Butch Graham, 64, a house painter from Salt Lake City on his “City of Salt Lake” land-speed racer and the legacy of his father, Athol Graham, as told to A.J. Baime.
For many years, people have come from all over the world to try to break land-speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats, outside of Salt Lake City. In 1958, my father, Athol Graham, decided that somebody from Salt Lake City should have the land-speed record, since we had the salt right here. He had an auto-repair business in town, and he started building cars in this garage.
At the time, land-speed racing was a big deal, and my father had big dreams. The more I have lived, the more I have learned how big those dreams were, and how many people my father inspired.
He built the “City of Salt Lake” racing car out of the frame of a diesel truck, with an Allison V-12 airplane engine from a World War II P-38 Lightning. It’s a 1,710-cubic-inch engine, and if you know the slightest thing about cars, you know that this thing is a beast. [The U.S. military rated this engine at 1,325-horsepower in the 1930s, according to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.]
In December 1959, my father was able to go over 344 mph in the “City of Salt Lake.” The record at the time was 394 mph, and he wanted to break 400 mph. On Aug. 1, 1960, he crashed at Bonneville at over 300 mph and was killed. [His death was reported in newspapers around the country and even abroad.] I was just 4 years old. I have seen many pictures of the two of us together, but I have no memory of him.
After he died, a teenage mechanic named Otto Anzjon, who had helped my father build the car, decided he wanted to rebuild it and fulfill my father’s dreams. Otto had cancer, and his parents thought if he had something to focus himself on, that would help with the disease. He rebuilt the car and ran it at Bonneville in 1962, over 200 mph, before he blew out a tire. He survived the crash, but he died of leukemia soon after.
When my mother went to sell the building where my father had his auto shop, she had no place to put what was left of this car. A guy from Las Vegas said he could redesign it and make it go fast. So she gave it to him.
Forty years ago, I went to Las Vegas to get the car back. It had been sitting on this guy’s front lawn for years, out in the elements. When I started restoring it, people who knew my father came out of the woodwork to help me. I have had old guys hunt me down, come to see the car, and just start to cry.
Every December, I would take a month off to work on the car because nobody wanted their house painted around the holidays. I had to rebuild the body. It was a lot of fabrication, and painting, too. On the 50th anniversary of my father’s death in 2010, we took the car back out onto the Salt Flats to show it to people. The engine was not in it, at the time. That made the newspapers, and out of nowhere, this hot rodder named Richard Thomas showed up at my doorstep, and he has been helping ever since. The first thing we had to do at that point was get that Allison engine running again.
It took a long time to find someone to rebuild the engine. When I did, Richard helped me take the engine to California. The job took a year and a half, and Richard helped me bring the engine back. He has become a best friend to me. Now the engine is back in the car and it runs. Let me tell you: It is scary!
This job has turned into a lifelong project. My plan now is to try to find a museum that can take good care of the car and help celebrate my father’s legacy.
Write to A.J. Baime at [email protected]
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
