BONNEVILLE SPEED WEEK

Henry Ford would have been proud. His models T, A, and B, millions of which rolled off the line between 1908 and 1934, are today the heart of amateur racecar drivers’ automotive dreams.

Every August during Speed Week, old-timer Fords rebuilt into hot rod racecars zoom over the perfectly smooth salty surfaces of Bonneville, Utah. But the technology that guarantees incredible acceleration and speed in the vehicles – some of them fantastically graceful – isn’t from yesterday. The hot rods are true racecars. The tradition of hot rodding – building racecars out of street-car parts and fitting them with the highest quality motors – goes back to the 1940s. It is a way of life that finds expression in the somewhat crazy constructions. Ford’s Model B Deuce Coup became an icon of hot rods, an expression of its purest form.

Perhaps today’s thrill in spending endless hours fixing up the old-timers, making them lighter, lower, tuning the V8 engines and tweaking each and every part, is the simple fact that there are miles between the boxy ur-auto and an aerodynamic racecar. On the Bonneville tracks the hot rods gather speeds of up to 125 mph.

Drivers and spectators alike have caught the “salt fever,” as has Hamburg photographer Alexander Babic. He has perfectly captured this singular pieces of American automotive art, which he stages in the abstracted and fantastical light of the salt desert moments before or after the proud driver and maker has tried his best to break a record on the arrow-straight course. The cars seem like imaginatively upgraded collectors’ pieces on par with modern sculpture. Each one has its own unique character and reflects the personality of its owner.

Babic wonderfully describes one playful aspect of the American way of life that combines positive energy, faith in technology, and the love of extravagant detail.

Horst Kloever