Going In Circles
Words by Cliff Gromer
he SEMA Show, held this past November in Las Vegas, displayed some really neat stuff. SEMA is where a company spends a zillion dollars on a major show booth, hires a half-dozen almost-nekkid girls, and rents a half-million dollar show car, all to draw attention to a new hang-from-your mirror air freshener. It’s great.
One of the coolest things, to me, at the show was the Mormon Meteor III, an automobile that, in 1940, set no less than 81 circular world speed records, from one to 3,774.781 miles in a 24-hour period. The driver, Ab Jenkins is a legend in auto racing. His 24-hour record of a 157.28 mph average wouldn’t be broken for 50 years—amazing when you consider the advances in automotive technology during that time. Jenks also set a 48-hour endurance record that has yet to be bettered.
Ab Jenkins’ 24-hour speed record-setting Mormon Meteor III.
(photos by TheBruntBros)
The car has a sense of history about it that you can feel. It’s like walking the playing field of Yankee Stadium, and sensing the presence of greatness—legends such as Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, who trod the same turf years before.
Jenkins’ 157+ mph record was broken in 1990 by a team of eight drivers piloting a Corvette. Jenkins did his deed with only one co-driver. It wasn’t the Corvette or the drivers that snatched the record from Ab, but the pit stops. The Vette team orchestrated their pit stops with NASCAR-like precision, so the short time in the pits had a minimal effect on their car’s average speed.
Ab, on the other hand had his car gravity-fueled from 50-gallon jugs. His pit stop times severely hampered his average speed. The Vette never did beat Ab’s one-hour average speed of 170.03 mph.
David Abbot “Ab” Jenkins was a Mormon carpenter, who first made a name for himself racing motorcycles. When the first highway was put through the Salt Flats in 1925, Jenkins was asked if he would race a train in an automobile as a publicity stunt to open the road. Ab beat the train by five minutes.
Ab’s endurance was legendary. In 1932, Ab asked the folks at Pierce-Arrow to run their new 12-cylinder car on the Flats for a 24-hour/2400-mile endurance run. It would prove the car, and also Bonneville as a suitable race venue. The P-A execs laughed at him. But, that didn’t bother Ab. He had his buddies mark off a 10-mile wide circle in the salt, grabbed six new tires as “spare parts,” smeared his face with grease as protection against sun and wind, and flipped on a pair of goggles. He hit the salt, and never left the driver’s seat for 24 hours straight.
When he finally pulled to a stop, he had racked up some 2,710 miles, with an average speed over the 24 hours of 112.9 mph. At the time, it was close to a world record.
Ab was a larger-than-life figure, and some of his racing exploits were mind boggling. In 1933, Ab set out on a second endurance run in the same Pierce-Arrow he had run the year before. But, this time, the weather was not as cooperative. Early into his run, a violent storm came out of nowhere and lashed the salt. The winds howled with gusts up to 60 mph and the rain came down in buckets. The officials who were timing the run ducked into their cars for shelters, as the tents they had set up had to be packed to keep them from blowing away. And Ab? He just kept on trucking, the wind and rain having little effect on his speed.
What’s even more amazing was that after his last gas stop, Jenkins whipped out his safety razor and started shaving while circling the salt at 125 mph!
The Mormon Meteor III, which carried Ab into the record books in ’39, was engineered by Augie Duesenberg, and was the last car built at the Duesy plant before it was shuttered. This huge machine was built on a 142-inch wheelbase and was just shy of 21 feet long. Firestone made special 22-inch tires for this monster, which was powered by a 12-cylinder Curtiss Conqueror aircraft engine. Power output was 750 horses at 2400 rpm. Top speed was 275 mph. Fuel mileage was 3-1/2 gallons at 200 mph, and the Meteor carried 112 gallons of gas on board.
Ab, a quiet, polite, humble sort of guy, is in sharp contrast to many of the sports figures today. They just don’t make racers like Ab anymore, or cars like the Mormon Meteor III. Too bad. 
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