Bonneville '83: Some pictures

In the fall of '83 my friend Tomas and I made the grand american tour, going from coast to coast and back again. One definite stop on the trek was the Speed Week at Bonneville, and we drove non-stop from Houston. As we got to Salt Lake City we realized there would probably not be any racing that year as the Salt Lake was completely flooded.

I was going through some boxes with old slides and found a bunch of photos from Bonneville and Wendover. It was far from the usual Speed Week action that year, but some cars showed up to make it at least a bit interesting.

Here's outside the Bonnneville museum. Lee Pratt and his lowrider Buick and a neat 41? pick-up:

Here it is again, at the road where you usually enter the race course. Lee Pratt's cars have been a great inspiration for me, especially his later ones like the golden '40 Ford coupe.

Dan Hostetter drove from San Diego in this cool little Deuce three window, towing a teardrop trailer. It sported a Dodge Red Ram hemi engine, and it made such an impact on me that since then I've wanted one of those babies myself. The naturalistic flames gives it personality. From what I've heard Dan is still into land speed racing, competing in another three-window painted with a similar flame job.

CB antenna, Turbo wheels, gold Moroso valve covers: definitely 1983. Wonder how it looks today?

Walking back to our rental, happily unaware of the fact that the brakes would fail completely at an intersection less than 12 hours later.

Another story will follow later, hang on.

Comments

[Steuf]

My homeland! I remember the floods that year. SLC's Main Street was made into a river. Everyone in the city was sandbagging the streets for days.

[Christer]

Yeah, I remember a funky looking amusement park by the "beach" (do you call it that?) that was completely flooded. That's more or less all we saw of SLC, hope to get a better look of it next time.