Waldo Says: February 2010

     Well this month has flown by and things are starting to move again for me and the project. I have had a lot of time at home because of the bad weather we have been having in California and my lack of work because of the bad economy. So this will be a long update as I am totally bored at home.

     First I am guessing you have already seen the shots of the new Sonic Wind LSRV model posted as promised. It is much more efficient than Imagine LSRV was to be but it has to be as it has a bit less power. It is prettier by far and everyone thinks that it is the best looking design to ever come from my drawing board. I will let you all make up your own minds on that one. Denise still thinks the Sonic Wind ice racer is still much sleeker and prettier. The new web page Ed Torsello put up tells all about Sonic Wind LSRV and all its capabilities.

      I have always liked white as a base color for a land speed car as  white helps the crew when the car is being worked on while standing on a desert playa. In the desert a vehicle’s skin tends to get very hot in the sun if it is a dark color or metallic. There are a few other colors on the vehicle and they all have a reason for being there. The green and red colors are a tribute to Arthur Arfons and his series of Green Monster cars. The blue and white are tribute colors to Craig Breedlove, Walt Arfons, Malcolm and Donald Campbell, Reed Railton, Ken and Lewis Norris.

     Even though the over all design is laid out to give the car a very low Cd. and keep it stable during its runs a lot of her lines are conceptual tributes to a few other designers I have studied and appreciated through the years. Land speed vehicles are engineered and not styled to just please the eye like automobiles are. On a land speed car every curve serves a function and they are all necessary to the over all handling and success of the vehicle.

     Sonic Wind LSRV’s top of the body curves are reworked ideas from Jack Costella’s designs, only reshaped for supersonic shockwave control. The thick Blue line on the side of Sonic Wind LSRV’s body makes the vehicle mirror the feminine lines of Jocko Johnson’s never completed “Triple Nickel/Spirit of Twenty Nine Palms” design. This is a concept some twenty five years old and still looks like it is ten years ahead of anything being built or currently running at Bonneville. Here is a shot of a hand made model of it he gave me about ten years ago.

     This was the last progression of that design and the one he was working on at the time of his death. It incorporated rear steering and front wheel drive. One of the early versions of this vehicle actually had a large T tail on top of the back pod which was to fly the rear of the car off the ground at speed. So the only things actually touching the ground were to be the drive wheels in the front pod. This was for sure a design feature that would have taken a computer system to keep controlled but a neat reach for Jocko none the less.

      My Sonic Wind LSRV vehicle does not actually have a bottom curve.  It is still very similar to the bell shape of the Imagine LSRV design. The blue line is only a color line, a sort of pinstripe or styling line.

     The twin rear tails are a necessary design feature on Sonic Wind LSRV and a tribute to John Ackroyd, Rosco McGlashen, Gary Gabelich and Tom Daniels who had earlier designs with vertical twin or twin canted out rear tails. All of these vehicle concepts except for Thrust 2 were never built. The twin tails on Sonic Wind LSRV can be moved from 45 degrees (as they are depicted on the model) to 90 degrees or vertical. All these styling design features are my way of acknowledging the design brilliance of the Giants on whose shoulders I stand. It is my way of honoring them all and thanking them for influencing my concepts. I never borrow an idea and not give the influencing design/designer credit like some engineers who will remain nameless do.

     One thing you will notice about my and Jocko’s designs is that the overall shapes tend to flow into each other and look like all the shapes belong together. This is where the term ‘Classic Design” comes in. A lot of people think that any old car or motorcycle is called a classic because it is old but that is not true at all. Classic cars and bikes are classic because even though they were designed and built in another time they look like they could have been built yesterday. In other words the overall vehicle design is timeless.

     Jocko’s early streamliner design that Jazzy Nelson set the ¼ mile drag record in 1957 looks like he could have built it yesterday. Later in the 1970s drag racer Don Garlits employed Jocko to build a dragster with nearly the exact same shape for Don to experiment with. It was so beautiful that it adorned Car Craft magazine’s front cover and had many feature articles written about it. Again Jocko’s designs show how classic they are.

      Here is an example for some of you to understand what “classic” means. A 1957 Chevy two door is a neat looking car and beautiful in many ways but it is not a classic car yet most Chevy Corvettes are. On the other hand a 1955-1957 Ford Thunderbird is a classic car because its lines are timeless. So much so in fact that Ford copied the lines off that year and the 1960 Thunderbird to build their later models of Thunderbirds. In the same vain you can say that a few of the Mustangs from the 1960s were also classic designs because Ford still copies those designs for their newer Mustangs.

     Volkswagen’s Beetle is also a classic and it was conceptualized by Germany’s Adolph Hitler who originally was a painter in watercolors and a professional artist by trade. That is before he decided to try and take over the world of course. Hitler commissioned the car to be designed by none other than Ferdinand Porsche. Porsches of course are usually all of classic design. Most anything designed by such streamliner experts as 1930s designer Raymond Lowey and of course Alex Tremilus tend to be classic. The Delorean DMC sports car is such a classic that it was used in the movie “Back to the Future” as it looks as though it could have been built 50 years from now. You can buy one of those nowadays on e-bay for cheap.  

     All land speed car and bike streamliners are classic because physics and aerodynamics don’t change and they are designed for absolute efficiency in their particular power and speed range. I never saw a streamliner I didn’t like…ever!

      Although he seldom gets credit for it Ken Norris is the father of all the newer jet and rocket land speed record cars that have come down the pike. His rocket powered Bluebird CMN-8 had all the features most of the three pointer rocket and jet cars do today. I remember reading an article about the proposed McClaren jet LSR car that was never built. When McClaren announced their intentions, there was the unveiling of the mock-up which the press was allowed to see but were not allowed to take any photos of. The chief designer claimed that it was a new design and was not influenced by any previous LSR car designs or designers. But damned if the drawings the press put in the magazines didn’t look remarkably like Bluebird CMN-8 with jet intakes. Since that time both the mock-ups of the CMN-8 and the McClaren LSR car seem to have fallen off the face of the Earth. There is that mock-up curse thing again! 

     Some very old cars that I would call “classics” are the coffin nosed Cord 810 Phaeton, most Duisenberg’s and many if not all the Bugattis. Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz sell a lot of classic automobiles. As for bikes any of the big black twins from Vincent or a lot of the early race bikes such as Cyclones, Merkels etc and a lot of the Harleys and Indians sustain very classic lines.

    Most Honda street bikes are not very classic except for a few such as the 1970s 750 four, the 1977 400 four the 1960s 305 twins all of which are expensive to buy even today. Most of the bikes built nowadays although exotic are lost in the cruiser, chopper or road racer shuffle and it is very difficult for me to tell them apart. The same holds true for most production cars built today.

      Kawasaki had the 1970s two stroke triples, the 250, 400, 500 and 750cc bikes and their original pumpkin tank 900cc four stroke was classic. Suzuki built the 1981 Katana which I think is probably the most beautiful bike ever built to this very day. It looks like something out of the movie Star Wars. I have always wanted to buy one but even on e-bay the prices of even beat to hell ones are way to steep for me. I guess the world agrees with me on that one.

     The Italians can’t build anything but classic as that is their very mindset. Laverda, Moto Guzzi, Moto Morini even their Vespas are classic. BMW has had many classic designs and still makes a beautiful and classic street bike every year. This might be attributed to the Bauhaus design philosophies of the area. Some of you may disagree with me but that is my take on classic designs. The Brits have a flair for the classic in all their sports cars built by Sunbeam, Aston Martin, McClaren, Triumph and the motorcycles of Triumph, BSA and Norton.

     As a mature man of 30 years old and older I have seldom owned a car personally and have only bought pick up trucks and motorcycles. Except that is for recently when I bought a 1976 Triumph TR-7 convertible. I believe that car is one of the most beautiful cars I have ever seen. The “wedge” design is gorgeous to look at but the car itself is absolute garbage. Its engine was about as dependable as a heroin addict and just about as expensive to maintain. I bought this TR-7 convertible which was lying abandoned in a field and left for dead for $100.00.

     I had the local company “Le Engine Shoppe” in Victorville California throw away the entire drive train and swap it out with a V6 and automatic transmission from a late 1980s Ford Thunderbird coupe. That deal took two years and cost me over $7,000.00. I have only to redo the interior and paint it to have a super sleeper. I will post photos of it when I do.

     Another car which I think has a timeless design is the Bricklin SV-1. It is really a bit cheaply built but the bodies are gorgeous. Someday I am going to find one that I can afford and keep it around just to look at it. Say what you will about all the SUVs and big cars running around nowadays. I am still convinced that the last real American Automobile (not a car) built in the US was the late 1970s Cadillac Eldorado. I saw an Italian guy who had a white on white convertible one in Hollywood recently. He was an actor of some sort and we talked about it. He told me how cool it was cruising to Las Vegas with his beautiful girlfriend on a hot day at a hundred miles per hour while playing music from the 8 track. I was all doe eyed I am sure….Someday I thought.   

      The Japanese don’t have a clue about classic lines but they sure have a handle on durability and finish. Most of the sort of classic car styles coming out of Mitsubishi (Mitsubishi industries was the company that built the Japanese Zero fighter plane that bombed Pearl Harbor….I just thought I’d point that out), Toyota and Nissan are usually copies of Italian designers or futurists like Luigi Colani. Nissan, back when they were lying to the world in order to get people to think they were German named their car line “Datsun”.  As Datsun they built a beautiful 1600, 2000 and the “Z” series, 240s on up in the late 1960s to today. Also the Mazda Wankel engine powered cars have always been hot looking. The Japanese sure are coming up with some stylish beauties nowadays but few are what I would call classic.

     I have never owned many Chevy or Ford cars because they tended to be so unreliable and pretty much just junk in my eyes. The best product the Ford Motor company makes in my opinion is their F-150 Pick up truck of which I have owned six through the years, a 1971, 1976, 1981, 1984, 1995 and a 2002 model which is the current Grey Ghost. I traded in the 1995 F-150 with 297,000 miles on it. I changed the oil in that truck four times in all those years. The Grey Ghost has just topped 149,000 miles and doesn’t drop a single drop of oil. I have changed the oil on it twice in the four years I have owned her!

     I took the Grey Ghost to a lube place and the kid working there was telling me that I should change the oil about every three thousand miles. I told him… “I don’t believe all that bull--t. Engines love sludge son, what do you think STP engine products are? They are like honey in consistency. “Just top her off junior and stow all the marketing bunk. My father was a mechanic 30 years before they were technicians and I have personally rebuilt more car engines than you lube here in a day.” He was laughing at me and put a sticker on the windshield with the next oil change to be done on the Grey Ghost at 300,000 miles to get back at me. The sticker has long since dried up and fallen off. This is probably because the stickers only last about three thousand miles.

     I didn’t buy very many cars after I got older but when I ran hot rods as a kid, Mopars were my favorite and I owned and drove the hell out of all the models. I had Dodge Chargers and Challengers, Plymouth Barracudas and Cudas etc. 1970s Mopar Muscle cars just seemed to have more get up and go even though they fell apart a lot. They had strong blocks and transmissions but the chassis and suspensions were weak. The bodies were a bit tiny too if I remember correctly.

     As for Chevys I had a few as Chevy makes a great straight six cylinder and their V8 engines just rock and also cheap to hot rod. I even once owned a 1975 Cosworth Vega #1567. They were numbered like fine art prints. This was some GM marketer’s idea to give a crappy gimmick car some value. I bought it for a song, used of course and I rebuilt the engine and later painted it a cool looking grey-blue. It had a nifty little 2,000 cc dual over head cam engine in it. It had a 16 valve Cosworth Racing head on it, a Bosch computer controlled fuel injection system and stainless steel headers right from the GM factory. At that time that was really cutting edge stuff (1975-1976).  

     Chevy claimed it could blow the doors off most of its competitors small V-8s. That turned out to be a lie as even a standard Dodge Valiant mom-mobile dusted me one time in a stop light to stop light drag race. That mom and her kids who were in the car at the time probably still tell that story whenever they need a good laugh.

     I used to use it to free air test my aerodynamic models on the freeway as it was long legged and it could hit 115 M.P.H. (going pretty straight) according to its speedometer. Chevrolet only made Cosworth Vegas for two years because they cost almost as much as a Corvette and really were just a dolled up Vega economy junk box.

     If you need a car to pick up chicks, the chicks don’t understand that this “Vega” has a Cosworth engine in it. It still looks like a cheesy Chevy Vega. Now Corvettes well, they understood that! The Cosworth Vega signature Black and Gold paint scheme looked pretty neat though. I painted mine grey because when it was black and gold, people would key it in the parking lots of the scummy bars I used to frequent. I guess the drunken slobs that went there also thought I had money or something so to hell with me.  Anyway, that is my take on classic cars and bikes.  

     Next, earlier on in the month I did a radio appearance on the Michael Hughes radio talk show which airs Wednesday nights at 6 PM on KCAA Am 1050 broadcasting out of San Bernardino California. It can be picked up throughout the I.E. as we call it here or the inland empire as it is called on maps. It is also podcasted so you can hear and see it on your computer. It was fun to do and Michael made me laugh a lot as I explained about the LSR and why I believed it should be held by an American team for awhile. Here is a shot of Michael and myself in studio.

     I don’t usually do press but Michael is the guy I have told you about that is trying to jump a steam rocket from Arizona into California, across the Colorado River. The jump project is progressing slowly and the jump dates are constantly being moved back because of lack of funds due to a sponsor backing out. There was also a problem with the FAA for awhile over his rocket and its planned trajectory. Yet, Michael is persistent and keeps plugging away so it is only a matter of time before he makes his dream come true. Michael established the radio talk show awhile back in order to help promote his rocket jump.

     I also heard from my author buddy Harvey Shapiro. He is now focusing on a book about LSR car builder and driver Athol Graham and his 1960 attempt on the LSR. He has been researching the book for a couple of years now and called to ask me to write the forward. I was flattered and will do my best when the time comes. For those of you who don’t remember Athol Graham. He was a Salt Lake City garage mechanic who wanted to set the land speed record at Bonneville. So he bought a surplus Allison V-12 aircraft engine taken out of a World War 2 P-51 Mustang fighter plane and built a chassis around it. Then encased the chassis in a body made from a stretched, sectioned and panel filled fighter drop fuel tank. He named the car “The City of Salt Lake”. The car was then taken to Bonneville and raced. He was timed on one of his runs at 344 M.P.H. and the car had plenty of power left. The record at the time was 397 M.P.H. held by John Cobb and set after the war in 1947.

     Then on a run at over 300 M.P.H. (some people say) the car veered sideways rolled upside down and slid until it flipped over and over. There is hearsay that the wheels failed in the initial slide and a tire came off. The car was shod with high speed Firestones and the wheels looked to me like those cast, finned Magnesium Halibrands a lot of guys ran in the early 1960s. Of course it doesn’t much matter now but the speculation of what caused the crash carries on to this very day.

     Monday morning quarterbacking on my part I would say the over all design was one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” designs. Aerodynamically the overall body was a neutral wing that only needed up or down attitude to generate enough lift to launch the car or drive it into the salt. The driver sat too far forward in the car to have enough time to analyze the movement of the car and compensate with steering changes. The car probably would have acted like a turntable as it looked like the Cg was at the center of the four wheels. With no tail fin to place the Cp in back of the Cg the car would have yawed like a Frisbee. So it would have been a white knuckle drive for even a lightning fast Formula 1 championship winning driver let alone a Salt Lake City mechanic.

     The car was built a little weak and the chassis reminded me of a standard automobile chassis being built of simple steel “C” channel. During the crash the firewall behind the drivers seat was bent forward just under Athol’s helmet and his spine was crushed. He also had internal injuries and some say he died right there on the salt while others say he died in the hospital a short time later.

     The car was later rebuilt by Athol’s young friend Otto Anjon and raced by the then 19 year old. It was later discovered that this was allowed by Athol’s widow Zeldine because Otto was dying of cancer, leukemia I believe and it was his last wish to rebuild and drive the car he believed in. This was the joy to the last days of young Otto Anjon’s life. Even though the cancer took Otto before he could get some serious high speed runs in.

     Later another Graham family friend Harry Mulbach added a few changes to the nose of the car by building a tube frame work on its nose to use as an attitude guide in order to make the car more drivable. Harry crashed the car also but was unhurt. The car is now owned by one of Athol’s sons who is currently restoring it for posterity. The Athol Graham story is one that needs to be told in truth as it is the story of the American hot rodding spirit. The “I can do this so just get out of my way and hand me that wrench” spirit that made this country great. 99 percent of you guys who read this site know exactly what I am talking about. So when Harvey finishes the book get yourself a copy.  

     I also made time this month to get the ice racer Sonic Wind back up to snuff. For a few years she has been under a tarp in the desert heat and the paint became faded and some of the systems weren’t working. I went through all her systems and put six coats of “Day Glo” “Rocket Red” paint on her. While building her ten years ago the Day Glo paint company was one of her material sponsors and I still keep a couple of gallons of the paint around for keeping her looking good. Thanks Day Glo for the paint donations. The Day Glo company was the first company to develop fluorescent color paints. They did it under military contract for the United States Air Force for the B-58 Hustler and the XB-70 Bomber. This was the paint used to paint the escape capsules used on these aircraft so the crew could be easier found on the ground after an ejection. Here is the ice racer Sonic Wind looking good and ready for a sponsor to help her run., and

     The reason I use this flat colored bright “rocket red” paint is that the sections painted red are only the cockpit blast capsule where the driver is and in case of emergency the support crew need only to focus on the red part of the vehicle if it should scatter into pieces. Also this paint has the ability to scrape off easily and will leave a trail should the capsule slide any distance. I plan to coat the blast capsule on the Sonic Wind LSRV car with the same paint for the exact same reasons.

     I have told this story before but I will tell it again. One time at Bonneville, Don Vesco was racing an Orange colored streamliner powered by a turbocharged Offenhauser Indianapolis race car engine. It was a five wheeler and very unstable and while running it he crashed at about 360 M.P.H. some people said. The vehicle broke into many pieces of similar size scattered about over a square mile or so. The emergency crews went from piece to piece looking for the piece containing the semiconscious Vesco. If he was on the verge of death he would surely have died before they found the right piece of the vehicle which contained Don Vesco. This story was told to me by Don Vesco himself. So I am going to go with this valuable lesson he gave me. It was one of many he gave me as he was a knowledgeable and courageous soul. If anyone deserves a mountain named after him at Bonneville it is Don Vesco.

     The Sonic Wind ice racer has the same speed potential of all the new LSR cars currently being built around the world. In theory it could hit a top speed of over 1,000 M.P.H. on the ice. I would love to campaign it but I have focused on building the new car because I currently have the ability to do so, the time is right and at this time sponsors don’t seem interested in an ice record no matter how fast it may be. Somehow sponsors believe that rocket or jet LSR cars are somehow “cars”. Even though their technology is no more like a cars than I am like a car. The only similarity LSR vehicles have with automobiles is that they roll on the ground.

     Trying to run Sonic Wind was one logistics headache after another and after two failed attempt fiascos on various frozen lakes around the country at my own expense, I decided to focus on building a new super car and Sonic Wind LSRV is that machine. Plus I am an on-hands-aholic and have to be building something all the time or I go stir crazy.

     To set a super sonic ice record we would have to set up camp on a frozen lake for a couple of months or so. The conditions of a good course and no wind are hard to come by on a frozen lake in the dead of winter. Paying for expendables, timing officials and room and board for a dozen crew members for that length of time is out of my financial reach right now and corporate America doesn’t seem to see the beauty of a rocket powered ice record. I am hoping the Sonic Wind LSRV car will generate a different interest. Especially if the other contenders around the world get their chance in the sun and the world becomes a little more LSR educated.

     If any of you have fifty thousand extra dollars lying around and the guts to have the ride of your life. The ice racer Sonic Wind is available for lease. I will even shake her down to the speed you want to hit to make sure she is safe and then put you in the cockpit to receive all your record setting glory. You have to be 5’8” or smaller in height to slip into her cockpit as she is quite compact. You have to be loaded into the cockpit like a bullet into a Winchester rifle by first sliding forward and then back into the seat. The cockpit is a cylinder only 20 inches in diameter and 5’2” long so put down that Twinkie!

      If you want all the glory I will sell Sonic Wind to you for $1.75M. That is half the asking price of the Fosset car and Sonic Wind is potentially 300 M.P.H. faster. For that kind of money I will even consult you and help you become a legend. Not a bad deal the way I see it. You don’t even have to run her. You can just hang her up on the wall in your living room like a Picasso or Rembrandt. You will be the envy of all of your friends as they talk about their Lambos and Bugattis while you share a glass of aged brandy. How many Lambos are powered by the engine from the X-1 rocket plane or have parts in them from every aerospace project leading all the way up to the moon walk? Of course if you use your Lambo to pick up chicks. The Sonic Wind would be more like the Cosworth Vega to them.

     The ice record still stands at 247 M.P.H. Sonic Wind would hit that in 4 seconds of burn time and she carries enough fuel to burn for 17 seconds at full thrust or 22 seconds at ¾ thrust as proven by all her many static engine tests we’ve already conducted. Got the bucks?...Got the guts? Really want to impress your friends at the club? ...Give me a call…I am currently flexible because I am broke and this new car is going through money like I’m printing it.

      On another note, I also heard from my friend Ky Michaelson this month. He said that his young son Buddy now has a new web site at wwwtherocketboy.us/index.html. Here are some shots of Buddy flying his own rocket belt on a tether. I believe he is not quite ten years old but I could be wrong. With Ky as his dad there is no telling what he will be up to when he becomes a man but I hope I am around to see it.

     Last month I was telling you about the movie Blade Runner and that incredible last scene. I guess that I am not the only one who feels that this is a scene where film actually becomes poetry. Because here are the You Tube videos many people have posted so you can see what I mean. Look up “BLADE RUNNER- Tears in the rain” or “Blade Runner-I’ve seen things”. It is fantastic to watch. An amazing bit of movie trivia for you that most people don’t know is that Rutger Hauer made up those lines right there on the spot while shooting and they were not scripted. I guess that is why he is a famous actor and I am not.

     I thought I saw him in an Italian restaurant in Kauai Hawaii last year. I know what he looks like as I have seen that movie a twenty times and know his face better than my own mothers. I approached the guy he was sitting with when Rutger went to the men’s room. The guy said it was not Rutger and gave me the “don’t bug us blow off”. So I guess an autograph was probably out of the question.

     I see poetry in film every now and then but it is rare nowadays. I remember the scene in the movie “The Pride and the Passion” where Cary Grant carries the body of Frank Sinatra into the city of Avilla Spain and lays his broken body at the feet of the statue of Saint Teresa. 30 years later I still can’t watch that movie and not get weepy at that scene. Another example is in the movie “One flew over the Cuckoos nest” when The Chief finishes off Jack Nicholson with a pillow and tosses that heavy marble tub through the window bars and escapes.

    I try to watch these old movies in a dark room so Denise doesn’t see me get misty eyed. Man, I hope she doesn’t get a chance to read this update. I would hate for her to think I was some kind of wimp or something……Waldo