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Show 1957 Ford Races To 458 New Records on Flats A 1957 Ford has traveled more than 50,000 miles at an average speed of more than 108 miles per hour on thte Bonneville, Utah Salt Flats to capture all records from one mile up to 50,000 miles for a total of 458 national and international inter-national marks. This totals more records than ever have been held by any other stock car, Alpine Motor Mo-tor Co., Ford dealer at American Fork, Utah announced today. Eugene Harvey, manager, said that the same type of 1957 Ford may be test driven by Utah county coun-ty residents, and he issued an invitation in-vitation to the public to try America's Amer-ica's most rugged car. "The Ford's Bonneville run began be-gan at 1:50 p.m. Sept. 9. In the next 19 days the car traveled a distance dis-tance equivalent to more than twice around the world at more than 108 miles an hour." Mr. Harvey Har-vey explained. "This was the greatest great-est durabliity and performance achievement in the history of the automobile," he added. "The reason reas-on for this endurance run came from Crew-Chief Danny Eames who said, 'We don"t want people to go this fast. What is more, no one should go this fast except racing ra-cing drivers . . . and then only on race tracks. 'This kind of test is designed strictly to improve the breed of cars ... to test their durability. We're: not after mere speed. The big thing is to torture the engine, the chassis, the body, and all the thousands of parts with high speed for tremendous distances. Here we've got an all new car, a new I kind of Ford, and we wanted to I prove to ourselves, as well as to the American people, just what we had.' " The Bonneville Salt Flats is one of the deadliest deserts on earth. Nothing can live on it, andi noth- ing grows on it. Daytime heats range up to 100 degrees while at night the thermometer plunges down to 50 degrees. But the great salt bed's surface sur-face makes it a perfect, testing ground for automobile performance perform-ance and endurance. It has been the world's most famous natural proving ground since 1924. "The first day at Bonneville, the Ford knocked off all records up to 24 hours by running at an average of better than 1 20 miles an hour including time for pit stops and changing of drivers. After breaking break-ing the one-day records, the endurance en-durance run continued for 19 more days breaking further records almost al-most every hour. A team of eight professional race drivers took turns keeping up the punishing test," Mr. Harvey explained. |