The Mormon Meteor III, Utah's most famous racing car, will go to a new home later this year at the renovated Union Pacific Depot in Salt Lake City if the state and the family of famed racer Ab Jenkins can agree on treatment of the revered vehicle.
The Meteor is being removed from the ground floor of the State Capitol to make room for new state offices.Marvin Jenkins, son of the late racer and Salt Lake mayor, told the Deseret News Thursday that the 52-year-old Meteor III will be refurbished to remedy years of neglect and abuse.
The Jenkins family is upset at the treatment the car received while in state hands since 1943. But Jenkins said the family is hopeful that an agreement can be reached to keep it in Utah and to show it properly at the Union Pacific Depot.
When the Meteor is taken out of the Capitol, it will be sent to the Jenkins' home in St. George, and the tattered body will be sent to race-car builder Quinn Epperly in Los Angeles for repairs. Other preservation work on the car will be done in St. George.
Jenkins said he had a four-hour meeting on Thursday with Max Evans, director of the Division of State History of the Utah Historical Society and Jack Quintana, assistant director of the office of Maintenance, Facilities, Construction and Management at the Capitol. According to Jenkins, the meeting was cordial, but he said the family was prepared to insist on return of the car unless a new agreement on its display is reached.
That agreement will provide that the Meteor must be protected and preserved properly and may be loaned temporarily to other museums, such as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian has expressed interest in obtaining the car, one of the most successful American land-speed record machines.
Jenkins quoted Quintana as saying he received more than 200 calls about the car after plans to remove it from the Capitol were made public.
Jenkins said Evans offered to microfilm the extensive collection of documentation on all of the race cars his father drove.
The Mormon Meteor III was the last of the record breakers that Jenkins drove between 1931 and 1950. Almost single-handedly, Jenkins put the Bonneville Salt Flats on the map as the fastest speedway on Earth.
The Meteor is a specially built Duesenberg chassis, powered by a V-12 Curtis Conqueror aircraft engine. Earlier, Jenkins had driven production Studebakers, Auburns and Duesenbergs to records on the Salt Flats and on Muroc Dry Lake in California.
After Jenkins became famous, the Deseret News held a contest to choose a name for his racing car, and a Salt Lake City schoolboy came up with the "Mormon Meteor" label.
Records set by Jenkins in his Meteors ranged from 10 miles to 10,000 miles, but the absolute unlimited straight-away mark eluded him because his cars could not match the brute power of British cars driven by such men as Malcolm Campbell, George Eyston and John Cobb. Campbell, Cobb and other Englishmen built a series of twin-engined vehicles powered by the same engines that carried the British to victory in the International Schneider Cup air races of the 1920s and 1930s, and then in the Battle of Britain.
American V-type engines never matched the English for horsepower and reliability.
Jenkins had August Duesenberg build the Meteor to carry two Curtis engines but never installed the second power plant.
Marvin Jenkins told the Deseret News that the historic Meteor suffered considerably at the hands of tourists in the State Capitol. He said accessories such as lights and door handles were stolen and trash was stuffed in the car's grille, among other indignities.