Neighbour Kev recently sold the Suzuki drag bike that took him to his second UK championship. Having delivered the 7-second time machine to its new home in Europe (and banked the cash), he booked two weeks in Florida, to visit racing buddies and attend some moorcycle meets.
Now returned, full of the joys of Spring, we had a late night catch-up the other evening, where he brought me up to speed on an impending trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats, to run a few bikes and try for some records. The timeline: sometime in the next two years. There’s only reaction to that sort of news: count me in!
Bonneville has always been a magnet for landscape fans and speed freaks. The vast expanse of white under an inverted blue sea exerts a draw of its own, long before you stick flat-out cars and drag bikes on top of it.
Al Holbert, Porsche USA Motorsport director and two-time Le Mans winner, was thinking the same when, in 1986, he gathered a team to attempt some production car speed records on the Salt Flats. The car was a 1987 Porsche 928 S4.
The 928 was entered in three categories including Category A: a class used by most manufacturers to attempt production car records, and which allowed some aerodynamic modifications. Here’s a video made of the attempt. The voiceover is proper ’80s, but it’s worth watching to the end.
What’s interesting here is a:Holbert’s easy camera manner and b: some blindingly obvious errors in continuity. Or are they?
The car that rolls out of the truck, supposedly fresh off the boat, has no mirrors. The car Al is interviewed in has flags bolted to the doors. Eh?
According to press reports of the time, the car ran with mirrors up until the 5th and final run when, having switched from European to US transmission and gearing to try and lift top speed (it didn’t work), the door mirrors were removed and holes filled, to reduce frontal area. It apparently made 1 mph of difference. The car still made 171 mph though and set an international record, which is the point at which any sensible marketing department would have sent a camera crew out to the desert to film the TV ads. I guess that is why the car makes its entrance minus the mirrors.
Hang on you say – what Euro transmission? This was a standard US production model, according to the script! Er – no. The car was a prototype that had just been run in high speed testing at Nardo, hitting 182 mph. Bonneville was a great idea: how sweet would it have been to hit 182 on the Salt Flats and watch US 928 S4 sales take off like a rocket! For whatever reason, 182 was not to be.
The Holbert 928 is right up my street. I like cars with stories to tell and this car has a great one. There were a few more tweaks made to the aero on the car than the press ever mentioned, and it was still racing hard, right up until September last year, when it hit the wall at Sears Point, right around the time we were there for the CSRG races.
Still, all is not lost. The car has moved to a new home, and a new owner who is rebuilding it with the intention of running it again at Bonneville on the 25th anniversary of the 1987 attempt. Do the math – that’s 2012, when Kev and his bike mates reckon they are there too.
I feel a road trip coming on!
