At one time, Jenkins held more records than any other person in the history of sports. He was given the ironic nickname of “the world’s safest speedster” because of his dedication to racing fast, but never at the cost of safety. His good sportsmanship and championing of the salt flats made him a hero to race enthusiasts.

When Ab Jenkins retired from racing, rather than keeping the Mormon Meteor III to himself, he decided he wanted to share the car with the citizens of Utah, especially the children. He had always attributed his stamina behind the wheel to his total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, as taught by Mormon doctrine. He wanted the car on display so that children could be inspired by his feats of endurance and clean living.

As previously reported in Barracuda, Jenkins turned the car over to the state of Utah for display in the state capitol for the sum of $1. An agreement was made with a very plainly written, simple contract, which said that the state should properly display and maintain the car. If the state ever failed to display or maintain the car, it would revert back to Jenkins as though the contract had never been written.

Allowing the state to display the car was very generous. The Mormon Meteor III held dozens of speed records in its day (and it actually still holds some of the 81 land speed records it set in 1940). As such, the Mormon Meteor III is a historically significant car. But in addition to its historical significance, the Meteor is also a Duesenberg—one of the rarest and most expensive collector car marques around. But not only is it a Duesenberg, the Mormon Meteor III was hand built on standard 143-inch Duesenberg frame rails by Augie Duesenberg himself. It is also the last Duesenberg ever built. Because of all of these factors, Motor Trend once listed it as the 4th most valuable car in the entire world. The car’s estimated value is somewhere around $5 million.

Ab Jenkins passed away in 1956, but his car remained on display in a large glass case in the Utah state capitol, where it was a popular attraction for tourists and school children for years to follow.

However, the car is no longer on display in the Utah state capitol. And the story of what happened to the car is almost unbelievable.

Many years after Ab’s passing, his son Marv was living in Texas. A friend called and asked him if he knew where the Meteor was. Marv replied that it was in the capitol in its display. His friend told him that the car was not in the capitol, it was sitting outdoors at a local truck wash. Astonished, Marv immediately flew to Utah and indeed found the Meteor sitting in the truck wash, unattended, neglected and vandalized. “It was enough to make you want to cry,” says Jenkins.

Get the amazing story of this car’s resurrection in the print edition of Barracuda.

Excerpted from the print edition of Barracuda Magazine issue #13.

There’s a disturbing trend afoot where the automobile is being demonized in the press and by environmental types as a scapegoat of the impending global warming crisis. The automobile is being unfairly portrayed as a foul, pollution-spewing dinosaur with no redeeming qualities that is the sole culprit behind global warming.

Lay off the automobile, ingrates! It doesn’t deserve to be vilified in this way. The automobile is one of the greatest inventions of the last 100 years. The automobile has literally powered cultural, social and economic change in this country. Every single person in this country has benefited and continues to benefit from the personal mobility that the automobile provides. So let’s not take it for granted and don’t act like the internal combustion engine and fossil fuels haven’t made your life better.

Aside from obviously providing an incredible amount of mobility to us on a daily basis, with any halfway decent used car and not too much money, any resident of the U.S. is capable of personally relocating to anywhere in the contiguous 48 states within one week. Imagine your employment prospects if you didn’t live in a big city and were limited only to the jobs that were available within 15 minutes of your home.

Before the advent of the car, Americans were either stuck in urbanized areas or isolated on a farm in outlying rural areas. Most Americans died within 25 miles of the place where they were born. Let us not underestimate the effect that this kind of isolation had on hindering everything from the free exchange of new ideas to commerce.

Fossil fuel automotion does more than get us to work in the morning. (Although many of us go to work to create the goods, services and technology that we all take for granted.) It powers trucks, trains, airplanes and cargo ships. These all make it possible for goods and services to be transported nationwide and globally in relatively short periods of time.

This equals an increase in commerce and affordable goods, which contributes to a healthy economy and technological advancement. Most shortages of vital goods and supplies around the world are caused not by a lack of production, but by a lack of distribution, which is dependent on transportation.

As Henry Ford once said, “It is not prosperity that makes the automobile, so much as it is the automobile that makes prosperity. It gives momentum and diversity to the people’s activity which tends constantly to increase and is most difficult to stop.”

The Myth of “Clean” Transportation and The Economics of Ecological Smugness

The demonization of the automobile shows not just an appalling lack of appreciation for what the automobile has done for this country historically, it also overstates the feasibility and cleanliness of the current alternatives.

A recent issue of EVolution Magazine told the story of an electric vehicle owner named Kris, who managed to drive an EV across the country. (This was all with the aid of charging stations specially set up just for him, of course. GM’s EV1 has a relatively short range before needing to be recharged for five or six hours.)

EVolution told of the driver’s stop at the Grand Canyon, where the National Park Service is considering a ban on internal combustion vehicles because of pollution problems. The magazine crowed, “He drove to the canyon rim knowing his vehicle shared no blame for fouling this natural wonder. ‘It’s good to know you’re the only one whose car is not polluting the air,’ [Kris] says.”

This example shows the condescending attitude and oversimplified understanding of ecological problems shared by many armchair ecological do-gooders. They are quick to point a finger at internal combustion cars while holding themselves completely blameless for contributions to pollution and global warming simply because they drive an EV.

Contrary to popular belief, electricity is not “clean.” EVs absolutely do generate exhaust gases that contribute to global warming, you just don’t see the emissions coming out of a tailpipe.

Where does the electricity to charge the batteries in EVs come from? The majority of electricity in this country is generated by burning coal, which happens to be a fossil fuel, which happens to have emissions that contribute to pollution and global warming.

So, the exhaust gases generated to make an EV run are simply shifted to some far-away smokestack at a generating plant, rather than out of a tailpipe on the car. This is not a case of clean transportation, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind.

An argument can clearly be made that electricity generated at a plant is a cleaner and a more efficient use of the potential energy of a fossil fuel than gas burned in a car’s engine. But, does that make our cross-country EV driver completely blameless, as he would like to believe? Does that make an EV truly a zero emissions car? Hardly.

Consider an EV’s exhaust gas contributions, very specifically, solely in terms of the emissions generated by a daily commute. If we compare those emissions to a similar internal combustion-powered commuter, yes, an EV is contributing less exhaust gases to the atmosphere. But that is much different from saying there are no emissions whatsoever. (And all of this assumes that these commutes are taking place over relatively short distances in an urbanized area — the only place where EVs are practical.)

However, if you want to address the issue of exhaust gases seriously, and in terms of whether the EV driver in our example can back up his claim of absolutely un-sullied ecological karma, the equation gets much more complicated.

Excerpted from Barracuda issue #09.

Is it wrong to love a car? Not as far as we are concerned, and not as far as artist Shag is concerned. The article is written by Shag himself and tells the story of how he found his “Flairbird” and why he loves it so much.

“The year of 1964 was a historic one for Ford Motorcars. The excesses of 1950s automotive design had finally been shed, and Ford’s cars were no longer doughy, rounded and chrome-bedecked behemoths. A low, trim, square aesthetic took root at their design studio, and automotive styling finally caught up with the modern “good-design” principles of architects and designers like Charles & Ray Eames, George Nelson, and Eero Saarinen. 1964 was also the year that Ford introduced their most successful model since the Model A, the beloved Mustang.

“However, I’m not going to write about the Mustang. That middle-class, midlife-crisis vehicle has been part of the public consciousness since its debut; as omnipresent and common as a trash-truck or ambulance, it’s an easy choice for a “classic” automobile. Reproduction parts and businesses that specialize in Mustangs are as easy to find as Velveeta at a company picnic. A less obvious model, but one which epitomizes Ford’s mid-sixties design philosophy in its purest form, is the 1964 Thunderbird.

“When I say “1964 T-Bird,” a majority of Americans think of the 1955 – 1957 T-Bird — that cornball, Happy Days-intro, malt-shop-visiting, feminine sports model that screams “1950s!” What glass Coke bottles are to beverages, what Sha Na Na is to rock bands, what sock-hops are to nightlife, the ‘55 T-Bird is to automotive history.

“But the ‘64 Bird was not a car for rowdy, speed-craving teens, nor for young, just-out-of-college bachelors. With a sticker price that was almost twice that of the Mustang, the T-Bird was the desired ride of the upper middle-class, comfort-loving, semi-sophisticated 30 – 45 year old male, the Sinatra-listening, Arrow Shirt-wearing, Playboy Magazine-subscribing gentleman.”

Excerpted from the print edition of Barracuda Magazine issue #10.

The rules for the class require that the engine you run must have been available in the stock version of the make and model car you are running. Many aftermarket, high-performance add-ons, like aluminum intakes, aluminum heads, headers and Holley carbs are not allowed. No locked rear ends are allowed, either, but postitraction rears are allowed. Tire size is limited to 70 series tires, which causes a lot of roll-overs. The car must also have at least a 104-inch wheelbase and be an American car.

Don Strouse is running the 52 car, which is a 1974 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna. Here are all the vital stats:

#52 Don Strouse
1974 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna
350 cubic inch engine
4 bolt main
4 bbl 850 cfm quadrajet carburetor
Comp cam
3 speed automatic transmission
8-point roll cage

Bill English is running the 82 car, which has a similar set-up, but with some key differences:

#82 Bill English
1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo
350 cubic inch engine
4 bbl 850 cfm quadrajet carburetor
Dart 2 heads
dual exhaust
posi rear
3 speed automatic transmission
12-point roll cage

Both drivers have three years experience racing and they both know that in this class of racing, being able to make it to the end of the race is just as important as going fast.

“Our basic strategy is to get the car back on the trailer under its own power. When you can do that, it’s always a victory,” says Strouse. The drivers are also planning on concentrating more on the set-up of the chassis and messing around with tire composition. “We think we have plenty of horsepower,” says Strouse, “We’re just trying to figure out how to get through the turns without getting off the throttle.”

The team shows promise. In the opening race of this season, Strouse started in 72nd position and had worked his way up to 35th when a caution flag came out in the 41st lap. When he downshifted to slow down, his shift cable melted from the heat of the exhaust and he was done for the night.

If you live in the Northeast, be sure to come out and cheer the Barracuda team to a victory this summer!

Barracuda Magazine RacingTeam schedule

Outlaw Stock class

Bridgeport Speedway, Bridgeport, NJ
June 28th
July 5th
July 19th
July 26th
August 9th
August 16
Sept. 20th

Sept 27th
October 19th
October 26th

Enduro class

Williams Grove Speedway, Mechanicsburg, PA
August 3rd (200 lap race)
September 5th (championship race)

SUMMER RACING SEASON UPDATES
________

July 5th racing at Bridgeport Speedway – The 52 car of Don Strouse started 14th in heat race #1. With only 5 laps to put the car in the top nine to qualify for the feature – Don had his work cut out for him. Within three laps Don had the car up to eighth, however after making a minor mistake in lap four, Don had to settle for the ninth and final qualifying spot.

The 82 car of Bill English started 14th in heat race #2. Bill also quickly moved up through the field until an electrical problem in his distributor sapped much of his horsepower, causing him to settle for twelfth place in the heat and a spot on the trailer.

The 52 car of Don Strouse started 15th in the 20 lap feature and finished a respectable 11th. We were very pleased with the way the car handled in the turns – the car responded well no matter where we put it on the track. This week we will do a little work to get some additional top end horsepower.

July 26th – Bridgeport Speedway (Outlaw Stock)

The 52 car of Don Strouse took the track for heat race #1. Things did not feel right during the parade laps so Strouse decided to hang back when the green flag flew- hoping just to qualify and get back to the pits for a look see. It turned out to be a good decision as in the second lap of the heat race the drive shaft snapped – causing us to load the car early.

Heat race #2 had Bill English starting 10th. Bill pushed the 82 car just hard enough to qualify 9th and make it to the feature.

“Mr. Excitement” Bill English started 15th in the 20 lap feature – after two separate 360 degree spin outs Bill managed a respectable 16th place finish – and somehow loaded the car without any scratches. This week we will be working on the chassis Strouse noted – we saw some wheel hop in the 82 – likely a problem with the shocks.

August 3rd – Williams Grove Speedway (Enduro 200)
After working all day Saturday and most of Sunday morning to correct a fuel feed problem we loaded the 52 car and made the 2.5 hour journey to Williams Grove. What looked like a field of more than 60 cars was poised and ready to race. With less than a half hour till race time the skies darkened and dumped more than an inch of rain on the track. No rain date has been set.

August 9th – Brideport Speedway (Outlaw Stock)
Cancelled due to rain.