Forty Years Of Bobby Issac’s 28 Land Speed Records

If you’re not a big fan on the Bonneville Salt Flats, there is something wrong with you. It is the Temple of Speed, the Mecca of hot rodding, the place where it all started. Legends rise and fall on the salt flats, and everybody who is anybody in the speed world has made the pilgrimage at least once. It’s the holiest place American gearheads have.

In 1971, it served as a place of solace for the outlawed NASCAR racing team of Bobby Issac. Jalopnik recently ran a story from an upcoming book chronicling Issac’s racing career from a book called Bobby Issac: NASCAR’s First Modern Champion by Steve Lehto.

The piece picks up shortly after NASCAR’s 1971 ban on the Charger Daytona and Plymouth Superbird aero-cars. Their domination and unfair advantage had made the racing series uncompetitive, to say the least, and Issac decided to have some fun with the Daytona before retiring it forever.

He hit the Bonneville Salt Flats and, over the course of a couple of days, set 28 land speed records in various categories, including the flying mile, the standing mile, so on and so forth. He reached an average top speed of 217 mph, beating the previous record by over 25 mph. Many of these records stand today. Head over to Jalopnik to read the piece in its entirety, or pick up the book on Amazon.com today.