Bill Summers (designer)

William Ray "Bill" Summers (* 18th December 1935 in Omaha , Nebraska ; † 12. May 2011 in Ontario , California ) was an American automobile - designer . He and his brother Bob Summers designed and built the Goldenrod , which held a land speed record for conventional vehicles from 1965 to 1991.

The Summers brothers began their careers in the 1950s by preparing rickety old cars for road tests on salt lakes . Bob was a welder (and later the driver of the record car he built) and Bill a truck driver, and yet they had the innovative concept that from then on shaped the design of almost all vehicles on the Bonneville Flats : the smallest possible frontal area. With this in mind, they built a vehicle that was described in Hot Rod Magazine in March 1964 under the heading “Bonneville's Most Unusual Streamliner”: a single-engine vehicle with front-wheel drive and two rear-mounted wheels. In class C (displacement from 3000 to 5000 cm³) the car set a new record over the flying kilometer with 456.57 km / h in autumn 1963.

The development of the Goldenrod was carried out in parallel . The four used in this vehicle Chrysler - naturally aspirated engines , each with 600 hp were aerodynamically arranged in a row. They built the Goldenrod in a sheet metal shed in the backyard, and later they owned a company that manufactured high-quality drive components, especially high-strength axles for dragsters . Bill Summers traveled the world after 1965 to present the car and has been to Europe five times alone. The brothers soon grew apart. Bob, the younger, died in 1991. The record car was extensively restored and acquired by the Henry Ford Museum in 2002 , which specifically points out that it and the inventiveness behind it are a visible reference to those ordinary people who resort to extraordinary means to create the “ American Dream “to come true. Participation in the first presentation caused moving words from Bill Summers: "... this is the high point in the life of this car ... and the high point of mine."

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Don Francisco : Bonneville Wrap-Up , Hot Rod Magazine, January 1964, pp. 83-84 (PDF file; 8.38 MB)
2. ↑ Rob Kinnan: American Treasure - Summers Brothers' Goldenrod , Hot Rod Magazine (excerpt from "johnbaechtel.com", accessed December 15, 2013)
3. ↑ Dennis Hevesi: Bill Summers, Car Builder Who Set a Speed ​​Record, Dies at 75 , The New York Times , May 20, 2011
4. ↑ Goldenrod on the homepage of the "Henry Ford Museum"
5. ↑ Steve Purdy: Goldenrod at The Henry Ford , published on "TheAutoChannel.com" (accessed March 1, 2014)