It doesn't matter if you view the Bonneville Salt Flats as the hallowed ground for land-speed racers or not. There are few words to describe the otherworldly feeling one gets when they step off of the asphalt of Bonneville Speedway Road and onto the salt crust of the Great Salt Lake Basin, the remnants of the prehistoric and hypersaline Lake Bonneville. There doesn't need to be a car present to be in awe of the northwest area of Utah. You see the piercing blue sky above you, the mountains around you, and the blazingly white salt underneath you...that's it. And when the sun goes down, trade the blue sky for one of the clearest views of the celestial sky you can see on the Earth. This is where the men who would drop the atomic bombs were sequestered and trained, sectioned off from the rest of humanity at Wendover Field, just across Interstate 80 to the southwest. Unless you are there during Speed Week, it is an oddly silent place, with only the whisper of interstate traffic in the distance and the sound of the wind against the grains of salt breaking up the noise.

Photo: BangShift.com/Bryan McTaggart

Throughout most of the year, a thin surface of water will sit on top of the basin, but during late summer, that water evaporates off and what is left is a thick crust of salt that racers have been putting to use ever since Bill Rishel and his business partners first drove across them in a Pierce-Arrow in 1907. Active as a land-speed test course since T.H. "Teddy" Tetzlaff used a 300-horsepower Benz to break the record in 1914 (to the tune of 142.8 miles per hour), Bonneville has attracted all manner of racing machines over the years, from stripped-frame jalopies to streamliners, belly tankers and even rocket-powered machines that looked like missiles with wheels. Even today, Bonneville is held in high regard by anyone who measures performance with the deep end of the speedometer.

The origin for this design came from rendering artist Rotislav Prokop, who asked us our thoughts regarding a hot-rodded American truck, maybe with a huge engine and blower out of the hood and a bit of a dragster flavor to it. There was some discussion on what that actually meant. Some felt that he was thinking of a truck like a Squarebody Chevy, or a Dodge D-series, or Ford done up as a Pro Stocker...that would be cool. Others wondered if he was thinking of a truck made between mid-1950s and mid-1960s, done up as a rail dragster push-truck...that would've been cool, too. But we were not ready for what he handed us, because at no point in time did anybody mention a Salt Flats racer. But we're blown away with the results.

The basis of this build centers around a Chevrolet "Advance Design" (1947-1954) era truck that has had the hot-rodding bible thrown at it. You could be forgiven for thinking that a Chevrolet body was dropped onto a worked-over Ford frame, the way the beam front axle is pushed all the way forward. The fender-less look works, but doesn't take away from the overall shape of the Chevrolet, and we're glad to see the iconic five-bar grille left intact. The bed is bobbed, but the tailgate remains, and the rollcage's downbars and the ducktail spoiler at the end of the bed speak to the true intentions of this build. While this is a rendering and the engine is purely speculative, we can't think of anything that would suit the long nose of this Chevrolet better than a 302 cubic inch GMC six-cylinder wearing a whole host of speed parts that is putting the twist through a four-speed transmission and out to a quick-change rear axle. Nothing says "Bonneville racer" like carrying two gearsets around...one for highway use, one for the salt!

With any rendering, there is always a bit of room for suggestions on what someone would change. We only have one...we would've parked this Chevrolet on the salt at sunset, where it belongs.