Words and Photos by Jamie Seymour, Axial’s R&D Industrial Designer

A few items on my personal bucket list:
1: Go to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and attend the SCTA Speed Week.
2: Fly on a private jet.

Recently we had the opportunity to do both.  Dave Storstad of Storstad Autosports invited us to Bonneville for the day.  Dave owns a 1933 Ford Coupe that a few years back held the speed record for a vintage coupe with a nitro burning flat head Ford.  Dave wants that record back so we were off to check out the competition.

We met at 8am at John Wayne airport in Orange County California and boarded Dave’s Learjet for a quick hour and a half flight into Utah.

As we approached the famous salt flats, we were treated to a low fly over the speedway.

We lopped around and then landed at Historic Wendover Airfield, a former US Air Force base where during WWII B-17s, B-24s and the 509th Composite Group of B-29s that included the Enola Gay trained in loading and dropping the first atomic bombs.

From the airfield it was a quick 2 mile drive on to the salt flats.  It’s an entire culture on the salt and it’s not just the cars that are racing, but the cars cruising around.

Just a Tucker.

You see those all the time….

And you know we cant go anywhere without finding at least one Jeep.

Early Fords, plenty.

And then there are the race cars.  1953 and 1954 Studebaker coupes are very popular for their way ahead of their time aerodynamic design.

Muscle car.

Oldsmobile.

Mercedes Gull Wing on the salt!

Streamlines

Home built.

A streamliner with twin supercharged small block Chevy engines going through tech inspection.

Belly Tankers.  Originally made from WWII aircraft belly mounted fuel takes.  Sure put a motor in it, mount some axles on it and drive it at 150mph across the salt.

Early Ford race cars.

Horsepower!

Motorcycles.  Lowbrow Customs dual engine 1955 Triumph, “Double Vision”.

And this, we really wanted to see this thing.  Called “Bombshell” a 1952 Buick Super Rivera built by metal artist Jeff Brock.  Running a straight 8 cylinder Buick engine, he holds at last count 5 Bonneville records.

At the end of the day we headed back to the town of Wendover for an early dinner and afterwards our pilot Ken had the jet ready, a quick flight and we were back home in Orange County before 8pm.  What a day!