Speed Week at the Bonneville Speedway at the Bonneville Salt Flats produced the usual crop of wild and wacky machines that made the 36,650 acre site in Wendover, Utah famous. Over the past 100 years a variety of cars have been used to set the land speed record including Malcolm Campbell in the Blue Bird when he established a 301.129mph speed in 1937 that only lasted a few months. A year later, Captain G.E.T. Eyston’s 3,600-horsepower Thunderbolt recorded a 347.49mph average speed, and then 30 years later American Craig Breedlove pushed the record to 407.447mph.
From the 1980s the place to make the land speed record changed to Black Rock Desert, but not before a 630.478mph run was recorded by Gary Gabelich in Blue Flame on the salt. This year’s event didn’t establish any world land speed records but the organisers, the Southern California Timing Association, have established land speed records for cars in just about every category imaginable so any car can compete for a record. Cars with two-stroke engines like the Saab 96 competed alongside machines with six or eight cylinders but for their own land speed category.
The venue that was made famous by the movie The World’s Fastest Indian, has always attracted motorcylists and this year’s event was no different. Machines with anything from 50cc to 500cc were raced along the salt surface in the BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials event sanctioned by the AMA. Although they don’t get near the 630.478mph speed Gabelich set in 1970, a bike has recorded a 376.363mph speed in the hands of Rocky Robinson in 2010.
via EUROCARBLOG
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