Stunning City of Burbank Streamliner at Bonneville after 7 Year Build

Posted by pikesan on Sep 17, 2013 in Racing | 0 comments

Beautiful, Historic and Fast Flathead Streamliner

bonneville speed week, bonneville racing, land speed racing, streamliner

All I did was capture the return to Bonneville. Dave Thomas, owner of this beautiful recreation of a circa 1952 land speed record holding streamliner. The sleek fiberglass beauty has been known by a few names, but finished here, it’s the “City of Burbank” #61 XF/GS streamliner.

Dave summed up Bonneville here…

“August 18, 2013….. The dust er salt has settled. We made it to Bonneville. We got thru tech inspection and had a chance to make a run down the course. It was the most exciting thing I have done in long time. Our driver pulled away from the push truck and motored off into the distance. We chased him for 5 miles before we saw the tiny speck up ahead parked in the turn off area. We didn’t go all that fast but the car ran the whole 5 miles without incident, right out of the box. It had never turned a wheel under power before that. The little 276 inch flathead did all it could considering the density altitude was 6700 feet. No excuses, we were all happy and we know with more power we can do better.”

There are a few great places to see more and learn more about this brought back to life piece of land speed racing history. The first is Dave’s City of Burbank Streamliner page where the last couple years of the build are documented, but Dave reminds me, the build took about 7 years!

Or, head over to Indianapolis Fabrication’s Hill/Davis Streamliner page where the body was built and painted. From their page, with photos of the fab and a cool stop action video:

“Indianapolis Fabrications painted the chassis and sculpted the body shape based on photographs. The body was carved in high-dense foam and skim coated in plaster then fiberglass and resin were hand-layed to create the body panels.”

Am I missing anything? OH YEA!

More pictures from the 2013 Bonneville Salt Flats shown here… Next year, watch for a feature story when this slick streamliner is featured as one of Bonneville’s Baddest Race Cars!

If you can’t get enough of Land Speed Racing, Check out the 90+ stories from Bonneville.