By Dick Mittman
indianapolismotorspeedway.com
Friday, November 14, 2003
The Mormon Meteor has been listed as the fourth-most valuable car ever built, worth $5 million if Marv Jenkins ever wanted to sell it.
A few years ago it was a deteriorating piece of junk.
Sixty-five years ago this fall it came out of Augie's Duesenberg's Indianapolis shop as the last car Duesenberg ever built. It was constructed for Ab Jenkins to set land speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
But before the car ever set a wheel on the salt, it rumbled over the bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Yes, it's a little-known fact that a car built for the indomitable Ab Jenkins to compete for endurance speed records made its debut on the 2½-mile oval at Indianapolis.
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But there wasn't any speed-record attempt involved in that shakedown run.
"Dad ran several laps around there just checking it," said Marv Jenkins, Ab's son, now 83 and living in St. George, Utah.
Marv Jenkins, who was involved with his father's speed pursuits from the time he was 11, rescued the car from a Salt Lake City truck wash after the state of Utah, which owned it for nearly 30 years, had basically lost track of it following an appearance in a parade.
Jenkins had to go to court to retrieve the car and then spent 7,000 hours and countless dollars rebuilding it into pristine condition.
On Sept. 18, the orange-and-blue Mormon Meteor III was at the Salt Flats once again. Sitting next to it was a 1933 Pierce-Arrow, Ab Jenkins' first land speed car. However, the original of that car had disappeared, and this was a replica built by John Hollansworth Sr., whose son John Jr. drove to 13th place in the 1999 Indianapolis 500.
As a teen-ager, Marv Jenkins had helped build both cars and drove both of them, too.
Both cars made exhibition runs on the salt in September but not for 24 or 48 hours straight as they did in the 1930's. On several occasions in the past, Ab Jenkins drove an entire 24-hour stint without relief. The Marmon Meteor III still holds the 48-hour average speed record of 148 mph.
The speeds they ran in what was basically a high-powered stock car don't mean a whole lot to today's society, where race cars run up into the 230-mph range on ovals. But a half-century ago, they were mind-boggling to the average passenger car driver. Marv Jenkins said he reached 208 mph once on a lap of the 10-mile oval course on the salt.
Famous Indianapolis 500 drivers such as Louie Meyer, a three-time champion, Babe Stapp and Cliff Bergere often drove relief in the long, tedious runs over the unique layout in western Utah.
Ab Jenkins, born in 1883, got into long-distance racing after giving up his lucrative contracting business in Salt Lake City to go to work with Studebaker in 1928 in South Bend, Ind.
After being part of a 26-day endurance run in 1928 on a board track at Atlantic City, N.J., Ab Jenkins became closely acquainted with Indianapolis 500 drivers like L.L. Corum, Ralph Hepburn, Bergere and, particularly, Billy Winn. Winn told Jenkins he could get him an Indianapolis 500 ride and brought him to the Speedway in 1930. It didn't work out.
"Dad was 47 years old," Marv Jenkins said. "Back then you were over the hill, so they wouldn't do anything."
So instead Ab Jenkins built a Studebaker to run in the 1931 race. He intended to drive it but encountered blood poisoning and turned it over to Tony Gulotta, who placed 19th after crashing while running second. Marv later became owner of the car - "a big old Speedway President 8" - and converted it to a sports car. Studebaker built four more cars for the Indianapolis 500.
In 1932, Ab Jenkins began his land speed racing in earnest, first with the Pierce-Arrow that Marv, only 14, helped build in Buffalo, N.Y., and then with the Meteor I and II. Meteor II actually was the same chassis as Meteor I, but Curtiss Conqueror airplane engines replaced the Duesenberg powerplant. Marv, 16, spent the summer at Auburn, Ind., helping install the engine.
Records on the salt toppled with this car. But stiff challenges were coming from overseas.
The decision was made to build a new chassis. Ab Jenkins, Augie Duesenberg and engineer Rex Pruntey got together and designed the car. It was built in the Duesenberg building in the 1300 block of W. Washington St. in Indianapolis.
By then, Marv Jenkins had gotten a job with Firestone although he was 18 and no one under 21 was allowed in the garages. He worked in the graphite pits during qualifying weekends that May and was so blackened nobody knew how old he was.
On weekdays, Marv worked on the new Meteor.
"It was getting close to October when we finally got a chance to test it," he said.
Duesenberg designed an independent suspension for the car to help with its balance when the 100-gallon fuel tank got low. There were other innovations, including one that helped the car's clutch accept the tremendous torque of the engine.
"We had temperature gauges that we could check the temperatures of the rear end, transmission, the engine oil and all the universal joints by just flipping different switches to pick it up," Marv Jenkins said.
"They were trying to see if there were any problems involved. Everything worked fine, so they put it on the truck and we headed for Utah."
Again, Ab Jenkins and his son rang up many more speed records, ranging from a mile up to 48 hours of constant running.
Meanwhile, Marv Jenkins became a pilot for Western Airlines while still working with Bud Winfield and the Bowes Seal Fast car at Indianapolis in 1939, '40 and '41. After World War II, Marv went to work for Lou Welch, and the first Novi was brought to the Speedway in 1946. Marv worked with the Novi program into the 1950s but not when Andy Granatelli later purchased them.
In 1947, an enclosed canopy was placed on one of the Novis and taken to the Salt Flats for a possible 24-hour run. But the layout of the breathers caused all of the oil to blow out of the engine when the car ran clockwise around the course.
Meanwhile, Ab Jenkins had sold the Mormon Meteor III to the state of Utah for $1 for display in the Capitol rotunda in 1943. A lover of children, he wanted the youth of Utah to be able to view his historic automobile. There was a strong stipulation in the contract that if the car was not properly cared for, it was to be returned to family ownership. The car made its final Salt Flat runs in 1950.
Jenkins, who never smoked or drank, was elected mayor of Salt Lake City in 1950. In 1956 he died of a heart attack while riding in a car on the way to Milwaukee to be honored at a race. He was 73.
Marv Jenkins had moved to Texas with his job as a pilot. One day in 1971, he received a call that the car was no longer in the Capitol but sitting out in the open beside a truck wash. When the parade ended, no one from the State was there to direct where it was to be taken, and no one missed it at the Capitol, so it was dumped at the truck wash.
Jenkins immediately flew to Salt Lake City and found the car in terrible condition, dented, full of trash, extra tires and parts missing, the famous Duesenberg clock worth $5,000 stolen from the dashboard, the heart of engine deteriorating due to water that ran down the stacks when the truck washers would periodically spray it.
Jenkins talked to the attorney general, and a deal was written up for the state to make the necessary repairs. But the state administration changed, and nothing was done.
Marv Jenkins retired to St. George, Utah, in 1989 and went to Salt Lake City to see the car. It was in even worse shape. He met with Gov. Norman Bangerter in 1991, and an agreement was reached where the state would reimburse Jenkins for expenses incurred in refurbishing the famous car.
Jenkins tore the car down to the bare nuts and bolts at Dixie College in St. George and began sandblasting every piece. He and others searched for parts and the missing wheels. The wheels sat in the yard of a man who lived halfway between Salt Lake City and the Salt Flats. He had worked for Firestone and was supposed to deliver them back to the Capitol but instead dropped them in his desert yard where they were exposed to the sun, salt and cold for 40 years.
The wheels were a special 22 inches. Jenkins contacted Firestone, but molds had been destroyed. He finally located some 22.5-inch Yokohama tires, Corker Tire came up with some tubes, and they were made to fit after a lot of work.
It had taken Jenkins from 1992 until 1998 to get the car completely away from the state. Now he had considerable money invested, not to mention thousands of hours labor in putting the car back in 1938 condition. The administration again had changed at the top in Utah, and it didn't recognize the previous governor's agreement.
So Jenkins was forced to take legal action once more.
But the Mormon Meteor III, due to the loving concern of Marv Jenkins, has been restored to masterpiece quality. It's been quite a trip for this record-breaking car and the then-18-year-old boy who helped build it 65 years ago in the shadow of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
It has run the Flats once more, been to the Classic Car show in Monterey, Calif., where antique car buff Jay Leno, among others, admired it, and will appear Nov. 21 at the St. George airport along side a replica of the Wright Brothers first airplane. The car may be put on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles next spring. ***
2004 tickets: Tickets are available for the 2004 Indianapolis 500. For information, log on to www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com, or call the IMS ticket office at (800) 822-INDY or (317) 492-6700.
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