Burke in 1941 while serving as Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Timing Association. Photo courtesy Geoff Hacker.
“The Michael Jordan of Bonneville,” Ryan Cochran, proprietor of The Jalopy Journal called him.
Geoff Hacker, Hemmings contributor and historian of Forgotten Fiberglass sports cars, said of him in 2012:
“Throughout his life, if you asked Bill about what he had accomplished, he would always focus on what he was working on, or on his future plans. It’s like that with these guys. They didn’t dwell on the past – they focused on the future.”
Born in 1918, Bill Burke is remembered best for his contributions to land-speed racing at the dry lakes and Bonneville beginning before WWII, in particular for originating the idea of re-purposing the teardrop-shaped drop tanks from fighter aircraft as ready-made bodywork for a streamlined race car–an idea that occurred to him while serving on PT Boats in the Pacific Theatre. Burke’s first “belly tanker” was created from a P-51 Mustang tank in 1946 and ran 131.96 MPH. With the original lost to time, Geoff Hacker was responsible for the re-creation of this first belly tanker.
Burke’s original P-51 belly tanker in 1946. Photos courtesy Geoff Hacker.
Not content with his first design, he soon obtained a larger P-38 Lightning drop tank and created a second lakester, this time with a rear engine. That car, ultimately dubbed “Sweet 16” and shared with engine guru and future Hot Rod technical editor Don Francisco, ran 151.085 MPH in July of 1949 and received the title of “World’s Fastest Hot Rod.”
Moving on from belly tanks, Burke tackled an enclosed-wheel streamliner for 1952. The O-class vehicle was powered by a motorcycle engine and ran 136.9 MPH, setting a class record that would stand for a decade. That experience with fiberglass would lead Burke to partner with Mickey Thompson and others in a sports-car building concern called Atlas (later Allied) Fiber-Glass, building bodies for the Swallow coupe—a hand-laid fiberglass copy of the 1947-52 Cisitalia 202 from Italy.
For Burke, whose day job by this point was advertising manager for Hot Rod, the Swallow was primarily a means to further his racing hobby. Burke used a modified Swallow body to run 167 MPH at Bonneville in 1953, setting a new record for closed sports cars that year.
Lucky Burton, Bill Burke and Bobby Green on the salt in 2010. Green owns Burke’s second tank, Sweet 16. Photo courtesy Bobby Green.
After selling off Allied in 1955, Burke continued his pattern of innovation and racing. In 1960 he set a new Class D record of 205.949 MPH in the Falcon-powered “Pumpkin Seed” streamliner that he later sold to and drove for Mickey Thompson in 1961, raced one of the first Studebaker Avantis at Bonneville (in fact, he campaigned the ’63 Avanti for 30 years, with two more generations of the Burke family ultimately taking the wheel to receive their own LSR licenses), and by 1965 he had built a Hemi-powered streamliner in pursuit of 300 MPH. In the 21st Century, Burke along with his son Steve and grandson Joshua, campaigned a stretched Mazda RX-7.
Burke’s original tank at speed on the dry lakes. See it in action here. Photo courtesy Geoff Hacker.
Burke was a regular at the Salt every year from 1949 to 2009 and he will be missed by hot rodders, Studebaker aficionados and racers alike.
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