The SCTA Building at the 2016 GNRS

Story by Richard Parks

The 67^th year of the Grand National Roadster Show (GNRS) features 7 buildings full of unique vehicles.  Building 9 is always reserved for a special event; something unique and different to draw in the crowds.  This year it was the land speed cars under the auspices of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA).  Land speed racing, along with road course racing is the oldest of all automotive land sports.  It has always lived out on the margins of society with a small but zealous group of racers and fans.  It is a primal urge to pit man against the elements, indeed against time itself; time, which erodes all things, metal, hope and life itself.  To race a car down a long straightaway and time the effort from point A to B is a simple goal, with an impossibly difficult outcome.  So much can go wrong, but men and women experience this utter thrill of speed and exultation.  It is addictive as men like Craig Breedlove and Skip Hedrick continue to race in their seventies.  The SCTA has been in existence since 1937 and this year Ron Main worked with John Buck to produce a special show called the “SCTA Quest For Speed.”
   Ron Main and David Fetherston produced a special two volume book entitled “SCTA Bonneville National Speed Trials; 1949 to 1968.”  Sales of the book will be donated to the SCTA to use to protect and save the Bonneville Salt Flats from further destruction by mining operations that are depleting the National Monument.  Fetherston is the author and Main provided the financial backing for the project.  Both men are instrumental in the fight to save a precious national treasure before it is destroyed.  Fetherston is also working on a five volume history on land speed racing.  Some of the cars on display were Stephanie and Douglas Adler’s 1950 sprint car and their 2010 diesel streamliner.  They are members of the Sidewinders car club in the SCTA.  Terry Baldwin exhibited the famous #4 Schenck streamliner that raced in the 1930’s through the ‘50’s under the Albata car club. 
     Other cars were the Old Crow, a Belly Tank Lakester; Eddie Miller Jr’s gorgeous Pontiac 6-cylinder Lakester; Sam Wheeler’s 999 E-Z Hook streamliner bike; The Phoenix G-BFMR Sloan & Zimmerman entry; the #8 Danny Sakai lakes modified tribute car; Jim Lattin’s #8, a tribute car that was based on the Stu Hilborn streamliner; and Kev Elliott’s ’28 Ford Model-A Pick-up.  In addition there were Rod Riders car club’s Scott Oliver’s V4F class 1948 Hellcat Belly Tank; Rhett Butler’s Texas Forever ’27 Model-T modified roadster on ’32 rails; the Blanchard/Bacik/York Adrenaline Rush Lakester; the Klos/Sutliff/Spacek VOT track midget car; and the new Poteet/Main Speed Demon streamliner that replaced their previous car that crashed at Bonneville.

Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].