Timeless.

Standing on the cracked, hard-packed surface of El Mirage, it's easy to get the vibe. The spirits of past racers seem like they're right there, if only you could relax your gaze enough to see them, shimmering through the decades like heat rising off the hardpan. Turn your head fast enough and you just might catch a glimpse of the dust trail left in a lakester's wake.

That weird time vortex is only heightened when these two icons of speed are parked on the lakebed. It could be 1954 all over again. The lake doesn't know the difference. Neither do the surrounding mountains, ever present in photos then and now.

The telltale as to which decade you're experiencing—for those of us too young to have been there in person, anyway—is the fact that these racing veterans appear before us in vivid color, not the muted gray tones of old magazine stories, scrapbook photos, or digital black-and-white scans. The Williams Bros. roadster is coated in Titian Red nitrocellulose, the Tommy Thompson streamliner in Wheatland Yellow, standing in for Thompson's original Goldenrod Yellow.

"It was always yellow," says Tom McIntyre, "and the number was always 990," chosen by Thompson because that's how much money he had invested in the car when it first went to Bonneville in 1953.

McIntyre owns both cars, though he doesn't think of them that way. His role is more as a guardian, tending to these machines while they're in his hands. "We need to be careful to preserve the car exactly the way it is," he told us as we gingerly moved the roadster around for our photo shoot. "The car will be around long after I'm gone, and the next conservator would want it that way."

In the decade that the roadster has been with McIntyre, it has been outside of his garage just three times, our photo shoot being the third.

We have paired these cars for several reasons. As part of McIntyre's remarkable collection, they're kept with several other significant race cars, including the Penske Racing/Sunoco '68 Camaro that Mark Donohue drove to the 1968 Trans-Am championship, and Mickey Thompson's '63 Z06 Corvette, which was prepped for racing by Smokey Yunick, powered by one of the first "Mystery Motor" 427s, and raced by Junior Johnson at Daytona (see HOT ROD April 2015).

The roadster and 'liner are both Bonneville record holders, though they achieved those marks decades apart. They also spent time in hibernation, tucked away for years in the garages of the men who drove them to fame.

They are salt-flat brothers in another way, too. They both participated in the Sixth Annual Bonneville National Speed Trials in 1954, the roadster for its one and only Bonneville race, the streamliner for the second time in a Bonneville appearance record that would span decades. We wish we had found a photo of the two of them together on the salt in 1954. Short of that, we felt pairing them on this hallowed ground in the Mojave Desert would be the next best thing.

The Roadster

Ron, Gerald, and Herb Williams lived in Oak View, California, north and a bit inland of the central-coast town of Ventura. Like so many other young men their age, they dove feet-first into the post-WWII hot rodding boom, first with a '30 Model A roadster with a two-port Riley banger, and then this '29 roadster. At first it sported a 21-stud flathead; the Dodge Red Ram would come shortly before their 1954 Bonneville trip.

McIntyre has compiled a record of some of the roadster's runs at El Mirage between 1949 and 1953. The brothers were obviously on the learning curve, as their 119.68-mph run in 1949 evolved into a 140.62-mph pass by 1953—within 6 mph of the B/Roadster record on the much faster racing surface at Bonneville.

With their proximity to the Santa Barbara area, it's no surprise that the brothers turned out for the very first drag races at Goleta. Don Montgomery's book, Hot Rods as They Were, shows the Williams Bros. roadster on Goleta's converted WWII airstrip racing against Ed Martinez's '29 Model A roadster in 1951.

The Williams brothers were Whistlers car club members, while Martinez belonged to the other Ventura-area club, the Motor Monarchs. The rivalry between the clubs would repeat itself on the dragstrip over and over, and was even captured in the July 1956 HRM, which featured another Motor Monarchs car on the cover, Dave Marquez's Ardun-powered '32 roadster. The final page of the cover story shows Marquez and Williams racing each other in Santa Maria in 1955, a race that Ron Williams won, according to Ken Gross's excellent article on the Williams Bros. car in The Rodder's Journal.

Ron Williams was a competitor, and not just in a straight line. McIntyre told us a story about some local sports car owners who came to Ron's machine shop in 1953 wanting him to make them some parts. They were getting ready for the local MG club's annual hillclimb. Ron was interested in the race, but he was told the event "was not for your kind of car," McIntyre says. That's all Williams needed to hear. After practicing on the hill over several nights, he showed up with his roadster among all those spindly little British cars and won the event.

As successful as they were with their roadster, the Williams boys must have realized it would take more than their flathead to make a dent in the competition at Bonneville. Fresh motivation came in the form of a brand new Red Ram Hemi, still in the box, from the local Dodge dealer.

McIntyre marvels at the ingenuity the brothers applied to their hop-up. The fuel-injection system on the motor is one of the first made by Stu Hilborn. Likewise the camshaft is among the first roller cams made by Chet Herbert. The individual exhaust pipes were joined to collectors made from conveyor-belt rollers Ron saw at a local fruit packing plant. They were cut to fit and exit on either side of the Halibrand quick-change. Bored to 250 ci and fitted with JE pistons, the Chet Herbert roller cam, and a Scintilla Vertex magneto, the Red Ram was "a very progressive engine," McIntyre says.

HRM's Dec. 1954 feature on the roadster described the brothers' sojourn to Bonneville as "Pow—double jackpot!" With Ron at the wheel, "the car not only stormed over 6 mph beyond the old B/Roadster two-way averagebut stepped clear out of their class to run over 2 mph faster than the one-way B/Modified mark for '54 when their Dodge-powered roadster sailed 159.57 mph."

Their two-way average for the new B/Roadster record, as reported in HRM's Bonneville coverage, was 150.90 mph. Why the nearly 10-mph difference between the top speed and the record? According to Ken Gross, the return run was just 142 mph, likely the result of the Hemi running on seven cylinders. Post-race teardown turned up a bent rod (verified by McIntyre going through old parts he got with the car), likely caused by fuel filling the cylinder accidentally when Ron was pressurizing the injection system for the return run.

Ron Williams only drove the roadster a few more times—including the Santa Maria race against Marquez—before parking the car in his machine shop, where it would sit for 50 years.

McIntyre heard about the car from "a friend of a friend of a friend" in February 2006, a tantalizing lead about a Bonneville record-holding roadster that had been found. It took a few months for him to connect with Ron Williams's widow Katy and his son, Dennis. They had a lot of questions of him, to make sure their beloved family roadster was going to a good home.

"The next morning, on May 1, the little roadster rolled outside for the first time in decades," McIntyre says of the fateful day. "It was an amazing sight. It was ready to go, again."

The Golden Rod

Wait a minute, you're thinking. Isn't that the name of the Summers Brothers car? Yes it is. Tommy Thompson named his streamliner after his Colorado hometown before taking it to Bonneville for the first time in 1953. The Summers came to him in 1965 asking if they could use the name. So this 'liner is the "original" Golden Rod.

Thompson built the car in his home garage in 1952. At the time he was an engineer for the Coors Brewing Company, working on the development of the aluminum beer can. Alcoa, eager to supply the raw materials for the new packaging, gave Thompson aluminum sheets to use for the 'liner. He fabricated its complex curves by hammering the aluminum over '40 Ford fenders, using the castoff sheetmetal as a buck. Look closely and you can see how Thompson shaped the streamliner's front fenders around the '40's rear fenders, and how the rear of the 'liner was formed around the '40's front fenders.

The handformed body was placed on a Model A frame, which was modified with a subframe to cradle the engine and driveline. Thompson powered the streamliner with an Oldsmobile V8 that had at one time been in a Pikes Peak race car. Local engine builder John Bandimere sleeved the 303-inch Rocket block down to 265 inches, allowing Thompson to compete in the C engine class. Thompson mated the engine to a '38 Ford transmission, and then joined the transmission directly to a quick-change rearend.

On its first trip to the salt in 1953, the Golden Rod ran 142.40 mph and earned Thompson a photo in HRM's "Bonneville Pictorial" in the December 1953 issue. The next time the Golden Rod appeared in HRM was 1956. "Tommy increases speed each year," read the caption in "Flat Out for '56," the November 1956 Bonneville coverage. "This year turned 189 mph."

The 1959 Bonneville program listed the 990 car in both B/Streamliner and C/Streamliner. In addition to his 265-inch Olds, Thompson came to the salt with a second Olds mill, a 394-inch experimental engine donated by General Motors. The smaller motor propelled him to his fastest run ever, 198.12 mph; but with the big engine he finally broke the 200-mph barrier with a 205.01-mph run. You wouldn't know it from HRM's Bonneville coverage that year, though, as another guy named Thompson was hogging all the attention in his quest for 400 mph.

That 205-mph mark would be the fastest Thompson would go driving the Golden Rod. He was a perennial contestant at Bonneville, even after almost completely destroying the 'liner during an exhibition run in Denver in 1964. Thompson rebuilt the Golden Rod but finally retired the car in the early 1970s, recognizing that streamliner technology had passed his homebuilt car by.

The Golden Rod began a second racing life just a few years later, as a trio of men from Nebraska, Dave Thomssen, Don Walling, and Rich Venza, updated the 'liner with new safety equipment and installed an Ardun motor where Olds Rockets had lived before. For 10 years the men, with Thompson as part of the team, campaigned the Golden Rod at the salt. While it was no faster than when Thompson drove it in the 1950s, they were able to set class records with several flathead motors, the last a 179.299-mph record in the Vintage class in 1979.

The Golden Rod may not have been the fastest competitor on the salt, but it earned a different kind of distinction: When it was finally parked back in the Thompson garage in 1987, it had "probably made more passes at Bonneville than any other car," McIntyre said.

Thompson passed away in 1995, and just before she passed in 1999, Thompson's widow Dorothy gave the Golden Rod to a longtime friend of Thompson's, Dennis Brackeen. He and engine builder Warren Longwell teamed up to restore 990 back to its 1959 configuration, with help (and vintage race parts) from many Denver-area racers. Fifty years after Thompson made his inaugural Bonneville appearance, Brackeen and Longwell had the Golden Rod back on the salt, a tale well told by Longwell in The Rodder's Journal.

About a year after the Golden Rod's return to Bonneville, McIntyre was walking through the Grove at the 2004 California Hot Rod Reunion talking with a friend about historic streamliners. Mid-conversation they looked up, and the bright yellow 'liner was parked not 50 yards away. While they headed over to have a look, a man stepped up and put a For Sale sign on the car. Too good to be true, McIntyre thought. A classic streamliner out of the 1950s?

After a brief discussion and what McIntyre calls a "miracle horse trade," the deal was done. He headed home with the Golden Rod on his trailer, and Dennis Brackeen drove back to Colorado in a "really neat" '32 Ford five-window coupe. "Everybody was happy," McIntyre recalls.

Since the Golden Rod's 2003 restoration was back to 1959 trim, it included the full enclosed canopy Thompson added to the streamliner that year. McIntyre brought the canopy to our photo shoot, but we elected to leave it off, to keep the 'liner truer to how it would have looked in 1954, when it and the Williams Bros. roadster shared time on the salt flats.

That both cars have survived, unlike so many race cars, is testament to the craftsmanship that went into them all those years ago. It also speaks to the attention paid to them, even through periods of benign neglect, in the years since. In Tom McIntyre's hands, their future is certain: They will remain frozen in time, monuments to the mid-century quest for all-out speed, a direct link to those El Mirage spirits almost visible through the shimmering heat.

See all 55 photos

See all 55 photos Ron Williams (in the car) and his brothers Gerald and Herb soak in the fact that they've set a new B/Roadster record in their first (and, it turned out, only) year at Bonneville. The effort was the culmination of five years of racing the roadster on the lakes, at the drags, and even against British sports cars in a hill climb.

See all 55 photos The Williams Bros. raced their roadster here at El Mirage from 1949 until 1953. In those years it was powered by a 21-stud, 244-inch flathead burning alcohol through four Stromberg 97s. Their dry-lake speed peaked in 1953 at 140.62 mph.

See all 55 photos The Williams boys scored a brand-new Dodge Red Ram Hemi—still in the box—from their local Dodge dealer for their trip to Bonneville. They bored the 241ci engine to 250 inches and filled the cylinders with JE pistons.

See all 55 photos The Hemi drank alcohol through Hilborn fuel injection. Tony Baker, in his book Hot Rodding in Ventura County, said Herb Williams was the brother entrusted with the induction system's tuning.

See all 55 photos HRM's caption for this photo said, "Dodge V8 engine has been relocated a foot back from original location. In the process, a new firewall was built from aluminum and [Model] A fuel tank was cut out."

See all 55 photos The large, rectangular tank in the roadster's trunk was not for fuel, but held 20 gallons of water as ballast to improve traction. The alcohol rode shotgun next to Ron Williams in a cylindrical-shaped surplus tank.

See all 55 photos The water tank, fuel tank, and hand fuel pump are still there, just like they were in 1954. So is the wiring, neatly curled behind the driver's seat, that was used to illuminate the roadster's taillights while under tow.

See all 55 photos Stories portray Ron Williams as a gutsy driver. He was known to tuck his head under the right side of the roadster's tonneau to cut down on wind resistance.

See all 55 photos The Williams Bros. not only built a fast roadster, they had a good eye for detail. Note that the cushions in the surplus seat frame match the color of the car. The large S-W tach was mounted to the '34 column just below the Bell three-spoke steering wheel.

See all 55 photos While the Model A sits on its original frame, the brothers mounted a dropped and filled Deuce front axle with the 1932 spring and split radius arms. Juice 1940 Ford brakes are at each corner.

See all 55 photos These are 1951-vintage Firestone Indianapolis racing tires, a little fragile now but still holding "60-year-old air," says McIntyre. Legend has it Ron Williams was in the shop of 1951 Indy 500 winner Lee Wallard, who realized Williams would be going as fast at Bonneville as he did on the bricks. "You'll need some tires," he told Williams, and pulled these off his race car.

See all 55 photos In back, the Model A transverse springs and radius rods hold '36 Ford axle tubes on either side of a Halibrand quick-change. Cogs inside the q-c provided a 3.05:1 final drive ratio.

See all 55 photos No one is exactly sure why the Williams Bros. stopped racing the roadster so soon after their Bonneville trip. Given their ability to go faster year after year at El Mirage, who knows where some sorting of the Hemi could have taken them on the salt?

See all 55 photos Tommy Thompson gets a push at Bonneville in 1955. His first visit to the salt in 1953 netted him a 140.42-mph speed; by 1955 that number had increased to 165.00.

See all 55 photos Friends of Thompson, including much of the hot rodding and land-speed-racing community around the Denver area, contributed to an early 2000's restoration of the Golden Rod to its 1959 configuration. The body wore the scars of decades of Bonneville appearances, and its Oldsmobile engines had been swapped for several flatheads.

See all 55 photos Thanks to his job with the Coors Brewing Company, Thompson obtained aluminum sheets from Alcoa to build the streamliner. Without patterns to follow, he shaped its curves using 1940 Ford fenders as a buck.

See all 55 photos This photo from 1966 shows Thompson back on the salt with the rebuilt Golden Rod. Comparing this photo to the one from 1953 shows off some subtle differences in the body's shape, notably the deeper creases in front of the rear-wheel arches, and a shorter blister behind Thompson's head to accommodate the full canopy he added in 1959.

See all 55 photos We don't have a date for this shot of 990, but it must be post-1959, as the full canopy is in place—and open here. Mario Baffico Collection.

See all 55 photos There's an Oldsmobile Rocket back in the Golden Rod's engine compartment, just like it had for most of its Bonneville career. Period speed equipment includes a Vertex magneto and six Stromberg 97s on an Edelbrock intake. Thompson built a subframe within the 'liner's Model A chassis to hold the engine and driveline.

See all 55 photos With the engine's position in the frame relative to the rear axle, there wasn't room for a driveshaft. So Thompson joined the '38 Ford transmission directly to the quick-change using an adaptor.

See all 55 photos Behind the four-spoke Cragar wheel is a simple aluminum instrument panel with Stewart-Warner oil pressure and water temperature gauges flanking a Sun tach. The surplus seat was originally used by a B-24 tail-gunner.

See all 55 photos The delicate spoon accelerator is in sharp contrast to the burly but symmetrical, home-built brake and clutch pedals. They fit the space perfectly.

See all 55 photos This is what passed for adequate driver protection in the 1950s.

See all 55 photos With a racing career that spanned from the 1950s to the 1980s, the Golden Rod has likely run more miles on the salt than any other Bonneville competitor.