Bill Burke, hot rod pioneer, passes away at 97
Burke in 1941 while serving as Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Timing Association. Photo courtesy Geoff Hacker.
“The Michael Jordan of Bonneville,” Ryan Cochran, proprietor of The Jalopy Journal called him.
Geoff Hacker, Hemmings contributor and historian of Forgotten Fiberglass sports cars, said of him in 2012:
“Throughout his life, if you asked Bill about what he had accomplished, he would always focus on what he was working on, or on his future plans. It’s like that with these guys. They didn’t dwell on the past – they focused on the future.”
Born in 1918, Bill Burke is remembered best for his contributions to land-speed racing at the dry lakes and Bonneville beginning before WWII, in particular for originating the idea of re-purposing the teardrop-shaped drop tanks from fighter aircraft as ready-made bodywork for a streamlined race car–an idea that occurred to him while serving on PT Boats in the Pacific Theatre. Burke’s first “belly tanker” was created from a P-51 Mustang tank in 1946 and ran 131.96 MPH. With the original lost to time, Geoff Hacker was responsible for the re-creation of this first belly tanker.
Burke’s original P-51 belly tanker in 1946. Photos courtesy Geoff Hacker.
Not content with his first design, he soon obtained a larger P-38 Lightning drop tank and created a second lakester, this time with a rear engine. That car, ultimately dubbed “Sweet 16” and shared with engine guru and future Hot Rod technical editor Don Francisco, ran 151.085 MPH in July of 1949 and received the title of “World’s Fastest Hot Rod.”
Moving on from belly tanks, Burke tackled an enclosed-wheel streamliner for 1952. The O-class vehicle was powered by a motorcycle engine and ran 136.9 MPH, setting a class record that would stand for a decade. That experience with fiberglass would lead Burke to partner with Mickey Thompson and others in a sports-car building concern called Atlas (later Allied) Fiber-Glass, building bodies for the Swallow coupe—a hand-laid fiberglass copy of the 1947-52 Cisitalia 202 from Italy.
For Burke, whose day job by this point was advertising manager for Hot Rod, the Swallow was primarily a means to further his racing hobby. Burke used a modified Swallow body to run 167 MPH at Bonneville in 1953, setting a new record for closed sports cars that year.
Lucky Burton, Bill Burke and Bobby Green on the salt in 2010. Green owns Burke’s second tank, Sweet 16. Photo courtesy Bobby Green.
After selling off Allied in 1955, Burke continued his pattern of innovation and racing. In 1960 he set a new Class D record of 205.949 MPH in the Falcon-powered “Pumpkin Seed” streamliner that he later sold to and drove for Mickey Thompson in 1961, raced one of the first Studebaker Avantis at Bonneville (in fact, he campaigned the ’63 Avanti for 30 years, with two more generations of the Burke family ultimately taking the wheel to receive their own LSR licenses), and by 1965 he had built a Hemi-powered streamliner in pursuit of 300 MPH. In the 21st Century, Burke along with his son Steve and grandson Joshua, campaigned a stretched Mazda RX-7.
Burke’s original tank at speed on the dry lakes. See it in action here. Photo courtesy Geoff Hacker.
Burke was a regular at the Salt every year from 1949 to 2009 and he will be missed by hot rodders, Studebaker aficionados and racers alike.
via Raymond Arsenault on Life and Business http://raymondarsenault.blogspot.com/2015/12/bill-burke-hot-rod-pioneer-passes-away.html
Posted on December 4th, 2015
BMW loans the Petersen Museum a trio of Art Cars (plus one)
The 2009 BMW Z4 used to create “An Expression of Joy” with artist Robin Rhode (L) and director Jake Scott. Photos courtesy BMW AG.
The Petersen Automotive Museum officially reopens to the public on Monday, December 7, and among its new attractions will be the Armand Hammer Foundation Gallery, presented by BMW of North America. The first display will center on BMW Art Cars, featuring three of the line’s better known examples, along with a Z4 Roadster that, while not an Art Car, still has significant ties to the brand’s support of the arts.
1975 BMW 3.0 CSL, by Alexander Calder.
The car that began it all was a 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL painted by American artist Alexander Calder in broad strokes of primary colors. Created at the request of Herve Poulain, a French auctioneer and racing driver, the BMW was campaigned in the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans by Sam Posey, Jean Guichet and Poulain himself, but retired with a broken drive shaft less than a third of the way into the race. Calder died in New York City the following year, making the BMW among his final contributions to the art world.
1990 BMW 535i, by Matazo Kayama.
Japanese artist Matazo Kayama was enlisted to paint a 1990 BMW 535i, and he based his creation on Snow, Moon and Cherry Blossoms, artwork originally crafted for the Tokyo National Museum of Arts. The installation blends airbrush techniques with more traditional Japanese mediums, such as foil printing (Arare) and metal cutting (Kirigane).
1995 BMW 850 CSi, by David Hockney.
David Hockney, a British artist now lining in the United States, was given the task of creating the 14th Art Car from a 1995 BMW 850 CSi. Hockney’s style typically depicts people within their environment, which explains his focus on turning the 850 CSi inside out. While the driver and his dog are readily apparent in this left side view of the car, other angles depict the car’s intake manifold, the motion of air over its wheels and tires, its suspension and the green landscape of the hills around his California home.
Technically, the 2009 BMW Z4 seen in the exhibit isn’t an Art Car, though its wheels, tires and flanks are splattered with paint. Instead, and as a method of launching the second-generation BMW Z4 Roadster, it was used by artist Robin Rhode to create a massive 100×200 foot canvas called “Expression of Joy.” Rhode didn’t drive the car himself, but instead directed the car’s path and determined where and how the colors were applied.
The Art Cars, along with the 2009 Z4 used by Robin Rhode, will be on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum throughout 2016. For additional information, visit Petersen.org.
via Raymond Arsenault on Life and Business http://raymondarsenault.blogspot.com/2015/12/bmw-loans-petersen-museum-trio-of-art.html
Posted on December 4th, 2015
Don’t Forget Your Free Space: For over 50 years, Auto Bingo has been helping the miles slip by
Vintage Auto and Find-A-Car Bingo cards; image by the author.
Road trips, specifically interstate excursions during week-long family vacations, are a somewhat overlooked piece of automotive history. They’ve produced endless tales of roadside attractions and mom and pop eateries – some good, some bad – that can often achieve epic status years, even decades, later. Yet every highway getaway has one common thread embedded within the “family vacation” headline: How to keep buckled occupants busy for over an hour in between stops at the UFO Watchtower (Hooper, Colorado) and Bishop Castle (Wetmore, Colorado). One entrepreneur came up with a solution in the mid Fifties in the form of Auto Bingo.
Auto Bingo was just one product from the Regal Games Manufacturing Company based in Chicago, Illinois. The company’s history dates back to the late Thirties when Erich Spitzner – a German immigrant then working in a local bank – purchased the struggling Regal Printing Company. Spitzner started printing/manufacturing bingo cards/games shortly thereafter, and by 1941 had applied for a patent on the now familiar sliding red window; it was awarded in 1947. Auto Bingo itself was launched as early as the mid 1950s, however current company owner Michael Robert states that 1957 is its traditionally accepted start date.
The name Auto Bingo, in one sense, has become a bit of a generic name for the line of bingo cards the company produced. There were actually four different versions, all on different colored cards: Auto Bingo, Find-A-Car Bingo, Interstate Bingo and Traffic Safety Bingo. We located two vintage editions at a recent swap meet – they are more prevalent online – for just a handful of dollars each in used but usable condition, the most entertaining of which (to us) was the Find-A-Car Bingo.
Logic states that with the advent of computerized hand-held games in the mid-Eighties, and more recently in-vehicle DVD systems, games such as Auto Bingo would have quickly been driven to the nether regions of forgotten entertainment, however that’s not the case. Widely successful for decades, Spitzner retired in 1985, which handed the day-to-day operations to Kurt Geringer until 2011, when Robert partnered with Spitzner’s daughter, Louanne Dunlap. To this day, Regal, still based in Chicago, continues producing three of the four original games: Interstate (orange cards); Traffic Safety (blue cards); and Auto (green and pink cards). Currently, the games can be obtained through a growing number of outlets, including BJ’s Wholesale and Cracker Barrel restaurants. But if electronic games are still your preference these days, there’s good news.
“We’ve just launched the Auto Bingo games as an iPad app, which includes our new bingo card, I Spy; we’re also hoping to re-launch Find-A-Car shortly, which has been on hiatus since the mid-Nineties. We’re a growing company; conservatively we’re prepared for a total sales figure north of a half-million cards, which equates to a 30 percent growth over last year,” said Robert.
This article originally appeared in the September, 2012 issue of Hemmings Motor News.
via Raymond Arsenault on Life and Business http://raymondarsenault.blogspot.com/2015/12/dont-forget-your-free-space-for-over-50.html
Posted on December 4th, 2015
Sergeant James Ward crawled out, at 10,000 feet, on the wing with a length of rope tied around his waist and a canvas cover to drape over the inferno in the engine. After extinguishing the flames he was pulled back into the Wellington bomber, over the Nor
When returning from a bombing run on Munster Germany, 1941, Co-pilot Sgt James Ward saved his stricken plane and crew by climbing on to the WING to put out an engine fire at 10,000 feet in act of heroism which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Sgt James Ward crawled along wing rope tied around his waist. Widdowson kept plane steady while Ward draped canvas cover over fire. After extinguishing flames Ward was pulled back into Wellington bomber by the rest of the crew who had been preparing to bail out over the North Sea. Sq Ldr Widdowson managed to fly the battered plane back to its base in Suffolk where it was only stopped from careering off the end of the runway by a barbed wire fence.
It was an incredible act of bravery that saw a wartime pilot save his stricken plane and crew by climbing onto the wing to put out a fire at 10,000ft.
The two pilots had been flying a Wellington bomber and its crew of six on a raid over Munster, Germany, in July 1941 when they were shot at by a Messerschmitt 110 nightfighter. Although rear gunner Sgt Alan Box shot the Luftwaffe plane down, the bomber was critically damaged with its starboard engine out of action and ablaze. Sq Ldr Widdowson instructed the crew to put their parachutes on in readiness to jump and then yelled out ‘…and see if you can put out that bloody fire’.
Full story in his own words at https://www.thevintagenews.com/2015/11/03/pilot-saved-his-stricken-bomber-crew-by-climbing-on-to-the-wing-to-extinguish-the-fire-at-13000/
via Raymond Arsenault on Life and Business http://raymondarsenault.blogspot.com/2015/12/sergeant-james-ward-crawled-out-at.html
Posted on December 4th, 2015
rare repeat post, respect to the Fresno HA for buying kids toys last xmas
Hell’s angels stood in line for five days at a Wal-Mart in Fresno, to buy every bike that was on the ad, (over 200), to donate to the homeless kids at the Povarello house. This is one of them paying for the bikes.
http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/12/todays-fully-awesome-award-goes-to.html
via Raymond Arsenault on Life and Business http://raymondarsenault.blogspot.com/2015/12/rare-repeat-post-respect-to-fresno-ha.html
Posted on December 4th, 2015
coolest garage clock I've ever seen
via Raymond Arsenault on Life and Business http://raymondarsenault.blogspot.com/2015/12/coolest-garage-clock-ive-ever-seen.html
Posted on December 4th, 2015