BROOKINGS – For its 25th anniversary, the Brookings Car Council (aka the Brookings Car Club or simply the Car Club) returns to a two-day event, bringing back some downtown events. But a couple of popular events that really pulled in both participants and spectators won’t be back this year: autocross and time-trials racing at the Brookings Regional Airport. They ended with 9/11.
One Brookings auto aficionado who recalls and misses those events is Mike Bartley, an optician who also owns and operates Brookings Hearing Associates.
He’s also a dedicated car collector – especially of foreign autos – and an autocross participant and former president of the Sports Car Club of Siouxland.
He got started in autocross racing in the local area at South Dakota State University in the years before 9/11. “They had a parking lot that they rented up there. I had a little Triumph TR-7. I’d had autocross while I was in the Army in Texas, with a Triumph. I got active with the club here after that; most of the races were in Sioux Falls. We decided to try the airport here.”
That led to Bartley’s being instrumental in bringing autocross – a form of road racing over a flat course set up with cones – and time-trials – a sort of one-at-a-time drag racing – to the annual car show here: both were individual events, with the clock determining the winner.
“I think it had a draw,” Bartley said of those bygone days of car versus clock that brought participants and spectators to the airport in droves. “It brought a lot of people into our club (SCCS) that hadn’t raced.”
He added, “We gave a lot of people rides. Kids, plus a lot of adults.” And safety was paramount, with spectators kept well away from the racers, out of harm’s way “if an engine blew.”
The “drag” races had a shortened 1/8-mile track, as opposed to the official 1/4-mile track used in mano a mano, one on one racing.
There were plenty of participants. Bartley said, “We had drag racers. We had everybody that made a modification to their car want to pay the money (an entry fee) and run.”
Safety job No. 1
But from the beginning, safety for both participants and spectators was a must. Cars that didn’t pass a safety inspection were not allowed to compete. Bartley humorously described one would-be racer trying to enter a jury-rigged truck with three loose, unsecured batteries, because only one was workable – but he didn’t know which one it was. He was turned away.
However, Bartley added, “He was a little upset with us. He left and came back an hour later. He had picked up a box somewhere, put the batteries in it and nailed a lid to it and drilled holes. It would have worked, but the batteries were still not secured. The only thing that secured the batteries together in the box were the cables. We told him no. He was a little upset and he left.”
However, Bartley noted that the man returned the next year ready to try again. “Same truck. But it was leaking oil so bad that we couldn’t let him run. We never saw him again after that. It was a pretty intensive safety check, especially if we had never seen the car before.”
One challenge to automotive events at the airport was its operational status, with scheduled flight arrivals and departures. If a flight was going to land, the time trials had to be stopped and the area cleared of cars, participants and spectators.
Bartley believes that led to considering the cancellation of events at the airport. Then with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 came enhanced security at airports nationwide. The airport events ceased and have never been reinstated.
He added, “It was a security concern at the airport. Although there are airports running them still, just not here.”
Gifted Jag
While Bartley liked the racing adjunct to the annual show, he is a car collector – mostly foreign cars. “I’ve got seven cars right now. I’ve got a ’56 Ford pickup that I’m currently working on, and have been for a long time; a ’56 Jaguar; an XK 140 Roadster; a ’57 Jaguar Mark IV that just got dropped in my driveway by a friend from Watertown who gave it to me; a ’73 MG Midget; an ’88 BMW Convertible; and a 2011 1M Coupe BMW.” He’s able to garage all of them at his Brookings home.
Asked about the gift of a Jaguar, Bartley explained, “It’s in beautiful shape. He knows I like Jags. He wants me to finish it. He said, ‘You can have it.’
“The guy who gave it to me has a lot of cars.” And it does need some work: “Oh yeah. The hydraulics have seized up. The brakes gone through, the clutch gone through, the engine turns over. It’ll run. He rebuilt the engine. The wood inside’s been refinished. At some point, I’ll get to it.”
Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.
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