Car Stories - Burgundy Z @ 105 mph

[DarrenX33]

Dan asked me to post this photo and story..

The 105 mph story.
Well without a doubt this is the dumbest thing I ever did. I put
the lives of others at risk without even considering them. If I
ever found out that any of my kids did anything like this I would
have beat them with a stick! The poor guy in the Beetle was
probably never the same again after this incident. For sure he
probably needed to do some cleaning when he got home. It was New
Years day 1969 at about 11:00 in the morning. The day was a
beautiful sunny 10 degree day. It was a quiet morning since most
people were probably home nursing hangovers. The rumor over the
years was that no one had ever taken the Bluebird curve at 100
mph. Why anyone would even want to try is beyond me now. But
when you’re 18 years old stupid came easy. I was motivated to do
these kind of things by Mark Donohue. Mark was dominating the
Trans America road racing series. When the Sunoco commercials
came on TV I was awe struck! Mark was maneuvering around those
curves with ease in his dusk blue number 6 Camaro. Anyway The
Bluebird Tavern was located 2 miles east of the Memri Drive In on
knoxville road, in Milan, Illinois. The name had actually changed
to Jim’s Knoxville Tap in 1964, when a new owner took over, but
the name of the curve in the highway never made the change.
Without my friend Mark Collins, I would not have all the pictures
that I enjoy today. He used his fathers 1945 35 mm camera. He
was kind of a camera buff that was always looking for a good shot.
We decided to take on the challenge turning left or heading into
town because it felt more natural to do, plus there was a long
straight away before the curve. One of the tricks to do this and
take a picture was to secure Mark some way in the back seat. I
really don’t remember exactly but I think Mark figured out to use
the two shoulder straps off of the headliner and clicked them to
the back seat belts around his legs. The goal was to be held
securely to avoid side to side swing rather than worrying about
flying forward. In fact people seldom used seat belts back then.
I wore my belt on this mission again only to stay put in the seat
from the centrifugal force. That was the first time the shoulder
belts were ever taken down and the last I think too. I had filled
the tank the night before and I felt with Mark in the back that
the extra weight would help me with the over steer problem that I
knew would occur with the terrible tires of the era. We made
several passes and I noticed that there was no traffic out at
all. The tavern had a couple of cars parked in the lot, one
parallel to the highway that I assumed was left by the owner
because of drunkenness the night before. The normal speed to
negotiate this curve was 45 to 50. I had rode with my parents
many times growing up and I never witnessed any speed faster.
Driving back and forth in my new Z/28 to town and back home every
day, speed for me was 100 on the straights and 80 on the curves.
I did this without batting an eye over my long driving career of
two years. All of the neighbors shook their heads in disgust as I
went by, but for some reason they liked me and never complained.
Now with everything feeling right, we decided it was show time.
We drove east , turned around in Alan DeSchepper’s driveway, and
headed back west. We came down the straightway at about 95 mph.
I thought it be best not to be going any faster, this way I could
actually accelerate entering the curve to gain control. The
adrenaline was rushing! Holy SH!!!!! We hadn’t seen a living
being all day and suddenly there was what seemed to be the BIGGEST
BUG I ever witnessed coming at me!!! But I wasn’t about to let up
on the pedal! The rear tires started crying for a grip, the nose
was edging into the oncoming lane, click went the camera!! I
started correcting the slide a fraction after the picture was
snapped, straightened out and read the speedometer, 105! Now,
were we really going 105mph? When I took the reading maybe we
increased speed slightly out of the curve, I don’t know. I do
know this the new rumor stuck. My only regret at the time was I
wished that Mark would have waited 1/1000 of a second later to
snap, because then the steering wheel would have been turned
slightly right to correct the over steer, indicating the high rate
of speed! But any way we were hootin’ and hollerin’ with joy and
kept the hammer down cruising toward Milan. I have another
picture passing a 1960 biscayne at about 120 after the curve shot.
Mark persuaded me to ride in the back seat some time to enjoy the
chambered exhaust. It has a sound all of it’s own.
Here is how I know the new 105 mph rumor stuck. On august 5, 1971
I was home on leave. I had friends over for my 21st birthday
party. Some of them came pretty well wound up. I’m not a drinker
but naturally since it was my 21st I tipped a few. My buddies
suggested that we go down to the Cross Roads Tavern, near the
Memri and have a couple more. Somehow I got stuck with a friend’s
friend that I hadn’t met until that night. So the way we go down
the road from my house to the Cross roads which is 3 miles from
home. We are in his 1966 catalina convertible cruising at 119
mph. Without even saying anything to him, at about a quarter
mile from the Bluebird curve, I rolled up in a ball and got down
on the floor and wedged myself between the dash and the seat . He
asks me what I’m doing and I say you’ll never make the curve! I
hear him say WHAT?, then the 5 mail boxes come crashing through
the passenger side glass! The boxes are located just to the right
of the Z in the picture. There are five homes located just east
of the tavern. Had I stayed up I would have been decapitated.
The car spins, misses a utility pole by inches, takes out the
farmers fence, and comes to a rest out in the farmers hay field.
Miraculously, neither one of us were hurt! All four tires were
still up, but there wasn’t one square inch of undented metal! He
actually drove the car out of the field the next day, after prying
some metal away from the tires! We got out of the car and by now
people were running out of the Jim’s Knoxville Tap to check on us.
The noise apparently could be heard over all of the noise in the
Bar. Jim the owner says to me “Dan is that you”? It’s around
midnight in poor lighting. He says to me, “I heard you coming
down the highway like a bat out of hell!” Yeah?. “You know
better than to drive that fast, you hold the record! “ By then
our other friends suspicion something had happened and they drove
back to check on us. Greg Mckenzie, my friend with the badest red
‘61 Impala coupe, took me home. I undressed in the laundry room,
and I noticed my clothes were shredded. My skin had tiny red dots
everywhere. Flying glass is what I figured to be the reason. My
family didn’t know anything until about three days later, when a
neighbor had spilled the beans.
On a somber note my final experience with the curve occurred in
August of 1976. At about where the VW is located in the picture,
a drunk driver hit my Grandmother head on. She lived a horrible
life for a few years, never walking again, before she died. I
just recently drove out Knoxville Road to visit the old
neighborhood. The concrete pavement is new and much wider. I
negotiated the infamous Blue Bird curve at about 47 mph in my used
Impala and thought, wow this is really fast enough! The next
story, 125mph in a 25 mph zone in Sherrard, IL.

[Mr.Nickey Nova]

Dan,
You must of been a wild and crazy young man back in the day.Always enjoy your stories and can't wait to hear the next one.

[Hylton]

Great story! Life was so different back then. If a kid did that today, they would throw the book at him.