History Athol Graham Bonneville Streamliner Rebuild: A Son's Dream & A Father's 300MPH Legacy

'I must be crazy,' son says as he rebuilds dad's streamliner. The car that Athol Graham, a garage mechanic, lovingly fashioned from salvaged airplane and truck parts. The car that on August 1, 1960, rocketed down Utah's gleaming white Bonneville Salt Flats at 300 mph before crashing and claiming Athol's life.

Great story from yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14765190

Also, 1960 Sports Illustrated story, "Death on the Salt Flats" http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1071650/1/index.htm

Anybody here know Butch Graham? And might have more photos of his rebuild?



Want to help Butch Graham in his rebuild? To raise money to finance the rebuild, Butch is selling commemorative T-shirts through the shop, Paint West, 1606 West 3500 South, West Valley, UT 84119-3314 (801) 972-9380‎

 

Hey, Goober, any way you could post a pic of the T-shirt? HAMBers like photos.






Thanks, Kinky6

 

At this point, all I know is the T-Shirts are available at Paint West, which is a paint store Butch Graham does business with. The owner is out today and will try to get info tomorrow on how to order, etc. I want one, too.

 

I'd like to buy a shirt and donate to help in this effort. Please let me know the particulars.

 

From the 1960 SI article..

"No 400-mph car can be built on a do-it-yourself basis. The tolerances are too fine, the risk too great. In proving this, Graham became the first man to die in 25 years of record runs at Bonneville."

Fortunately the "do it yourself" Burklands didn't listen to this.

 

Cool story.

My uneducated guess would be that front end design caused too much lift.

Rich

 

I saw that article in the Tribune, pretty cool. My Dad told me that Athol married a woman from his home town of Joseph City, Arizona. I think he said he knew her. Its not a big town

 

This past weekend, Salt Lake City television station KSL 5 ran a news story about the
rebuilt "City of Salt Lake" streamliner:

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The entire "Man restores race car in father's honor" article & KSL 5 newscast video can be found HERE.

 

That's my daddy! If you guys are wanting to get a hold of him for t shirts you can email him at abutchgram@comcast.net

 

Also I'll try to post some more pics of the rebuild asap.

 

@agrahamhenry -

Welcome to the H.A.M.B. !!!

Yes, please post more pics of the City of Salt Lake 'liner (the original and the rebuilt version) ... it's really easy to "Attach" images () or "Insert" images from a photo sharing website ().

Also ... Please feel free to share any info & stories you might have about your grandfather and his Bonneville streamliner.

 

WOW.....another GREAT story here on the HAMB!
A piece of B-ville history brought back for all to see, a big THANK YOU to the Grahams.

 

Amazing story. Beautiful job on the car. Lippy

 

Here's some pics from the Robert Gehrke "Rebuilt speedster honors father’s dream" article that appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune on July 31, 2010:

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The entire article can be found HERE.

 

Yes, great story, more details on the car would be cool...I seem to remember that much of it was aircraft parts, the body sides were from a B-29 wing tank, if I remember right? I think that the car first appeared the year before Graham was killed, but did not pass the strict SCTA safety inspection. Athol Graham actually was able to walk to the ambulance after the accident but succumbed to head injuries, again if my memory is correct (which is not always!)...probably others have better details. Anyway he was a real pioneer and it is great that his son has restored the car.

 

Was always interested in Mr Graham, but he never got as much ink as the others... thanks for posting this story.

 

Ray (@ChevyAsylum) Therat has over 100 photos of the rebuild on the Graham liner restoration pages of his website ... just click the thumbnail:

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Here's a couple of pics of the original City Of Salt Lake 'liner culled from other HAMB threads:

image from Dean Lowe's Vintage Bonneville car pictures thread


image from Farmer's Merry Christmas Hamb! Here's my gift to you all.... thread​

... and a few found elsewhere on the Internet:

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Here's some pics of the 1:43 scale version of the City of Salt Lake 'liner:

click thumbnails to enlarge​

 

Utah's Silver Island Mountain Range is located adjacent to the Bonneville Salt Flats ... at 7,563 feet above sea level, "Graham Peak" is the highest peak in the range ... and (you guessed it) was named for the late Athol Graham:

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this is a cool thread , i like it when an old car with history gets rebuilt , awesome

 

Thanks for sharing this with us. I never knew about the car before now and it's interesting that he was the first to die in a quest for speed at Bonneville. He would be amazed at what has taken place there since his death and it would have been interesting to see if he would have rebuilt the car and continued his assault on the record.

Frank

 

This thread deserves a bump back to the top. This liner is incredible & the amount of information in this thread is excellent. Goober, Thanks for starting the thread & Hemi32, thanks for posting all of those links.

 

And looking over the back side of Grahams Peak. That's my red pick up in the middle of the pic. another part of Bonneville everybody should see.

 

@Toner283 - My pleasure!

Here's a couple of amazing "Sunset on the Salt" images of the "City of Salt Lake" streamliner that @Buick59 shot during Bonneville Speed Week 2010:

NOTE: An 11x17 poster of this image is available HERE​

 

Thanks Hemi32! Those were actually shot at sunset.

 

wow! Fantastic effort by Butch Graham. Tremendous story!

 

MY brother was a friend of athol, he took me and my younger brother down to see the car in 1959, athol wasn't at the shop when we were there.

 

Sweet!

 

We met Butch at Bonneville this year, a great guy, a beautiful rebuild. We bought shirts and took a bunch of shots. It must be emotionally exhausting for him to tell that story over and over.