Don Vesco

( -2002 )

The Vesco family has been racing at the Speed Trials on the Bonneville Salt Flats for most of their over fifty years long history. In 1957 John Vesco first raced what was then known as the Vesco-Dinkins streamliner, a car that evolved through the years to become the current Vesco-Nish 444 streamliner, presently undergoing yet another rebuild.
In subsequent years sons Don and Rick raced many streamliners, mostly motorcycle, and Don held the outright motorcycle land speed record from 1975 to 1990.
In the mid eighties they decided they should do something about the so called wheel-driven land speed record, then still held by the Summers Brothers' Goldenrod. Rick designed a new four wheel, four-wheel-drive streamliner, called Project 425 (this being the targeted speed), which appeared on the salt for the first time in 1989, then pushed by two small-block Chevys, which were quickly discarded in favour of two turbocharged Offy fours. The car ran for a number of years at Bonneville but never quite matched the expectations. In the meantime Al Teague had finally set a new wheel-driven LSR and other cars, like Rick and Nolan White's Spirit of Autopower and the massive four-engined Herbert-Steen streamliner, also looked like they could take the record any day, given the right salt conditions.

Don Vesco died of cancer in 2002, defeated by an enemy he had been fighting while, or perhaps "by", setting new speed records. Team Vesco, under the direction of Rick Vesco, continued to race at Bonneville, and still does, setting records with a new version of the famous Vesco family 444 streamliner, but the project to break the 500 mph barrier with a wheel-driven record was put on hold, although Turbinator was maintained "ready to run" and will indeed make a "Don Vesco Memorial Run" at Speed Week 2011.

Discovery Channel video