works, Richard Noble made no mention of his impending afternoon tea with the Queen of England. However, he did say, “I’m going to Brazil to hide from the creditors.” The Thrust SSC will be mothballed in a museum, never to run again.

Craig Breedlove is still on the playa, albeit with a new goal: to be the first man to travel at 800 mph on land. He clocked 636 mph as this story was filed.

*****

And there you have it: The theoretical work of Ayers, Bowsher, Noble and the entire entourage of the Thrust SSC—as articulated by Andy Green’s cockpit acumen—has been established. And it confirms this notion: The universe is expanding. Just ask Mr. Ayers the next time you see him at the Miner’s Club, having a drink with Spencer Tracy.

(Originally published in Drag Racing Monthly.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 7, 2010, K-Bomb Centcom, Los Angeles, CA—In what is arguably a drag-strip journalism first, both Cole Coonce’s Top Fuel Wormhole (his collection of drag racing essays), and its predecessor, Infinity Over Zero (an impressionistic history of the Land Speed Record), have both gone electric. Which is to say these may or may not be the first books on the topics to have a presence on Amazon.com’s Kindle store, but, arguably, these are the first essential ones.

With new, paper-less versions of both of Coonce’s rocket-fueled books now specially formatted for e-readers, modern motor-sports esthetes can download these delicious digital documents and enjoy them with the knowledge that the trees spared by the lack of pulp-processing can now serve as emissions credits for burning rubber and fouling spark plugs.

To that end, K-Bomb Publishing, the imprint that produced both the electric and paper versions of these thick tomes, encourages all consumers to brandish their Kindles at the drag races and, as the next pair of monopropellant-powered Funny Cars blasts by, exclaim to anybody who can hear over the noise that with enough pulp-free purchases of Top Fuel Wormhole, drag racing could ultimately be considered carbon neutral.

Indeed, with an electronic acquisition of Top Fuel Wormhole, the drag-racing reader can enjoy Coonce’s exhaustive essays on San Fernando Raceway, Arley Langlo, Lions Drag Strip, “Wild Willie” Borsch, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, Shirley Muldowney, “Jocko” Johnson, Blaine Johnson, the “Surfers,” Tony Pedregon, Mendy Fry, John Force and others, guilt-free! A similar, relaxed experience is available with the consumption of Infinity Over Zero, which recounts Andy Green’s smashing of both the Land Speed Record and the actual Sound Barrier in a jet-powered car, and explores the intrepid exploits of other fearless land-speed racers such as John Cobb, Mickey Thompson, Glen Leasher, Craig Breedlove, Art Arfons, Gary Gabelich and more.

These thorough, stout books are available for wireless auto-delivery to one’s e-reader for the nice prices of $6.95 (Infinity) and $7.95 (Top Fuel Wormhole).

And for old-school consumers, hard copies of both Wormhole and Infinity Over Zero can still be purchased, of course, at Amazon and elsewhere. But that’s hardly cool these day, is it?

Top Fuel Wormhole is now Kindle-ready

Beyond memories and quotes from notorious compatriots such as Don “the Snake” Prudhomme and “240 Gordie” Bonin, in this feature Leong really opened up to writer Cole Coonce with his thoughts about his life as a nitro-addled greenhorn driver in the early 1960s; his early successes dominating NHRA’s Top Fuel Eliminator with his Hawaiian slingshot dragster; his professional life as a barnstorming Funny Car maven in the 1970s; his involvement in NHRA cutthroat, corporate-enabled circuit of the 1990s; and now as a tuner and consultant in the exploding nostalgia-style AA/Funny Car scene. Essential reading. Mahalo. -30-

Roland Leong, as featured in the May HOT ROD Magazine

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MURPHY MAKES HISTORY AND MARCHES TO GLORY (excerpt)

Jim Murphy and the WW Two Top Fueler @ the 1998 March Meet (photo by Cole Coonce)

Goodguys 39th March Meet, Famoso Raceway, March 13-15, 1998—Wam! Bam! Wallakazaam! What a rootin’ tootin’ drag race! And it all boiled down to two dragsters—the venerable awe-inspiring, Jim Murphy-shoed W.W. Two machine against the immaculate fresh-outta’-the-oven Foothill Flyer slingshot (shoed by “Nitro Neil” Bisciglia)—squaring off for all the prestige and glory that is part and parcel of winning Top Fuel Eliminator at the March Meet.

The box score will reveal that Murphy did a masterful job of negotiating W.W. Two past the traction-deficient bottom end and posted a quarter-mile elapsed time of 6.26 seconds to defeat the Foothill Flyer, which began spinning the tires about 300 feet into the run whereupon Bisciglia prudently shut off the engine while savoring runner-up status. But this doesn’t do the March Meet justice, and once the smoke cleared after this final pair of fuelers BA-WHAPPED their way down the quarter mile, it was hard not to reflect on a March Meet that was absolutely loaded with awe-inspiring moments…

Indeed, there were so many highlights, this writer is at a loss as to where to starting litanizing them; The beginning would be the logical place to start, I guess, but that was Friday night’s qualifying session, which was rained out—no epic moments there. But come Saturday, it was hellzapoppin’ right off the bat, courtesy of Denver Schutz. Schutz catapulted his way to the #1 qualifying position of the 8-car show (where he stayed) with an early shut off (!) 6.01 @ 209 mph, a run that was as smooth as a baby’s keister to the 1/8^th mile—in fact, the Eirich, Schiller & Schutz Ground Zero fueler clocked an unprecedented 203 mph at half-track—before tire shake forced Schutz to abort the run. “Everybody’s accusing me of shutting it off early all the time, falling on my ass in order to save (the engine)—well, I’m tired of doing that! But it was vibrating so bad down there, the tires were so far out of balance, I couldn’t see,” said an exhilarated Schutz, champing at the prospect of driving it out the back door come race day. No matter how stunning, however, this wasn’t the run that sent the railbirds into orbit. Nor was the #2 shot by Mike McClennan, who wowed ‘em with a rod-tossin’, crank-charrin’ 6.09 @ 218…

The biggest damage to the spectator’s and participant’s sense of reality transpired during the final session of Top Fuel qualifying late Saturday afternoon, when the wheat began to separate from the chaff. Amongst the 21 cars entered, the list of non-qualifiers as of Saturday afternoon would make for a pretty decent hot-rod harvest unto itself: Champion Speed Shop, Fuller & Dunlap, Pure Hell, The Birky Bunch, the Foothill Flyer, W.W. Two, Steiner & Berger and others were all in line to get tickets to Sunday’s dance.

Dunlap punched his ticket early, clocking a 6.15 at 216 mph, which enabled the Mike Fuller MotorsportsFugowie fueler which was doin’ the monkey at 180 mph through the lights and playing pong with the guardrails while upside down. (Butch was okay… the once-gorgeous race car was actually fairly intact except for a missing rear wheel and slick, an obliterated set of front tires, a bongoed blower set-up and an inch or so of chrome-moly missing off of the top of the roll cage… yikes! Suffice it to say, Butch, who is an excavator and contractor when he ain’t running a Top Fuel dragster, operated very little heavy machinery the rest of the weekend; in fact, nothing more strenuous than a blender. Doctor’s orders!) machine to enter the show—and also kept him out in front of Butch Blair’s barrel-rolling

More high drama manifested when “Nitro Neil” attempted to qualify the brand new Stirling-chassied Foothill Flyer, which arrived at engine czar Ken Castagnino’s shop at 6 am the previous Monday morning—sans motor. It had been a tumultuous, topsy-turvy week for Neil, car owner Pete Jensen, engine donor Ron “Pro” Welty and the rest of the Foothill Flyer’s “Free Mexican Air Force,” as they thrashed on the dragster for five days, ultimately towing to Bakersfield without having even fired the engine.

More than one member of the nitro cognoscenti raised an eyebrow in disbelief as the FMAF worked like an Alabama chain gang to finish prepping the new car, only to smoke the tires during their first two qualifying attempts. All that overtime paid off, however, as Neil silenced the non-believers with an in-the-pocket 6.37 at 224 mph, a clocking which prevailed for 8^th and final position on the eliminator ladder.

Once the euphoria of Bisciglia’s accomplishment was digested, the place went absolutely ballistic after the W.W. Two’s subsequent benchmark performance, the obliteration of the 250 speed barrier, as Jim Murphy turned a time of 6.25 seconds @ 250.00 mph. What makes this feat even more startling is the notion that is was all a mistake… “It was a little unexpected,” said W.W. Two czar, Jim Herbert. “We tried to soften everything just to get down the track—we weren’t in the program—the new combination (Mastodon aluminum heads) seems to be making a little different power curve.”

Herbert’s driver describes this momentous run as kind of a turkey—at last initially. “I held the brake, it was a screwed up run. it was real doggy off the start.” After Murphy let go of the brake handle, the tires started spinning again and the car veers toward the guardrail, so Murphy grabbed the brake again! “It was really screwed up,” Murphy reiterates. But all this tugging on the brakes loaded the motor REAL GOOD… when Murphy finally let go of the brake at about 700 feet into the run (while heroically hugging the guardrail) the motor was makin’ bacon like Farmer John on disco biscuits… “It was pullin’ and pullin’ and pullin’,” said Murphy later. “I was gonna run it right to the light—I wanted to make sure we got in. We didn’t want to be sitting out.”

“I don’t like a lot of speed; speed hurts things, luckily it didn’t this time,” Herbert revealed. (Actually, further evaluation proved they had hurt a main bearing.) “He got a little disorientated down there,” Herbert continued. “The car was still moving at half track on him, he kind of lost where he was at and when it did hook up it started to haul ass.” Herbert tersely doled out praise for his driver: “He drove the wheels off of it; we’re here to be in the show. I’m not a very good loser.” — Cole Coonce

(Originally published in Drag Racing USA)

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JIM HERBERT R.I.P.

Jim Herbert plugs his ears (photo by Cole Coonce)

MARCH 3, 1999—It is with great sorrow that I report that Jim Herbert, majordomo of the W.W. Two AA/Fuel Dragster, passed on this morning.

Details are still forthcoming, but apparently it was heart related. The timing of his passing is somewhat ironic because his health had been sketchy for years, but he really seemed to be getting healthier lately.

I was discussing benchmarks recently with some Internet bleacher bums and some folks mentioned the 6.000 that Ted “the Bad Lieutenant” Taylor recorded in the W.W. Two car as a definitive moment in drag-strip history. We would be remiss to mention that Herbert’s hot rod was the second slingshot in the 5’s. He also tuned his latest driver, Jim Murphy, to that 250 mph moon shot at Famoso.

I had the honor of “getting next” to Herbert during the course of my drag strip journalism endeavors—which is to say he would return my phone calls. Straight up, nobody commanded my respect more than this man—and I have had the pleasure of meeting a plethora of both abstract and forward thinkers in a variety of mediums. Herbert, however, had really been in a groove for the last decade or so. It was a real privilege to meet the man as he truly hit his stride.

One of the most epic sights in drag racing was watching Herbert snap the ground wire off the mag and WHAPP! WHAPP! WHAPP! the mighty, beastly W.W. Two fueler would awaken with a roar. Herbert would point the driver (Taylor, Gary Ritter, Murphy) into the beams and with these few graceful and economic hand gestures he would let everyone gathered around the starting line know exactly whom they were reckoning with.

“Epic.” “Graceful.” Hey! We should all hit our marks with such dignity and panache. Jim, the drag strip community will be poorer without your presence. You were truly a hero, whose penchant for setting racers and race fans on their ear was matched only by your humility and modesty.

I can’t tell you how happy I am for you. You had the opportunity to shine like a diamond, but you were never ostentatious. You will be missed. — Cole Coonce

(Originally published in Nitronic Research)

A bittersweet victory. (photo by Cole Coonce)

WW TWO IN BAKERSFIELD TEAR-JERKER

Goodguys 40th March Meet, Famoso Raceway, March 13-15—It was perhaps the most poignant final round in the history of the sport…

Facing off against “Wild Bill” Alexander for the honor of Top Fuel Eliminator at the Goodguys March Meet was the W.W. Two AA/Fuel Dragster, the defending champs, who were sans their esteemed point man, Jim “the Lizard” Herbert, who had passed on to the Great Flow Bench in the Sky a mere ten days prior, a victim of a heart aneurysm.

Herbert died with the secrets of his tune-up still locked in his noggin. Defense of the March Meet title was left to his surviving teammates (who were ambivalent about campaigning the dragster in Herbert’s absence but were persuaded to go racing by Herbert’s widow, Cheri) and their ability to unlock and decipher the secrets of a complicated matrix of nozzles, weights and measures that comprised the blown-Chrysler-on-nitro tune-up that had been taken to the grave. Befitting of a man of his stature, the winner of Top Fuel Eliminator at the March Meet was also the recipient of the Jim Herbert Memorial Trophy.

During qualifying, the chances of driver Jim “Holy Smokes” Murphy and the rest of the W.W. Two team transforming their appearance here into a proper wake seemed remote. After three qualifying attempts, they anchored the bump spot with an elapsed time of 6.23, far off the pace set by “Swingin’ Sammy” Hale in the Champion Speed Shop/Juxtapoz Chevy-powered fueler, who had rocketed to an unprecedented 5.87 at 232 mph to snare the pole position.

(As a parenthetical to Hale’s benchmark—“We’re going to bypass the .90s,” is how “Swingin’ Sammy” prophesied the run—bodacious manifold pressure kicked out both the ingress and egress lines of the oil system, creating a geyser of Torco that lubricated the left slick like a banana peel on a back-lot sidewalk. As an oil-blind Hale fought for control of his 230 mph Valdez, jettisoned oil actually doused the driver in the next lane, Circuit Breaker hot shoe Howard Haight, who was busy swapping lanes—not once but twice—with the caroming Champion machine. To reiterate, in addition to Sammy, Howard Haight also received an oil bath… from the digger in the other lane! Howard, who has cut his teeth on a variety of mean machines including the infamous Pure Heaven AA/Fuel Altered, said it was the scariest ride he had ever taken.)

Despite the performance of the W.W. Two machine being well behind the curve of Sammy Hale’s moon shot, during eliminations kismet, providence and perspiration intervened on behalf of Herbert’s survivors… Murphy began the afternoon by zipping past Gerry Steiner, 6.11 @ 215 mph to Steiner’s charging 6.13, 242 mph. (As a consolation, Steiner’s boisterous assault on the lights stood for Top Speed of the Meet.) In the semi-finals, Murphy upped the ante with a 6.09 clocking that dropped Denver Schutz’s trailing 6.29. (Note: FTN would be remiss in not mentioning Schutz’s first-round opponent, Jack Harris in the Dale “the Snail” Emory-tuned Nitro Thunder dragster; these guys qualified 2^nd at a rollicking 6.04 but had traction problems against Schutz. . . )

On the other side of the ladder, however, Alexander, shoe for Frank “Root Beer” Hedge’s Mastercam team the unenviable #5 position on the elimination ladder and pitted Alexander against “Swingin’ Sammy” Hale. But in eliminations the Champion team made a strategic mistake as the Chevy put out a cylinder or two, lost and regained traction and sashayed to a losing 6.54 against Bill’s superior 6.17 at an impressive 234 mph. Despite an aggressive clutch set-up, fate continued to bless Alexander in the semi-final round of eliminations. His competition, Rick McGee in the Tedford, Hester & McGee entry, appeared en route to an easy victory as the Mastercam machine struck the tires on the launch and limped down the racetrack. At 1000 feet, however, as McGee was all alone ten yards from the end zone, he fumbled, striking the centerline cones and was disqualified. McGee’s transgression left Hedge & Alexander with the uneasy task of playing Snidely Whiplash to the W.W. Two team’s Dudley Dooright. . .

Indeed, as Hedge emerged from the undulating clouds of tire smoke en route to his tow vehicle and was informed that he actually had won that heat, he was noticeably shaken and appeared rather distraught. “This is Herbert’s race,” he said, moments before regaining his senses and cranking up both the nitro percentage and the lead on the magneto.

Despite any perceived trepidation concerning spoiling a Cinderella story, the Mastercam machine was loaded like an elephant gun in the final round. The motor was as loud, over-the-top and boisterous as it has ever sounded. The burnout was particularly deafening. As “Wild Bill” pulled ‘er into the beams, the blower straps caught on fire due to a leak out of the left header bank. Starter Larry Sutton (of Lions Drag Strip fame and an absolute Timelord of the Xmas tree) doused the flames with a fire extinguisher and motioned Bill into the beams (!); the blower straps caught on fire again and Sutton hit the extinguisher once more before giving Alexander the kill sign. Sutton then wheeled around and held up one finger to Murphy, signifying a solo shot to victory. It was a touching coda to one of the most emotional weekends in drag racing as crew members gathered around Murphy and the W.W. Two machine in a semi-circle, most of whom raised the right hand and the air and extended their index fingers in salute to their fallen leader. As Murphy popped the parachutes at the culmination of a 6.23, 208 victory lap, railbirds, racers and bleacher bums were openly weeping.

In general, the event was a slam-dunk success. The staging lanes, bleachers and porta-potties were all filled to capacity. Moreover, the impromptu tribute to Jim Herbert was as inspired as it was implausible. But the success of W.W. Two—in spite of the absence of their fallen leader—begs this question: When was the last time you cried at a drag race? — Cole Coonce

(Originally published in Full Throttle News)

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TOP FUEL WORMHOLE is available here.

HOT ROD Magazine’s feature on octogenarian dragster-driver Chris Karamesines is now available both on the newsstand and online.

Nitro-addled cybernauts can point their browsers here: ‘Never Slow Down: Keeping The Candles Lit With Chris “The Golden Greek” Karamesines’

Penned by author and drag strip journalist Cole Coonce, Karamesines rags-to-drag-strip-hero story is timeless — as is, apparently, “The Greek” himself, who, between rounds of competition in Top Fuel at last November’s NHRA Finals, blew out the candles on a birthday cake commemorating his eighty-one years on Planet Earth, packed his parachutes and then consented to his interview with Coonce, in which he looked back at his epic history. While retracing his sixty years of racing, Chris’s biographical retrospective included a thorough analysis of Karamesines’ provocative and debatable 1960 clocking of 204 mph in his Chizler AA/Fuel Dragster — an occurrence that has historians, bleachers bums and members of drag racing Fourth Estate still arguing amongst each other.

Because of Karamesines apparent disregard for — if not subversion of — the dictates of time as we know it, his story seems like perfect fodder for a Second Volume of Top Fuel Wormhole.

(photo by Cole Coonce)

“We did it all, and we’ll never see times like these again.”—Dean Batchelor, The American Hot Rod.

At first I thought it was a mirage. Or an apparition. I was suffering from an acute lack of sleep, my disorientation and sensory deprivation amplified by a lack of proper coffee as well as the blinding reflection of the morning sun as it bounced off of the milky-white, crystallized floor of the dry lakebed. I shook my head, threw back the dregs of the caffeine, and blinked. It was no hallucination. There I was at Edwards AFB, deep in the heart of the cruel and unforgiving Mojave Desert, a landscape that a French philosopher once called a “slow catastrophe,” and three paces from my bones was the man who organized hot rodding after WWII on this very same uninhabitable desert. That’s right: Wally Parks, President of the Southern California Timing Association in 1946. Editor of Petersen Publishing’s Hot Rod Magazinein 1948. President of the National Hot Rod Association during its birthin’ in 1951, until Dallas Gardner stepped in during the Reagan Years. And probably the first man to call the linear pursuit of horsepower a “drag race,” way back in 1939 in the Racing News.

I was stunned and I was silent. I did not know how to approach the man. Or, closer to the heart of the matter, maybe I did not know how to approach the myth and the legend that is Wally Parks as he stood there larger-than-life, towering over the proceedings at the most mystical and legendary plot of real estate in these here United States of America.

Ah yes, the mythology. There has been more history, folklore, and mythology concocted at the Muroc Dry Lake than anywhere else on the planet since the days of Apollo and Aphrodite making noise on Mt. Olympus. For it was at this wasteland where the Muroc Racing Association, predecessor to the SCTA, predecessor to the Russetta Timing Association, predecessor to the NHRA, etc., etc., etc., began in 1932, hosting competition between renegade hot rodders from the far side of the San Gabriel Mountains, men who would test their mettle, bravado and mechanical acumen by racing hari-kari across the lakebed, sometimes four or five abreast, kicking up such a furious tempest of dust and debris in their wake that only the leader of the pack could actually see where he was going. The other drivers? Well, crashing into your colleagues and barrel-rolling, hobbling into the nearest hospital in Palmdale, 30 miles away via an undulating washboard of a dirt road, only to find upon your return—assuming you survived—what was left of your race car had been scavenged and stripped down to the frame rails, that was the price one paid for inferior horsepower out there in the Mojave Desert during the years of Herbert Hoover and FDR. This, race fans, was the true genesis of drag racing.

Beyond the isolation of this primeval racing on the lakebeds and just when we thought America had already made the world safe for democracy, a funny thing happened beyond either pond that flanks these here Continental United States—the Second World War. And not to trivialize the battles Iwo Jima or Normandy, but the SoCal hot rodding community also suffered a loss in the War. By virtue of eminent domain, the Muroc Dry Lake, the birth place of drag racing, was claimed by Uncle Sam as a “proving ground” for military aerospace research and development. The pangs of this loss were mitigated by a couple of factors: The dry lakes racers and the car clubbers were migrating to other lakebeds, among them El Mirage, Harper, and Rosamond where they continued “cuttin’ the crystals” during single-file “speed trials” (side-by-side competition was now deemed entirely too unsafe at the dry lakes) nearly every weekend; as well as the fact that at night the lakester guys and the car clubbers were matching wheels at either say, Slauson Avenue or Lincoln Boulevard or Glenoaks out in the Valley; or, as early as 1950, they wuz’ changing rear tires and gear ratios, pouring increasingly generous helpings of nitromethane into the combustion chambers of their flathead Ford V-8s and “draggin’” down at CJ Hart’s chunk of airstrip known as the Santa Ana Drags out in Orange County where, for once, they didn’t have to worry about outrunning the fuzz as well as the competition.

And as Chuck Yeager banged through the palpitating turbulence of the Speed of Sound over the hallowed ground of Edwards AFB (nee Muroc Field) in October ‘47, teenagers continued racing across the alkali crystals of the Mojave, or down the concrete banks of the arid, withered L.A. River bed. Soon after Yeager’s scrotal-squeezing supersonic gonzo sleigh ride, President Eisenhower unleashed the clandestine ramjet-propelled SR-71 spy planes, which would rocket through the heavens over Muroc—50,000 feet high!—at speeds in excess of 2,000 miles per hour, subsequently blaze over the bleached bones of the coyotes in Death Valley, and ultimately descend, minutes later, 300 miles away into Nevada’s notorious Area 51. At Muroc in 1959, NASA unveiled its team of astronauts destined for the moon, the Mercury Seven.

Through all of this, there was Wally, always astute and alert as per the trends of speed-addled youth, be it time trials at the dry lakes, rumbles at the malt shop, or draggin’ at the strip. A man of epic scope and vision, he was deftly plotting the co-option, development and commodification of America’s horniness for horsepower into what Parks called in a April 1950 Hot Rod feature “Controlled Drag Racing,” as administered by his yet to be unveiled NHRA. (The birth of the NHRA itself is part and parcel emblematic of how much mythology is intrinsic to the history of hot rodding. To wit, in 1951 Parks asked Lee O. Ryan, Petersen Publishing’s GM, to compose a fictitious “letter to the editor” expressing concern over the lack of direction in hot rodding. In rebuttal, Parks proposed an organization “dedicated to safety,” while providing the gearhead with a place to race, thus decreeing the formation of the NHRA whilst simultaneously inviting everyone to join.)

Suffice it to say, what made Wally Parks’ presence out at Muroc 1996 interesting was how the NHRA, which began as a nationwide extension of the ethos of the MRA and the SCTA—y’know, bitchin’ trophies for the industrious back yard tinkerer—has metamorphosed into an organization that became a player and a schmoozer in the Multi-National Corridors of Power in America. There are no luxury suites out in the desert. There isn’t even any running water. But as I stood there blinking my eyes, there was Wally…

So the paradox is this: out of the ashes of the Dry Lakes rose the multi-headed Phoenix which is Hot Rod Magazine, the NHRA, National Dragster, the Winston $1,000,000 series, and the “members only” glass-tower corporate suites that lease for $30,000 per event so’s High Society-types can watch the races on closed-circuit monitors while sipping snifters of Napoleon Brandy and eating weenies on a stick. That entire reality is of no concern to the lakebed Bedouins, however. This is because the SCTA and the whole culture of the dry lakes have continued to exist on their own terms for all those years since WWII, albeit with a low profile. In fact, it has been flourishing out at El Mirage with dyed-in-the-wool lake guys supplemented by refugees from the drag-strip wars, veterans of the 1320 who could no longer abide the rampant parts attrition as well as the exorbitant costs of contemporary drag racing. 13,000 gearheads descended upon Muroc on Saturday April 27^th 1996, to symbolically reclaim Muroc, ironically a happening that never would have come to pass without the clout, sociopolitical machinations and handshaking ability of Wally Parks.

And like I say, while wiping the sleep out of my eyes, I stood in the shadow of the exalted hot rodder who embodies the duality of man, the avuncular and towering Wally Parks. I thrust a micro-cassette recorder in his mug, and lofted a softball of a question like, “How does it feel to be back on the dry lakes?” and away he went…

“We’re all absolutely delighted,” sez Wally, “that we’ve had a chance to come back here, because it’s been 55 years since the SCTA ran here. I think having access to this place has got as much value for historic reasons as it has for the satisfaction of running down the course. But the thing we like most is the people who have returned here, who were once up here, and the newcomers who come in to see it. We just think we’ve got 100 percent success and we are very grateful to the Air Base here and the commander for letting us be here.

“Our presence here,” he continued reciting, his towering, lean torso magnificently framed against blue skies and Jet Propulsion Laboratories’ rocket launchers burrowed into the nearby Rosamond Hills, “ties in with research and development programs and their technology and so forth, which is the spirit of Edwards AFB, the test center, which is what this is all about: people testing new ideas. It may not apply to aircraft but it all comes out of the same box.”

Aahh, the Mojave Desert is the perfect backdrop for a powerful oratory, and at 83 years of age, Wally Parks was showcasing his rhetorical skills. But something was a little too perfect about this sermonizing. I wasn’t sure if I was interviewing the man who is not only the driving force behind the SCTA’s wistful return to its Mecca, but also the embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism, or if I was merely on the ass-end of a feedback-generated tape loop fed into a 10” speaker implanted into a cryogenically-enhanced human body, not unlike, say, the walking-talking Mr. Lincoln Exhibit at Disneyland. It was weird—I’ve been dying to bench race with the Man, the Myth, the Legend that is Wally Parks, a complex man, a man who personifies the dichotomy of everything that is virtuous, controversial, banal, and perhaps even disturbing about the Master Capitalists of America, be it Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Dick Clark or Bill Gates. As sandstorms started to kick up and pelt my face with sharp crystals of fossilized mud, Wally continued riffing about America and “the pioneering spirit.” Despite the dust devils he never stopped talking. I have to confess at some point I began to tune out Parks’ monologue about the nobility of Muroc, as the repetitive read-only memory functions of his speech were kicking into high gear. I began to free-associate about Mr. Parks’ pivotal role in the SCTA “taking back Muroc” (at least for one weekend), and I began to wonder if this gesture was not unlike a long-in-the-tusk mastodon going home to his elephant’s graveyard. The speechifying continued, and as I dutifully held my micro-cassette aloft I thought, “Who is this guy? Who am I really interviewing? Machiavelli? Dwight D. Eisenhower? Charles Keating? Charles Foster Kane?” As I write this, I am still not sure…

As the interview with Wally continued, I was overcome by the swirling dust and the heat. As the temperature was climbing into the triple-digit range, the sweat and the sand and the sun block coagulated into this afterbirth-ish goop which seemed to gravitate from my brow into the recesses of my eyes. I tried closing one, then the other, but to no avail. I couldn’t see anything beyond vague forms perpendicular to the earth’s curvature—one of which was talking non-stop (Wally)—all of this tableaux more surreal and bizarre than your typical mirage. Wally was either oblivious or just nonplussed by my fevered perspiring and blinking, the loop tape continuing unabated. I knew this was my only chance to heave a curve ball at the most legendary figure in the NHRA. So as I wiped my eyes, I asked him, “Did you derive more pleasure from your tenure at the SCTA or shaping the NHRA into what it is today?” He answered, “Both, although it’s apples and oranges. One is a non-profit dedication and the other one is trying to keep a big thing going…”

At that moment, with the loop tape mechanism finally disengaged, I felt Wally and I were on the verge of a meaningful dialogue. I was poised to ask him if he felt the longevity of the SCTA was perhaps due to a reaction to the politics and fiscal policies of the NHRA. Fate intervened, however. A senior member of Wally’s entourage (I think it was his sister-in-law) sought relief from the heat and the sand and the noise, and Wally, who had been extremely gracious and accommodating with me, begged off further questions, and chivalrously went to assist the member of his party in distress. I was that close to the truth.

*****

Before, during, and after Wally’s discourse on the nobility of the pioneering spirit, various lakesters, nitrous-oxide powered coupes, land-speed streamliners, and blown Studebakers began their procession across the desert, hurtling across the lakebed towards the timing beams, over a 1.3 mile course marked by scores of pylons. There were hundreds of drivers in pursuit of various Muroc speed records in machines encompassing a multitude of engine, body, and chemical combinations. Among them was Al Teague, windin’ out his Spirit of 76 streamliner in second gear at well over 200 mph—this same combustion-engined contraption clocked a Wheel-driven land-speed record 432 mph out at Bonneville a few years back. Joaquin Arnett, who has been tippin’ the can since the late 40s, also showcased the home-built Bean Bandits nitro-burning streamliner. There were a few vintage “belly tank” lakesters—speed machines crafted out of fuel tanks from P-38 Lightning fighter planes that were liberated out of aerospace surplus yards. There was even a land speed entry from Guam.

*****

All told, before the dust settled, fourteen drivers were initiated into the Muroc 200 MPH Club. This included SCTA v.p. Mike Cook, who raced across the desert in his blown Ford T-bird at 227 mph.  While the eclectic assembly of speed machines continued kicking up gigantic rooster tails of dust, their clockings were announced over Channel 1 on citizen’s band radios, which were employed in lieu of a public address system. It was an interesting counterpoint, the juxtaposition of low-fidelity c.b. radios against the various satellite communication systems and megawatt transmitters deployed by the Air Force. Out of earshot of the “p.a.” and beyond the pylons, I encountered a messianic figure trekking across the desert in flip-flops. It was Robert “Jocko” Johnson, inventor, bohemian sculptor, and mechanical visionary. (In 1959 at Riverside, CA, Jocko stunned the world of hot rodding with an 8.35 E.T. in drag racing’s first full-bodied streamliner, a clocking 3/10ths of a second quicker than any other Top Fuel dragster. Before he could improve on this outrageous performance, the streamliner subsequently self-destructed at Lions Drag Strip.) Out at Muroc, Jocko was on a mission whose dual agenda was thus: a) to show Alex Xydias (proprietor of the “So-Cal Speed Shop” in Burbank) a brand new pocket-sized centrifugal force-powered supercharger, a device Jocko designed to replace the relatively bulky and inefficient GMC “roots” design; and b) to get a sno-cone and beat the desert heat. He invited me over to his tent for tacos later that evening and I graciously accepted.

That night, after consuming more than a few of “Jocko’s tacos” and discussing Jocko’s plan to unveil a streamliner propelled by an 18-cylinder, 25 cubic inch radial motor—capable of 400 horsepower(!)—out on the salt flats, it was time to explore the “proving grounds,” as it were. As the racers put their exotic machines to bed, the campfires, the Coleman lanterns and the barbecues provided the sole source of illumination, besides the constellations and the orbiting satellites (which, out in the Mojave Desert, are visible to the naked eye). I wandered through the pits, blown away by the massive proportions of this congregation of motorheads who had migrated to this uninhabitable air strip in the Mojave Desert. And as I waded through the nomads camping in the barren flats of the Seventh Circle of Hell, I overheard a campfire conversation about Project Mercury ace Gordo Cooper’s appearance on a “reality-based” teevee docudrama about the Paranormal, riffing about his brushes with alien spacecraft while in astronaut training. The winds began to howl, I looked up at the stars and the satellite space stations and continued walking.

I heard music over at another campsite and I followed its call. Dusty Springfield was singing “Son of a Preacher Man” over a car stereo ratcheted into the door panels of a not-exactly-cherry flamed ‘52 Chevy sedan, while a couple of “Go Cat Wild!” retro-rockabilly greaser-types, twenty-somethings who had complete and utter distaste for contemporary fashion and values, were engaged in a high-octane bench race session. At that moment I knew the Muroc Reunion was a metaphor. I stood off in the shadows, eavesdropping as these reactionary rodders debated the fall and debasement of the late Dean Moon’s legendary speed emporium, “Moon Special Equipment,” recently rechristened “Mooneyes” by its new Japanese proprietors, and which may or may not be a bastardization of the translation of “Moon.” At this point, I piped in from the darkness and suggested there was still a decent cam-grinder in the employ of “Mooneyes.”

“The issue is just because one good cam-grinder still works there,” said one lanky car clubber with a thick Cockney accent, “doesn’t mean that it isn’t the biggest sell-out in the history of (expletive) hot rodding, man.”

“Dean Moon was a genius,” his friend burped, “but it makes me want to puke that people are trying to make money off all that dashboard crap they sell behind the counters of these so-called speed shops.”

“What people are building today holds absolutely no interest to me,” returned the Brit, spilling his can of libation. “I came from (expletive) millions of miles away to live in this country because I’m a (expletive) hot rod freak, right? And when I got to this country I was so (expletive) disappointed because the entire (expletive) place had sold out. And everybody is driving Japanese (expletive) cars.

“I came to (expletive) America and I came to Muroc today because I thought it was the last bastion of hot rodding,” the émigré gearhead was gathering steam now, double-clutching his soliloquy into overdrive, “and I think that this is (expletive) great today because shit like this rolled up (points to a ‘32 Model A D/Gas lakester) and made me a believer that hot rodding is still alive. (Screw) all that painted chrome and shit, this is a proper hot rod (points to the ‘52 Chevy sedan). You know what? I hate all this ‘family values’ and wearing shorts with flames on it, like ‘blar, blar, blar’ and ‘blar, blar, blar’ and ‘Excuse me, you can’t have no beer on that site.’ ‘Ex-cuse me?’ y’know-what-I-mean? I ain’t got no kids, I don’t want no (expletive) kids, I don’t want to be in an environment where I have to watch my (expletive) behavior because there might be kids present, I want to go and hang out where the is some old (expletive) proper hot rods, man.”

“Our ancestors,” his pal extrapolated, “much like him, left Europe to do what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it. He came over here, and he found he can’t do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.”

“It’s not a case of that exactly,” the Brit resumed. “It’s a case of indoctrination. It’s a case of the asses who run the magazines these days—the writers are getting paid wages by the suits who run the magazine to say what’s trendy because the advertisers tell them to. So he has to say what is trendy, and it’s like ‘new-(expletive)-stalgia!’. What the (expletive) does that mean?

“Street rodding, as far as I’m concerned, means conforming to the rules the magazines have put down. Y’know: it’s easy to have a 350 Chevy with this person’s steering column, and this person’s (expletive) tie-rod, and this person’s (expletive) blah-blah-blah. That’s not, as far as I’m concerned, what hot rodding is all about, which is hauling shee-it out of a (expletive) junkyard and building a car on the jeeg.”

“Real hot rods don’t have tan interiors,” one of his pals summed up.

“You can build an old-looking car out of new pieces, but that doesn’t make it an old hot rod. Old hot rodding, truly, has disappeared. I think an article, really a lament, on the decline of true hot rodding would be a cool thing because nobody wants to do it—they’re scared to do it, they don’t want to put that in a magazine because they are supported by the people who are selling the parts.”

I reckoned he was correct, no magazine would publish those sentiments. I also told these adrenaline-addled hell raisers that most of their heroes—Alex Xydias, Stu Hilborn, Joaquin Arnett, etc. were in their seventies nowadays, and were probably trying to catch some shut-eye. The most reverent yet politic gesture these hep cats could make would be to turn down their stereo, put out their campfire and go to sleep…

The next morning, after a handful of test runs down the parched mud where NASA, the JPL, and the Southern California Timing Association pulled off their bizarre romantic visions (indeed the only place that could not only tolerate but actually nurture their dreams), the winds kicked in with a ferocity that rendered further speed-record attempts futile. As the mother of all sandstorms blew fiercer and more torrentially, the desert rats collapsed their tents and loaded their belongings into their motor homes, trailers, and deuce coupes and began their journey home. But for one weekend this procession of the Timelords of the Apocalypse, a gathering of tribes seriously in touch with the soul of the Universe, got to play in their Garden of Eden—never mind that the only foliage in this Garden were a few sandblasted Joshua trees out by the rocket launchers.

As the timing officials announced the cancellation of the speed trials over the c.b. radio, I closed my eyes. I could see the plume of thick, charcoal-black death smoke, emanating off of the horizon on the desert floor. And I got the chills as the stinging pricks of the torrential sands continued to dig into my face. Aerospace. Jocko Johnson. Wally Parks. Project Mercury. Rockabilly Anarchists. Sonic Booms. The SCTA. Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Drag Racing. Mach One. The Bean Bandits. They were all the same thing, big chunks of the Southern California Experience, just expressed in different ways out at Muroc. It was all a twisted, glorious manifestation of what the Mercury Seven called “Go! Fever,” a sickness that starts out innocently enough as an intellectual exercise to debunk physics via downforce (with a co-efficient of drag) or propulsion or torque, anything man, just hit the throttle!, a fever so mesmerizing that its victim becomes caught up in his quest for speed, speed, and more speed, until the rational and linear thought processes have been superseded by raw desire, damn the torpedoes and damn the consequences, I want to live man!, even if it means dying, so turn up the boost and gimme some nitro! Jocko Johnson spit out the quote that defined the existence of these veterans of the dry lake sandstorms. Over turkey meat tacos the night before he said, “The more creative you are, the closer you are to God.”

Anybody who tells you that soulless corporations are a necessary ingredient to the pursuit of horsepower has never stepped foot on the fossilized dry lakebeds of the Mojave Desert. Those who have seen and tasted the elements of the dry lakes—sandstorms, whiskey, rocket engines, nitromethane, and maximum velocity penis-shaped land speed vehicles—as they coalesce on a lunar landscape in the Mojave Desert, will tell you this: The sands will come again. Just ask Jocko. Or Wally Parks.

(Author’s note: I must acknowledge a serious debt as per literary sources that informed this article. These include: The Nearest Faraway Place by Timothy White (Henry Holt and Co. Inc.); High Performance by Robert Post (John Hopkins University); and The American Hot Rod by Dean Batchelor (Motorbooks International).)

(Originally published in Super Stock & Drag Illustrated)

(excerpted from TOP FUEL WORMHOLE: THE COLE COONCE DRAG STRIP READER, VOL. 1)

The “Wild Bill” Alexander Interview

by Cole Coonce

"Wild Bill" Alexander (photo by Ron Lewis)

This story is one of growth, transformation and alchemy as metaphor. Defined as “a medieval chemical philosophy having as its asserted aims the transmutation of base metals into gold,” the process of alchemy involves the charring of metal, a procedure that the man who came to be known as “Wild Bill” Alexander witnessed repeatedly from the cauldron of a cockpit. Indeed, nobody has encountered—and dodged—more molten metal than the bold and angry prince who answered to the name “Alexander.” Every trip down the drag strip was a potentially explosive exercise in metallurgical sorcery, which saw the alchemist himself grow and mutate from Hot Rod Hooligan into hell-bent Speed King and Conqueror to, finally, Elder Statesman of the Nitro Wars.

Alexander began his ascent into adulthood with a bad mojo. As a dyslexic schoolboy from a broken home, Bill sought comfort and camaraderie in the Bel Airs, one of the many ubiquitous car clubs that sprouted up in SoCal during the 1950s. Concurrent with leaving home at 16, he finally found a field he excelled in—and a potential outlet for his prodigious anger: Speed.

His buddies talk about Alexander’s precocious aptitude for wrestling with a hot job. “He was racing my ‘34 Vicky and it had a 3-speed on the steering column,” one Bel Air member remembers. “The gearshift lever broke off in mid-shift and he never even blinked. I was riding in the passenger seat and I couldn’t believe it. He just tossed it aside and continued shifting with a nub on the column.”

In one of the great symmetries of the era, the unsavory street racing favored by the Bel Airs thrived in an impromptu arena that was nothing if not a civic embarrassment: the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. Traditionally, rivers are florid metaphorical tableaus upon which life and culture flourish. Think of the Nile and its fertile lands which gave rise to the Pharaohs of Egypt, among them Alexander the Great. Then think of a narrow piece of muck and concrete that serves no larger purpose than that of a glorified drainage ditch. Yes, although it is known as the breeding ground of nothing except perhaps a case of dysentery, the L.A. River gave rise to the career of “Wild Bill” in the same way that the Nile enabled a rampaging young Pharaoh also known as Alexander to conquer entire empires.

At the concrete delta, Alexander’s reputation grew while outrunning not only car clubbers but also the fuzz. One night, Law Dogs surprised the river-bed drag racers and attempted to broom the juvenile ne’er-do-wells into paddy wagons. The hot rodders peeled rubber and commenced to scattering like excited particles in a science experiment. Forced to improvise, Alexander resorted to scampering in his coupe like a coyote up the dusty bridle trails of Griffith Park and up into the Hollywood Hills. . .

The chaotic, dirty gear-jamming of the L.A. River ultimately yielded to properly sanctioned speed contests at El Mirage, Bonneville and San Fernando Raceway. While operating a drill press during the week, the drag strip was where Alexander’s star shone brighter still. Part working-class hero, part ultimate cockpit chimp, “Wild Bill” was subjected to and rode out the effects of imperfections in tire technology, as well as structural, metallurgical and thermodynamic failures. But he survived the frequent bouts with carnage in style: Shoeing Ernie Alvarado’s Shudder Bug, Bill stood down the notorious and fabled Greer, Black & Prudhomme AA/Fuel Dragster for Top Eliminator at Lions December 8, 1962, a dragster eliminated by only 7 other drivers. After crashing at Fernando in ‘63, he returns to the strip and, under the aegis of horsepower-monger Jim Brissette, is newly christened “Wild Bill” Alexander as he sets Top Speed of his career in his first lap back.  Later he sets Top Speed of the Universe, arguably at 202 mph, and then indisputably at 205.

Occasionally back in the 60s the drag racing press referred to Bill as Alexander the Great. This was apropos, as the precocious terror who became king of Macedonia at the prime age of twenty had an insatiable appetite for destruction and decimation. “Wild Bill” similarly had a scorched-earth policy. For reasons he wouldn’t understand until much later in life, he was anti-social, misunderstood and kinda’ mad at the world. Nobody escaped his agitation: competitors, officials or even teammates.

But, heck, after leaving a wake of wanton bloodshed and genocide, even Alexander the Great eventually mellowed and could be found dancing nude at the tomb of Greek poets. And after retiring as a journeyman in 1971, as the sport of drag racing took a turn Bill wasn’t comfortable with, Alexander returned to the drag strips in the ‘90s with the genesis of California’s front-motored “Prostalgia” Top Fuel wars. But his comeback is distinguished by the same jones for speed that characterized his first tenure in the hot seat; moreover, it is enhanced by a kinder, gentler demeanor and a new lust for life. Indeed, as runner-up at this year’s March Meet at Bakersfield, while driving for “Root Beer Frank” Hedge’s Mastercam AA/Fuel Dragster, Bill posted his career best elapsed time of 6.08 seconds.

"Wild Bill" Alexander and his Nitronic Research 5-Second Club shirt (photo by Cole Coonce)

*****

So some of the guys in the Bel Airs tell me you used to race on the L.A. river bed.

Alexander: Oh yeah (nonplussed). Generally on Friday night. At the time I didn’t haven’t a car. My buddy, Gary, had his ‘34 Victoria. Stan had a ‘57 Chevy—brand new—and we’d go down there and race with Tony Nancy, Floyd Lippencott, Jr. and Tommy Ivo, and all these guys and just street race in the river bed. It had this green slime down there so we had to find a spot with the least amount of green slime in order to race. Whoever’s side had the least amount of green slime won, usually.

Then we went to the River Road—which is Forest Lawn Drive now. We’d get 4 or 500 spectators down there, pit areas, the whole thing.

But it was more than just the L.A. River. It was Glenoaks Blvd…

Alexander: When we were street racing there was a Frostee (Foster’s) Freeze where everyone hung out. That’s when I had my ‘34. You’d park yourself and if some guy came by with a hot car, there was a signal right there. He’d have to stop and you’d just pull out next to him. You’d race down Glenoaks as far as Brand Blvd, turn around and pull back into the Frostee Freeze.

How did you make the leap from street racing and running from the law into climbing into a digger?

Alexander: My brother had built a ‘41 Willys to run the lakebed (El Mirage). He got drafted and left the car at home. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to touch it but instead I—whoop—took it out to the lakebed. It was kind of a dog; it ran 127 mph. A friend of mine said, “Let’s get the rulebook and check it.” We looked at the rulebook and we could take a 265 Chevy and de-stroke it 1/8th of an inch and get it down to 259 inches, put a blower and an injector on it and we could run it in the same class, C/Altered. We did. The record at the time, if I’m not mistaken, was 129 and we took it out and ran 155. Just shattered it. Then we went to Bonneville and ran 172 and then it took back to El Mirage and ran 181—in a ‘41 Willys coupe that went everywhere but where you pointed it. It was the most ill-handling thing—of course, I didn’t know any better because I had never driven anything out there.

After El Mirage one day, on the way back we went to San Fernando to run it and Ernie (Alvarado) was there. The next weekend they came and said, “Hey, you want to go to Long Beach?”  Ivo runs 8.99—it was the first 8 second time (on gas)—in a dual engined, unblown Buick. Ernie, who was a roundy-round guy, went, “Oohh, I like this.” The next weekend they came by and said, “Hey, you want to go to Long Beach again? And how would like to drive a dragster?”

When I was 14 my brother-in-law, Marty Elvehoff, had a slingshot altered that he was doing body work on at his house. I sat in it and I told myself, “Someday I’m going to drive one of these.” So when Ernie asked, I finally had the chance. So we go to Kent Fullers’ and we start building an aluminum body for it. We go down to the river road, fire it up and we had put the main jets in backwards. It was trying to hydraulic the motor. I’m down there trying to turn the fuel shut-off valve on and off, trying to make it run and it goes Ka-Blooey! and kicks the rods out of it—steel rods!  We oiled down the river road… never even got it to the race track.

That had to be a portent of things to come.

Alexander: Oh yeah. So we build a new motor for it, we’re getting ready to go to the races at San Fernando, loading the car up and the phone rings. Ernie’s dad had just died. Obviously, we didn’t run. That lasted almost a year. Ernie and his dad had just gotten close—it just devastated him.

Oh no.

Alexander: Finally, we got around to running it.  We take it to San Fernando, I leave the starting line and you talk about a shock. It probably went out about 400 feet and I’m off the throttle, out of it, dead player. Get down to end and the guys come down and ask, “How was it? How was it?”  I said, “Aw, bitchin’.” Lying through my teeth. . . ly-ing through my teeth. “You want to make another one?” “Yeah!” Lying again. We go back and cool the motor down (we were running on gas), make the next run, go about 700 feet and the comfort zone is gone—I’m petrified—CLICK! It ran 145 or 147 and I’m making the turnoff and I’m thinking there is n-o way I will EVER get this thing to the end of the track.

A blown Pontiac on gas?

Alexander: A blown Pontiac on gas. Probably at that time, the most state of the art car built—Kent Fuller built it. So after the second run, they come down and ask, “How was it?” “Bitchin’! I loved it!” Still lying through my teeth. “You want to make another one? “Yeah, okay… (under his breath) Oh, God. . .”

We go back and r’n’r the thing, cool it down. We go up to make the last pass. The gas record at that time was 168 mph and it turned 165 mph—and I got it down to the end. I shocked myself. Doing that convinced me that I could do it.

Were there any other pivotal moments?

Alexander: Well, shortly thereafter I met my first wife. The only reason she went out with me was because I drove one of those cars with a parachute on ‘em. We got married soon thereafter. So now I’d ask Ernie, “Are we going to run the car this weekend?” and he’d say no. This went on four or five weeks in a row.
What had happened was Ernie didn’t want a married guy driving for him. He didn’t want the responsibility. So he pulled the plug on me and put Tommy Ivo in. Tommy drove it that winter until the March Meet.

Was it still a hobby at that point or were you able to actually get some grocery money out of it?

Alexander: It was strictly a hobby. But after the March Meet, the car sat in Ernie’s garage for four months and I got the brilliant idea to tell him, “Give me your garage, give me your push car, give me your trailer, give me the race car and I will turn it into a Top Fuel car—with my money, it won’t cost you a penny.” Duh. Dumb idea, right? I didn’t have a pot to piss in, I’m married with one, soon to be two kids. He said, “Okay.” So every penny I could beg, borrow and steal went towards converting the injector over: new nozzle, new barrel valve, all that stuff so we could run it on fuel. Edgar Hugglebuss and I went out to Long Beach every Saturday night and that thing would go 200’ and it would turn right. So I’d get out of it. Edgar said if he had insurance he’d drive it. Right. That really pissed me off. So I told him, “I’m getting this (expletive) down there. It’s either going to the end or it is going to crash—one or the other, I don’t care anymore.” So I legged it on down there and about the 300’ mark, it turned right and I turned left and it went right through it. It did the same thing on every pass I ever made with that car. It was just one of those idiosyncrasies. From then on we went down for a long time and set Top Time or Low E.T. and then we’d get beat. Until a 32-car showdown there where we went and beat Greer, Black & Prudhomme. That was our first win and it seemed like we almost couldn’t get beat after that. Until it crashed.

So from late ‘62 and into ‘63, you were among the elite fueler guys.

Alexander: None of us felt that way. At that time we were a bunch of kids having fun—a bunch of kids who knew we weren’t going to live past 35. With Ernie’s car, I never took a penny, although it made a ton of money.

So you didn’t quit your day job at this point?

Alexander: It never dawned on me it could be possible. All the money went into the racing account which Ernie ended up keeping after I crashed. But after that I always took 33%. I did not drive for anything less.

Tell me about the crash.

Alexander: Mickey Thompson saved my life. The very first time we tried to run at Long Beach the inspectors looked at what was one of the first over-the-head hoop rollbars and they didn’t like it. So they called Mickey on the radio and he said, “If you put two bars halfway up the rollbars down to the rear-end mounts, I’ll let you run it.” So we put two “sissy rails” on it. That’s what prompted the body to be designed the way it was. Ernie hated those sissy rails so much. Lujie Lesovsky (Indy car builder) built the body up on the sides and into the parachute pack to hide the sissy bars. He said, “I can’t just stop here,” like most of the guys did.

So you’re saying this actually precipitated the design of, say, Stellings & Hampshire.

Alexander: Ernie’s car was something that everybody went off of and made better. Ernie’s car was kind of boxy. The Greer, Black & Prudhomme car was a little slicker—it looked a little smoother and nicer. Everybody smoothed ‘em out, but Ernie’s was the first of its kind.

Until that Sunday at the Pond in April of ‘63.

Alexander: Right. In those day we ran 15 or 16 pounds of air in the rear tires. We made the first run and broke the track record—mile an hour and E.T. Came back for the first round and instead of 15 or 16 we ran a pound less. “If that was good, this ought to be better.” Same thing, Low E.T., Top Speed, track record. Come back the next round, it’s a pound lower. So screw it: “If that was good, this ought to be really good.” Went out and did the same thing. Come to the final round and one of the last things I remember is that we were another pound lower. My theory is that the tires finally got so low that it spun the wheel in the tire and at half track started spitting tire out and kicked the right hand tire off, blew it up, it drove it into the dirt, nosed in about 1000 feet and ended up clearing the flags over the finish line and then all hell broke loose. It just dug in and catapulted. Flat out, it blew a right tire.

After it catapulted, it came apart like a cheap watch. The front end broke off, the engine took off. People told me that the chutes came out when it was 20 feet in the air. When I got stopped, my hand was still on my shoulder like I had pulled the chutes. They did a magnificent job of getting me out of the car. Dave Wallace and Harry Hibler (track personnel) saved my life. Harry looked at me and said, “Goddammit, don’t you die.” I rolled my eyes back in my head and he said, “You son of a bitch.” He thought I had died. They hauled me off to the hospital—we called it the butcher shop. Meanwhile, a friend of my wife’s called her and said, “You and Renee can come live with us.” My wife said, “What are you talking about?” “I just saw on teevee that Bill got killed out at San Fernando.”

(silence)

Alexander: Yeah, heavy stuff. Ernie’s damn near dead—he’s in shock and was in the next room.

Besides that dark day at the Pond, how was it getting the Shudder Bug down the strip?

Alexander: That car taught me everything I know today. It was an evil car—I didn’t know that at the time. At that time, it was state of the art. But it was an evil little bastard. It taught me how to feel the car, rather than let the car act and then I react. It taught me to turn the wheel before the back of the car ever reacted. It taught me to be ahead of it—to feel the car. Ernie’s car taught me so very much—but it also taught me that life is very precious.

Maybe that’s the car they should use in the drag racing schools. So when you came back, that was the advent of “Wild Bill”?

Alexander: When I first drove again I went faster and quicker than I ever went in my life.

Out of the box?

Alexander: Out of the box. I was worried that I would have this big flashback where I was upside down and on fire. It didn’t happen, I just legged it on through there like it was no big deal. I don’t remember the guy’s name who was in the tower, but he said, “Oh, that’s old ‘Wild Bill’ for ya’.” I got stuck with the name.

This was with Hippo (Everett Brammer) and Jim Brissette, right? How did this partnership come together?

Alexander: Hippo went to Jim Brissette and said, “Would you put your motor in my car if I get Bill Alexander to drive for me?” He said, “Sure.” Then he asked me, “Would you drive my car if I get Jim Brissette to put his motor in the car?”

We started out with a 354 and would smoke the tires, went to a 331 and would smoke the tires, and finally ended up with a 300-incher and the thing ran good. We could finally control the horsepower. But through all of that Jimmy decided, “Screw this.” He ordered a brand new Woody Gilmore car, 144-inch-long come-catch-me-throw-me-down-top-of-the-line, with the engine about 3 inches off the rear end. It didn’t have immediate success. Fastest car in the world for maybe two years, quickest car in the world for maybe four months.

The reputation was that the car would stay together for maybe three rounds.

Alexander: It would haul ass in qualifying. The first round nobody wanted us; second round everybody wanted us because they knew the rods were coming out at half-track. It was because Jimmy was making so much more horsepower and the car worked so good that it worked the motor that much harder. It would have main bearing problems, which became rod bearing problems. Jimmy tried everything—we drilled the main caps and had extra lines going into the main caps—and then the fingers started pointing. “Bill is driving it too hard.” For the last eight months it was finger pointing, not by Jimmy so much, but by his friends and people at the races. Yeah—we’re running 206 and a tenth of a second ahead of the field sometimes and “he’s driving the car too hard.”

What was your deal with Brissette?

Alexander: 33 percent, bottom line. I packed the parachute and drove.

The consensus was that Brissette wouldn’t settle for anything but big numbers.

Alexander: Exactly. Blowing the engine up and catching it on fire—that didn’t bother me. Blowing the rods out, getting oiled in, I’m okay with that. Ernie’s car, every run we ever made, I got oiled in. But then we started blowing blowers off—this became rather serious. Actually, it became very serious.

We went to Fremont one night and whistled the sucker down through there, get about 900’ and ka-blooey: We split the blower right down the middle. Come back, put the spare on it, go out there and whistle it through…  ka-blooey: We split the blower right down the middle. Some guy who had already qualified goes over and pulls the blower off his car and goes “plink!” “I want to see you guys run over 200 mph.” Jimmy throws that sucker on the motor, run it down there till’ about 1100 feet, it sneezes and splits that blower. Somebody else walks over with another blower. Etc., etc. By the final, we leave the starting line, I’ve got the other guy covered and the thing is really hauling ass. I’m thinking, “All right!” And I’m whistling down there…  Ka-blooey! It goes off. The blower lifts and comes back and hits me right between the eyes. The entire blower and the injector. It falls in my lap, it pulls my hands off the wheel and into my lap. This all takes place in a millisecond. I lift the thing out of the car, throw it out on the cowl, grab a hold of the steering wheel and I’m still trying to drive. There is oil on my goggles—they are all cracked by now. I take one hand off, wipe off my goggles. “Okay, I’m still fine.” The blower goes, “clink, clink, clink” hits the tires, goes back in the air and hits me right back in the eyes again. This all sounds like bullshit, but it went “boink, boink.” I went, “Aww,  s-s-h-h-it.” It hit the tire again, came back and hit me in the face and that is the last thing I remember until the ambulance guys were taking me out of the car.

When I became conscious the first thing out of my mouth was, “Did I win?” “No, you lost.” “Aww, s-s-h-h-it.” It ripped my finger from the knuckle down and split my nose from my forehead down. It was going, “phfffllttt. . . phfffllttt. . . phfffllttt.”

And it was more of a mercenary deal at this point?

Alexander: If it hadn’t have been for drag racing, I wouldn’t have been able to have a wife and raise two kids. I worked during the day and I made more on the weekends than I did during a whole week. I was able to take care of my family and provide for them much better than I ever knew.

Who did you drive after Brissette?

Alexander: I didn’t drive for a couple of years. Then Bob Sbarbaro called me from San Francisco. I would commute—all expenses paid. Plus 33 percent. I started driving for him but we didn’t get along. Bob was very outgoing and loved everybody. I was very withdrawn and really a homebody. (At this point) I did racing for a living—not because I enjoyed it.

So it would it be safe to say that you enjoyed being in the cockpit, but not socializing.

Alexander: The only thing I liked about racing was driving the car. As far as socializing, I didn’t do it. Maybe people got the wrong impression of me. But that was me and has been me—until not long ago.

I couldn’t tell you why I was the way I was. I didn’t know any different; I didn’t know any better.

Why were you so mad at the world?

Alexander: I had a shitty childhood—a gawd-awful childhood. Walking the streets when I was 7 or 8 years old. (Details deleted at Alexander’s request). I hated the world and I was an angry, very upset young man who took my anger out on anything or everything.

But driving a fuel car had to be the ultimate release.

Alexander: It was the ultimate release, but as soon as I got out of the car the anger came back. It was a lousy way to live. It ruined my first marriage.

With a co-efficient of drag racing.

Alexander: Not really—that’s what I thought. But in hindsight, I ruined that marriage. I was a pissed off young man who didn’t know why he was angry. I didn’t realize this until six or seven years ago. I have been trying to turn my life around for six or seven years.

Isn’t it interesting that the front-motored fueler thing has come back and you have a chance, perhaps, to undo some things?

Alexander: This is where you are exactly right. This is where I have a chance to make up for a lot of the bad things I said and the bad things I did. As far as moaning and bad-mouthing of sanctioning bodies—I made a lot of mistakes.

So there you were in the late ‘60s and the sport is getting more professional. How come you didn’t ride that wave? Did your outspoken manner make it difficult?

Alexander: I had a wife and two kids I had to be responsible for. I had an opportunity to go on tour but I was afraid I couldn’t make enough money to support them. My marriage was shaky, so I thought I should stay home and try to salvage it—which wasn’t salvageable.

Do you regret that choice?

Alexander: No. I’m glad I did it. I would have liked to have taken the chance but I wasn’t about to gamble with my wife and kids.

Is what you’re doing now providing a venue for some of you guys who felt that you didn’t get a chance to ride out that last wave as you saw fit?

Alexander: This has let a lot of us do what we wanted to do when we were younger—and maybe a little more talented. But it is allowing us to fulfill maybe a dream, or maybe the reality of something we stopped doing then because of families, business or whatever.

It takes a certain kind of mind to run a nitro car, particularly to tune one…

Alexander: Now you’re out of my league. I know how to drive and pack the parachute—and mix nitro. And I try to stay away from mixing nitro because I just assume pour straight nitro in it.

"Wild Bill" Alexander, in the Ground Zero Top Fuel dragster at the 2003 March Meet (photo by Cole Coonce)

(Originally published in Drag Racing USA)

In its “Folks of Interest” column, The Jalopy Journal evaluates the “Target Speed 29 Palms: The Guerilla Renaissaince is Now!” essay, excerpted from the book Top Fuel Wormhole: The Cole Coonce Drag Strip Reader.

To wit: “I remember him for being an absolute lunatic… The good kind. He thought differently than most, worked differently than just about everybody, and defined the very essence of a “maverick.” Put simply, “Jocko” was an eccentric… a very mysterious eccentric.”

Among the Jalopy Journal reader’s comments:  “‘HOLY CRAP! Who the hell is Cole Coonce? That is bad ass. I particularly enjoyed ‘drag racing is much more punk rock that any slacker gen X shithead with an out of tune guitar.’ Truer words may have never been spoken.” (There is also a small debate in the comments section about how much Hunter S. Thompson influenced Coonce’s work.)

(Top Fuel Wormhole can be found at amazon.com, lulu.com and AutoAero Books)

In addition to its availability on Amazon and Lulu.com, legendary independent bookstore “Autobooks-Aerobooks” (“In Burbank Since 1951!”) is now carrying Cole Coonce’s Top Fuel Wormhole. Readers can place their order online, here: Autobooks-Aerobooks.

Or those who want to motor down to the actual bricks and mortar location of “the oldest and largest automotive bookstore in the US” and open up their wallet and purchase a copy of the book should shuttle their steed to 3524 W. Magnolia Blvd. Burbank, CA 91505. In lieu of that, call the store at (818) 845-0707.