This Speedster was powered by the new 160 h.p. V-12 Lycoming engine."Automotive Industries" reported in it's Jan.1932 issue that new speed records were set at distances from one mile to 500 miles. The mile run set a new 100.77 mph mark, and the 500 mile distance was covered at an average speed of 88.95 mph.
However, feeling that the surface of Alvord was too soft for over 700 mph, Shadle chose Diamond Valley Playa, a dry lake bed about 25 miles north of Eureka, for supersonic speed runs.
Of course, the other places that are lesser known than Bonneville for that level of runs is Black Rock, Nevada, where Burning Man happens, and the Nevada State Route 160 near Pahrump where Koenigsegg just went 277.9
Thurst SSC officially broke the sound barrier 21 years ago when accelerating to 763.035 mph at Black Rock, and still trying to get funding to run in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa for the Bloodhound SSC.
By the way, the Environmental Assessment request to the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-office/projects/nepa/92024/128254/156103/20171218_NAE_Land_Speed_EA_FINAL.pdf shows that the only considerations for using a lifeless dry lake bed, that the US Govt labels "an area of flat, dried-up land, especially a desert basin" where there is NOTHING, not even water or grass, still has to be judged against the imagined needs of the great sage grouse
To minimize or avoid potential
impacts to fish, aquatic invertebrates, wildlife, special status species,
migratory birds, raptors, and great sage-grouse. Hard to believe the govt is this stupid, but there you have it, on a govt document.
. Not that ANY are on the dry lake, but, you know... govt regulations:
• American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 (42 USC 1996)
• BLM Shoshone-Eureka Resource Management Plan, as amended (2002)
• Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, as amended (16 USC
669-668d)
• Clean Water Act of 1977 (33 USC 1251 et seq.)
• Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and
Liability Act of 1980(42 USC 9615)
• Diamond Valley Weed Control District (NRS [Nevada Revised
Statutes] 555.202)
• Eureka County Master Plan, as amended (2010)
• Eureka County Water Resources Master Plan (2016)
• Executive Order 11988, Floodplain Management, as amended (1977)
• Executive Order 11990, Protection of Wetlands (1977)
• Executive Order 13045, Protection of Children from Environmental
Health Risks and Safety Risks (1997) which you'll remember, wasn't a factor they assessed when the FBI killed all the kids at Waco.
• Executive Order 13112, Safeguarding the Nation from Impacts of
Invasive Species (1999)
• Executive Order 13186, Responsibilities of Federal Agencies to
Protect Migratory Birds (2001)
• Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (Pub.L. [Public
Law] 94-579)
• Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (16 USC 703-711)
• National Environment Protection Act of 1976 (42 USC 4321)
• National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (16 USC 470
et seq.)
• Nevada and Northeastern California Greater Sage-Grouse Approved
Resource Management Plan Amendment (2015)
• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (42 USC 6901 et
seq.)
• Safe Drinking Water Act of 1977, as amended (42 USC 300f et seq.)
And here's an idea of how varied the American Indian Religious Freedom Act is:
Traditional social activities important to the Western
Shoshone include pine nut gathering, edible and medical plant gathering,
hunting and fishing, and spiritual/ceremonial practices. Such sites of
importance include, but are not limited to, existing antelope traps; certain
mountain tops used for vision questing and prayer; medicinal and edible
plant gathering locations; prehistoric and historic village sites and
gravesites; sites associated with creation stories; hot and cold springs;
material used for basketry and cradle board making; locations of stone
tools such as projectile points and grinding stones; toolstone quarries;
hunting sites; sweat lodge locations; locations that of consistent pine nut
harvesting and ceremonies; boulders used for offerings and medicine
gathering; rock shelters; and petroglyph locations; and tribally identified
TCPs.
None of which are on the desert alkali flat. However, if they were, the govt would still put an oil pipeline through, but they wouldn't allow dry lakebed racing.
Anyway, it's fascinating to read the govt report which spells out every plant, soil sample, all 23 birds, fish and critter that possibly could be in the area. HOW anyone ever gets an oil drilling operation going, which WILL pollute the area, is a mystery to me
The son of sharecroppers, Needham was born in Memphis, Tenn., in 1931, and spent most of his childhood so deep in the Ozarks that, as he liked to joke, "You had to pump the sunshine to us."
Dropping out of school after eighth grade, he worked as a tree trimmer in St. Louis before joining the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in 1951. When he left the service he headed west with three pairs of jeans, six T-shirts, a buddy and no particular plan.
The Bud Rocket... it did run on Muroc and Bonneville, it was fast, and Hal Needham owned it.
Needham didn't drive the Bud Rocket though, Stan Barret did, and Barret was Paul Newman's stunt double, and was sparring with Bruce Lee. He also was on the Dean Martin Roast of Ronald Reagan, and since Needham was friends with Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, they starred in the movie Cannonball Run, which we'll get to at the bottom of this post.
His run was witnessed by some famous people who knew about speed... Chuck Yeager, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and William J. "Pete" Knight, who, to this day holds the all-time speed record for level flight, when he flew an X-15 at Mach 6.7.
Unfortunately, there is no accurate or verifiable way to know what speed it ran. But that's what you get with publicity stunts vs real hardcore attempts at landspeed records. There was no FIA, no SCTA, etc etc to get an accurate high speed, average speed, and they didn't turn around for a return run to get a both ways required run for the international record. But, they really didn't care about all the hoopla. They made money, got rich, caused a hell of a media splash.. and didn't have to hire Evel Knievel.
Paul Newman climbing into the Budweiser Rocket at Bonneville, Newman was responsible for putting together the relationship for Budweiser to be the lead sponsor. After 9 runs at Bonneville, the Budweiser Rocket kept digging into the unstable salt surface which presented a serious safety issue, and Chuck Yeager interceded and got them permission from the Air Force to run at Muroc, now part of Edwards AFB.
It wasn't Needham's 1st land speed vehicle though, the SMI Motivator was. You've probably never heard of that, because it never accomplished anything.
During 1976 Needham tested the Budweiser/SMI Motivator –sponsored vehicle in excess of 600 mph on a huge dry lake located in Oregon. So... credit him that, and give him 2 of those ballcaps that celebrate breaking the 300 mph barrier... or a 400 and a 200. I just don't thing they ever made a 600 mph hat, as only a couple people have ever, or will ever go faster on wheels.
The `SMI Motivator' was made available to two drivers: Needham and the wife of his partner Duffy Hambleton. Kitty O'Neil was a 28-year-old Irish and Cherokee woman from Texas, who was to drive the 'Motivator' to a new women's record, while Hal went for the speed of sound.
Nothing but a publicity gambit.
Needham's sponsor had paid out more than $75,000 to get him the drive, but after a high-speed foray on Mud Lane at Tonopah in Nevada, he run out of lake and into the sage brush on the surrounding desert, vowing never to drive the car again. (I've never heard of a dry lake near Tonopah, and the internet turned up no info)
Lets face it, no one even tries, and if they wanted to, Bonneville probably can't support that if everything I've heard about the condition of the salt is correct.
In May 1977, his movie directorial debut was released... and Smokey and the Bandit which cost 12 million reaped tenfold that amount in less than 6 months. And that was the summer all movies had to compete with Star Wars for ticket sales, which had been released 2 days earlier than Smokey.
Burt Reynolds became the highest paid actor in cinema history up to that point, for this movie, making five million dollars for four weeks work.
Roger Moore never drove an Aston Martin in the Bond movies, but he drove a DB5 in Smokey.
The Ferrari 308 used in the movie belonged to Director Hal Needham.
Ron Rice, owner of Hawaiian Tropic, loaned his black Lamborghini to his buddies Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham.
The moustache worn by Burt Reynolds in this movie was subsequently auctioned for the charity, UNICEF. The auction was held in Geneva, Switzerland, and the winning bid was twenty-five thousand dollars from Freddie Mercury https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082136/trivia
And that's when Needham might be considered to have created redneck buddy movies. He directed, Burt Reynolds drove, and everyone was happy. He created movies with fast cars, car stunts, bar fights, country music and devil-may-care men who’d do anything for a buddy, and for a good time.
Just in time for Dukes of Hazard to catch the wave and ride it to CBS in Jan 1979. It was based on a 1975 movie, Moonrunners, which was identical in every way to the tv show, just not as cute and funny.
The movie was narrated by Waylon Jennings who introduces and comments on the story of cousins, who run moonshine for their widower uncle Jesse who knows the Bible better than the local preacher. He makes liquor, according to his "granddaddy's granddaddy's" recipe, in stills named Molly and Beulah. In the opening, one of the cousins is in the county jail for a bar fight at the Boar's Nest. So, you can see, it's a movie version of the tv show, with a couple character names changed. There's a Cooter, and a county boss bad guy who owns the Boar's Nest and the local brothel. He sells moonshine to yankees. To get at Jesse’s supply, Sheriff Rosco Coltrane harasses the cousins who use bow and arrows because they are on probabtion and can't own guns. There's the whole Dukes of Hazard County in a nutshell.
Anyway.... getting back to Hal Needham.
He was a paratrooper in the Army. No wonder he got a job in Hollywood as a stuntman
As the highest paid stuntman in the world, Hal Needham broke 56 bones, his back twice, punctured a lung and knocked out a few teeth. His career has included work on 4500 television episodes and 310 feature films as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, 2nd unit director and ultimately, director.
Needham wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up, was dragged by horses, rescued the cast and crew from a Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia, set a world record for a boat stunt on Gator (1976), jumped a rocket powered pick-up truck across a canal for a GM commercial and was the first human to test the car airbag.
He wrote Cannonball Run II, Stroker Ace, Smokey and the Bandit one and two
In addition, he directed Smokey and the Bandit one and two, Cannonball Run one and two, Hooper, Stroker Ace, and others that really aren't important or impressive.
Jackie Chan makes one of his first U.S. film appearance in Cannonball Run, and inspired by Hal Needham's notion of including bloopers during the closing credits, Chan began a tradition of doing the same in most of his movies.
The ambulance used in the movie, is the actual ambulance that Hal Needham and Brock Yates souped up and raced in the real Cannonball Run. It had been upgraded with a hemi, and topped out at 145 mph, and was equipped with 4 gas tanks, and 4 filler holes, so that the max ninety gallons could be pumped quickly from one gas station island. Needham and Yates didn't win the race (the transmission blew in Palm Springs, California) so Needham kept it in storage for several years, until the time came to make this film.
Stan Barret related the true story about how he was the stunt double for Burt Reynolds on the movie Hooper and loaned Burt his Rolex to wear in the movie as Burt played the role of Hal, and they kept passing it back and forth as Stan wore it in the stunt scenes and Burt wore it in the regular scenes. The action movie Hooper was loosely based upon his and Hal Needham's careers as stuntmen.
He invented and introduced to the film industry, the air ram, air bag, the car cannon turnover, the nitrogen ratchet, the jerk-off ratchet, rocket power and The Shotmaker Camera Car to make stunts safer and yet more spectacular at the same time. He also directed the 1980's hit BMX movie Rad.
Needham co-owned a NASCAR race team and was the first team owner to use telemetry technology.
In February 1981 Needham and Burt Reynolds debuted their Skoal Bandit Racing team at the Daytona 500. They intended to run 19 races with (previously featured at the beginning of this article) Stan Barrett at the wheel. The Skoal-Bandit race team was one of the most popular NASCAR teams ever - second only to that of Richard Petty
After running the Bud Rocket and using real time telemetry, Needham decided to employ it on his stock car. With permission from Bill France, it was installed in the car for the Talladega race. Every other team in the pits had a fit because they were getting real time updates in the pits from the car on exactly what was going on. It was the only time France allowed it.
Journeyman driver Harry Gant was enlisted to assist crew chief Travis Carter in setting up the car for Barrett. After Gant, driving for another team, finished second to Cale Yarborough at the Atlanta race, Needham approached Gant about driving a second car for the team.
Gant's first start for the team came a month later at Darlington and he finished second. Halfway through the year Barrett was gone and the team now competed fulltime on the NASCAR circuit. After five more runner-up finishes, Gant broke through and won his first race at Martinsville in April 1982.
After 17 years of racing, most of them in NASCAR's lesser divisions, Gant was a star and his fans that cheered him on the short tracks had a Winston Cup hero. Gant won eight more races and finished in the top-five in points four times before Needham bowed out of the sport after the 1988 season.
Gant credits Needham with being a major force in changing the face of stock car racing. "Hal was the first to dress the crew in matching embroidered uniforms. He had a big hauler with the car painted on it. He brought people from Hollywood to the races. He even had cheerleaders in the pits once."
In 2012, Needham received a Governor's Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The academy, which gives no Oscars for stunt work, cited Needham as "an innovator, mentor and master technician who elevated his craft to an art and made the impossible look easy."
