2016 marks the 102nd year of land speed racing competition on the Bonneville Salt Flats and 1965 is one of those years that sticks out as being particularly awesome. It was the year that the Summers Brothers’ Goldenrod went 409 miles per hour. It was one of the most pitched years of the Breedlove/Arfons battle made even cooler for the fact that Breedlove teamed up with Bobby Tatroe who was driving the Walt Arfons Wingfoot Express to set 23 speed records in a Shelby Daytona coupe, mainly to keep Art Arfons from getting back on the sale that year. Bob Summers also drove a stock hemi powered 1966 Plymouth Satellite to a speed of 156mph to grab a record away from Pontiac, Bob Herda went 328mph in his beautiful streamliner, in motorcycles Harley Davidson and Yamaha traded records, and the Gyronaut X-1 went 212. There was another player on the salt in the motorcycle battle and this documentary (which is all narrated in German) is about them. The Kreidler Motorcycle company from Germany showed up with the intention of resetting as many 50cc motorcycle records as they could and over the course of a month on the salt, they did just that. This film is the story of their efforts on that most barren of places.

Krediler brought a standard looking race motorcycle along with a fully streamlined machine that looks awesome, even in this black and white film. The clear plexiglass nose is really neat and we’re betting that the body was painted bright red. The thing was probably a dream to shoot photos of against the white salt. Anyway, the streamlined bike was ridden by Rudolph Kunz and designed by a an Italian guy who lived in Argentina, Vaifro Meo. We’re not sure how they all got hooked up, but the marriage was a successful one. Packing a 50cc engine that made 15 hp at 15,000 RPM, the streamlined machine achieved a top speed of 140mph over the course of their time on the salt during a mile sprint. They set records at 129 and 130mph in the mile and kilometer respectively. The motorcycle had an eight speed transmission and the exhaust note of a really pissed of weed whacker. We love the footage of the crew guys pushing Kunz off the starting line and seeing him off down the salt.

While the video is concentrated around the Kreidler team, you’ll see footage of Craig Breedlove and even cooler, the Walt Arfons Wingfoot Express. A failure by any measure the Wingfoot was powered by a brace of JATO rockets which were fired in all different sequences from staged to all at once in the hopes of achieving the highest speed. The problem was that the rockets didn’t have near enough run time to get the car anywhere near where it was supposed to be with respect to speed. A fun fact is that each of the JATOs cost $700 a piece in 1965 money and Arfons was ripping though 15 of them on each run. After a few tries with 15 in different configurations, he went whole hog and added an additional 10 rockets by cutting the body and modifying it. The additional rockets didn’t function in the planned manner and the effort was scrapped, well short of expectations.

This film is very, very cool. The one thing that strikes us about the whole thing is that having been to Bonneville in recent years and seeing how “much” there is to do there now, we can only imagine how these guys were entertaining themselves at night or days when it rained. The Nevada side must have been sucked dry of any alcohol after a month! Also note how few people are out there. No thousands of people, lines of campers, people in rental cars. Just the teams and their vehicles along with some select media and PR people. This video absolutely freakin’ rules.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO WATCH THIS FASCINATING ACCOUNT OF RECORD CHASING AT BONNEVILLE IN 1965 –