Gary Gabelich - "Plenty Boss, Man. Plenty Boss."

Unlike most car geeks, I wasn't much of a gearhead when I was a kid. No subscription to Hot Rod or CarToons, no shelf of carefully-constructed Revell car models, no posters of scantily-clad girls posing next to race cars. I certainly noticed old cars on the rare occasions that I saw them, and did have a passing interest in kid-candy like the Munsters Koach, but my Dad was so OVER being an auto mechanic by the time I came along that there was no romance under the hood. 

The only time I really remember being enthralled by a car as a kid was when we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats on a road trip. I was fascinated by the lunar landscape - and by the idea of cars going hundreds of miles an hour out there in the middle of nowhere. We stopped at a gas station in Wendover and I bought a postcard of the rocket-shaped car that then held the Land Speed Record: The Blue Flame, driven 622 miles an hour by Gary Gabelich. I still have that postcard.

You can imagine my surprise when I discovered last month that Gary Gabelich got his start in a Crosley.

Liebherr Crosley at Bonneville: VIDEO!

Fellow Crosley kook John McKnight found this cool in-car video of Dale and Rob Liebherr's 1947 Crosley coupe burning up the salt at Bonneville:


The Liebherr's Never Paid 4 racing team has been trying to capture the J Production class record for about two years. That record, 103 and some change, is currently in the hands of the Evil Tweety team. They hopped in their Honda 600 and took the record back from Crosley of Kentucky's Gerald Davenport about ten years ago, and have been inching it upwards ever since.

Liv and I spent a day on the salt with the Leibherrs a couple of summers ago during their first trip to Speed Week. We had a blast, and if you have any interest in this stuff, GO. It's an amazing event.

The Never Paid 4 team haven't quite cracked the century mark yet, but every trip is moving the needle. They just built a brand new motor and switched over to disc brakes, and last I heard, all was looking good for 2011. Can't wait!

On the Road!

Liv and I are getting ready to take off on our first real vacation in a year and a half.  

When I realized that the date of my brother's wedding in Tahoe neatly coincided with the start of Speed Week at Bonneville it was a no-brainer to plan a longer trip.  We plan to spend a day at the Salt Flats checking out the speed trials-  I've never been and have long wanted to go.  Liv spent some of her childhood in Utah and grew up steeped in the mystique of Bonneville.

Bonus is that I'll actually know a few folks out there.  Gerald "Crosley of Kentucky" Davenport will be running his Super Sport, and the Liebherr clan are debuting their sedan at the salt this year.  I'll also get to meet John McKnight face-to-face for the first time.  We've been trading emails about Crosleys since he outbid me on a Crosley wagon ten years ago and I offered to buy the guts in case he was going to hotrod it.  He kept the parts, and we've kept in touch ever since.  There are a few locals going too.  My pal Johnny CrashaRama will be there this year, and I suspect I may run into the legendary Dick Bertolucci who has been going since about 1950.

After Bonneville we're heading out to explore the high desert and then off to a date in Newport, Washington...