You Go, Girl

This writer is the first person to admit she knows next to nothing about cars. As long as the engine starts when she turns the key, the  tires are not flat, and she can shift into the appropriate gear she is content. If one of those things doesn’t work, she calls her husband if he’s available and tells him to deal with it. If he is not, she knows an excellent mechanic. 

Therefore, when she meets a mother of two boys in her forties who has driven a race car 187 miles an hour at the Bonnevile Salt Flats and plans to go back so she can go over 200 mph, she just hopes not to make a fool of herself when asking questions.

The woman driver, eat your hearts out gentlemen, is Jerilyn Kugel, normally the mild-mannered  office manager of Kugel Komponents, the company her father, Jerry, started in the 1960s.  Located off Cypress Street on Industrial Park Drive, it is a family business where her father and two brothers, Joe and Jeff, oversee the manufacturing of independent front and rear suspensions for street rods, and Muroc chassis without wheels, tires, and steering wheels. The Muroc High Boy is without fenders and only 10 will be built. Ten with full fenders will also be built. The price for what is called a ‘roller’, which is only the body and chassis without engine, transmission, paint or upholstery, is $110,000.

Jerry planned to build a full fender Muroc to become his own street car, but he made sure it could be easily converted by removing its running boards, fenders, and windshield to take it racing.  “When we’re done racing it, it’ll be a street car,” Jerilyn said, “unless someone offers enough that Dad decides to sell it.”

The car is so expensive because it is hand-built of steel and weighs 4,000 pounds. As a race car it needs to be heavy to keep it low, and, of course, it has to have a parachute to slow it down so it can be stopped.

Jerry has been racing since 1962. “In 1959 he went out to Bonneville and saw Mickey Thompson’s Challenger run and that’s what hooked him. In 1962 he came back with his own car,” his daughter explained. Her brothers have been racing at Bonneville since the ’90s, but began driving runs there in the late ’80s.