Bill Summers (car builder)

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

The brothers Summers began her career in the 1950s in order to trim rickety old cars for driving tests on salt lakes. Bob was a welder (and later the driver of the built record breaker ) and Bill a truck driver, and yet they had the innovative concept that henceforth shaped the design of almost all vehicles inserted on the Bonneville Flats: the smallest possible frontal area. Was built In the same spirit of them a vehicle that was described in March 1964, Hot Rod Magazine, under the heading " Bonneville 's Most Unusual Streamliner ": A single-engine vehicle with front wheel drive and two series -mounted wheels in the rear. In the class C ( engine capacity of 3000 to 5000 cc ) the car turned over the flying kilometer at 456.57 km / h in the autumn of 1963, a new record.

In parallel, the development of the Goldenrod ran. The four used in this vehicle Chrysler naturally aspirated engines with 600 hp each were arranged streamlined in a row. The Goldenrod they built in a backyard shed plate, later they had a company for the manufacture of high quality drive components, high-strength axles for Dragster particular. Bill Summers traveled after 1965 the world to showcase the car and was alone five times in Europe. But the brothers were living apart soon. Bob, the younger, died in 1991. The record car was extensively restored, purchased in 2002 by Henry Ford Museum, which indicates special care he and the underlying spirit of invention had a visible indication of those simple people who resort to extraordinary measures to the "American Dream to come. " Attendance at the first presentation made ​​at Bill Summers for moving words: " ... this is the high point in the life of this car ... and the highlight of mine. "

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