It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I’m joined by Louise Noeth, better known as “Land Speed Louise”, whose passion and expertise have made her one of the leading authorities on land speed racing.

Louise shares her unlikely journey into motorsport, from growing up on the South Side of Chicago with little automotive influence to discovering a fascination with cars, speed and engineering. She reflects on the experiences and people who shaped her career, including legendary racer and designer Carroll Shelby, and how she eventually found herself immersed in the extraordinary world of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

We explore Louise’s work as a journalist, author and historian, documenting the remarkable people and machines that have pushed the boundaries of speed. She also discusses her commitment to ensuring the achievements of female racers and land speed record holders receive the recognition they deserve.

The conversation also turns to the future of land speed racing and the environmental challenges facing Bonneville. Louise explains why protecting the Salt Flats is so important, not only for motorsport but for preserving a unique piece of American automotive history.

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I'd like to introduce the backseat driver, a lady who is an acknowledged expert on land speed records.

Bonneville salt Flats, was taught some of her handy racing techniques by the legendary Carol Shelby, drives a Subaru wrx, is a very successful author.

In fact, the list goes on.

It is purely endless.

And by her own description, she's a girl from Chicago cargo who didn't come from a motorsport background.

But I'd like to introduce the backseat driver, Louise Noeth, better known as land speed Louise.

Louise, welcome to the backseat driver.

Hey, Mark, thanks for having me on your show.

How did all this come about?

Because as you said, you didn't really come.

You didn't come from a family who were interested in motorsport.

Now, I grew up in the south side of Chicago.

It's a little bit of the main streets back then.

And it's an odd way I came to cars.

I was born stereo.

But now I'm a Noral because I was dropped.

My ear was severed, and when they sewed it back on, I got an infection.

But nobody really knew it was an infection because I was an infant.

And what do kids do?

We'll cry all the time.

So.

So the infection took my hearing on my left ear and it left me half deaf.

So sounds became, shall we say, a treat, not an everyday normality.

And the doctor's son across the street was much older, and he and his pals had a lot of, amazingly enough, European sports cars, which the exhaust notes were just wonderful things to hear.

So I would go over there and.

And watch what they did.

And I had little hands and they had big gorilla paws.

And when they would move something down into the car or such, I could easily go, oh, I see it.

And I would just jump right in and grab it.

And I.

That's kind of what I.

How I first learned about vehicles.

Yeah.

Was through the itty bitty little, little tiny little motor type of thing.

Because remember, we're.

I'm.

I'm.

This was in the early 60s, and they were all gigantic beasts.

Yeah.

And the little European sport cars, they were completely the antithesis of anything that was rolling around on our streets other than a bug.

A Volkswagen bug.

And so that was the start of it.

But the reality was that I wanted to drive.

I wanted to be able to be in motion and not have to take the bus and not have to walk.

And I wanted to go full in my bicycle.

Yeah.

So I couldn't figure out how I could afford a car.

We weren't that kind of family.

We're on their 16th birthday, you got a brand new car with a bow on it.

But I don't.

I was an artist.

God gave me the great skills of artistic ability and I started to letter and draw or paint pictures on the side of the local street king cars.

Oh right.

I would make them white.

Yeah.

I would buy the, I would make them buy the paint, buy the brushes.

They wanted gold, they had to buy the gold leaf.

And this was all self taught.

Yeah.

And I put the stuff, whatever they wanted on the car and sometimes it was pennies but most of the time up front I said I'll do this, you'll buy all this and then with your car, for what you want me to do, you will allow me to drive it.

Yeah.

For X number of hours.

That's the deal.

And if you don't, I will tell everybody that you're a.

You're a dirtbag that didn't have a worm.

So they would do that.

But we couldn't do it in the neighborhood.

He said, well, I don't want them to think we're going out.

I said I don't want to kiss you.

I just want to drive your car.

I want nothing to do with you romantically.

And so that's how I learned to drive all the different hot rods.

By the time I had gotten my full on license with my dad, that's another story.

I had driven most every single what you would consider muscle car of the 60s.

Yeah.

Because of all what I did and I really liked driving.

Yeah.

And I conclude it was the little hands etc that you learned to be a mechanic because you are.

That's one of your other skills.

You are a good mechanic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In this house with the, with my, my British husband by the way from the black country of wool rampton.

He gets the kitchen and the toolbox is mine.

Yeah.

And as long as he stays away from my power tools, we stay away from the emergency room.

I teach him a little bit but.

But he can't unless he really see, he never.

Nobody ever taught him.

It's not that he's stupid.

Nobody taught him.

And you know, I mean a skill saw, he gets that, that's a danger.

But some of the other stuff it's.

He doesn't get that you don't do this because otherwise that could happen.

And the backlash, you know, it's got a lot more power than you do.

Yeah.

It's like using a ch.

It's like using a chainsaw.

I said that to friends.

I occasionally use a chainsaw for things.

I'll say, of course, halfway through, you leave it ticking over while you just move something.

I'll say, don't touch it, because if you do, you will probably remove one of your limbs.

Or worse still, one of min.

Yeah, that's it.

So that's.

That's.

You know, we would.

We would steal my father's car because he was a contractor, so he would leave really early in the morning and this big, heavy car.

Yeah, big heavy car.

And we would enlist our.

Our friends who had to chip in for the gas money.

And because of the sound of that engine, I knew damn well that if we started that thing up in the garage behind the house, my mother or somebody would hear it.

And we would have to push it out and push it down the alley to the long end of the alley, because on the short end of the alley lived Mr. Clancy.

And Mr. Clancy was.

My dad's.

One of my dad's good friends.

He just happened to be a captain in the Chicago police force.

So you didn't want to see the car either.

So we would push the car, steal the car, and drive up and down Garfield Boulevard.

Because I thought, aha.

But you see, this is where you think you know everything and you don't.

On the boulevard.

Pickup trucks and construction material thing.

Can't drive on the boulevard.

It's only for cars.

Yeah, well, Mark.

Yes, that's true.

But if you have a job on the boulevard, guess where you can drive on the boulevard?

Oh, you bet.

And that was one day, one of those fateful days in May.

We go driving up and down, the girls and I, complete with cigarettes hanging out of our fingers.

Past the place my father is working.

We don't see him.

He sees us.

He jumps in the truck.

And the next thing you know, my sister and I are having cardiac arrest because there is my father pacing us on the other lane.

Take that car home.

And that's how we got caught.

And we thought we were both going to the convent in another country.

Yeah.

He came home, he went to his filing cabinet.

He got something out.

He said, get in the car.

I thought, oh, this is it.

And we end up at the insurance company guy's office.

And he says, how much?

And he tells him to put them on because we were both licensed, not allowed to take his car.

And he finds out.

And then we go to the bank, and he removes that amount of money from each of our bank accounts, puts us on the account.

And he said, ask in the future.

Yeah, that was certainly not the response.

We both figured, we really thought that we were going to be tired.

Toothpaste.

So from there, how did you get into the racing?

Well, the local street kings.

That had a lot to do with it.

And I would go to us 30 drag strip and up in Union Grove, Wisconsin.

Of course, when I was starting to drive, I could do all those things.

And they were, you know, sometimes a couple of two hours away.

It didn't matter, but it was a great drive.

And then one.

One day I met my first jet car.

And as far as I was concerned, Pistons could drink my bath water.

Oh, God, the sound.

Remember, sound is paramount in my life.

And then I looked at this thing and I made this sound and I wanted to know more.

And the bottom line is I ended up going racing with Doug Rose with the green mamba with a J46 Westinghouse jet engine that used to be in a F7U Cutlass in the Second World War surplus.

And there, you know, I met The Walt and R.R.

Fons and Craig Reedlove and Gary Gavlit, the whole Thrust powered crap.

And I was too short because Doug was much bigger to drive the thing.

Yeah.

But had the operational manuals.

And I'm quite the reader.

So I just digested this and it was like, okay, you know, I mean, I'll tell you the one sentence in that.

And I would.

This could be a Jeopardy question.

The one sentence in that book that repeated more than any other sentence sentences that book is.

That is There shall be no.

There shall be no leapage or seepage from this component.

I couldn't like, you know, that little day.

It's a small world after all.

See, and this is like 50 years later or so, and it's still bouncing around in my head.

Yeah.

And I loved what you did with the debt.

I looked at what you had to do with pistons in between rounds in a drag race.

And then I looked at what we didn't have to do with a jet or a rocket.

Yeah.

In between Browns at a drag race.

No, thanks.

And then I saw the speeds we could go.

Yeah.

So that's what I did for several years.

And one of the guys from the magazines came around and they were asking all kinds of dumb questions because they didn't know.

And I realized that this was.

That somebody needed to teach all these guys.

So I had left Chicago for another reason.

To go to California.

Yeah.

And to move there.

And essentially the operation was that I could, I got, essentially I was hired by the Bob Peterson and Fred Wangro, the owner and president of Peterson Publishing.

Yeah, to be the first female editor of the Hot Rod Performance and Custom Directory.

And as I understand, so when Bob sold the country company, I was the only woman that was ever in charge of an automotive publication during his ownership of the company.

And I didn't get, I didn't get hired because I was a mechanical genius.

Yeah, I got hired because I knew computer stuff and programming and they were doing at Peterson a switchover from paste up and you know, normal stuff into the computerization.

And that was what my job was back in Illinois with the Department of Labor in the state of Illinois.

I essentially created the training program for people to do that.

So when I interviewed, I went with all the normal guys at Peterson, the editors and the publishers.

And then the one Wayne Grove sent me, the president sent me over to the data processing gal and I was there for three hours and she just picked up the phone and said, oh, Mr. Peterson will be hired.

Hiring her.

Yeah, that was it.

That was, that was how I went from racing into, into the journalism business.

And I wasn't trained for any of it.

So all I can say, it's been a heck of a, a bouncing ball.

You know, I'm a, I'm a hot rod ping pong ball.

So where did you first encounter Bonneville?

I mean Bonneville is renowned the world over.

Also, it's been a proving ground.

One brand that is very, very closely connected with it, I don't know that it still has, is STP oil.

It's used for all sorts.

And besides the straight lines that people drive there, I haven't realized.

There's also a circular course, but I mean, and it can only be used for a certain number of months of the year because it, when it rains you get about 2 or 3 inch of water there.

So everybody has to wait for the water to disappear.

But I mean I've seen photographs of it and films of it and it is, what's the famous say, it's like a lunar landscape.

It's got to be the most unique place on earth.

But how did you come to get yourself down there and get yourself driving down it?

From a dear good friend, Tom center, who was at the time was the editor of popular Hot Rodding magazine.

And he just thought it was fascinating that I got this job at Peterson, helped me out and to get that Job or at least told me about the party, that I got the wind of this thing.

Yeah.

And said, look, I want.

I, I've got this, this Camaro that I have been trying with an Arden with a flathead engine, an Arden in it that I've been trying to get into the 200 mile an hour club to get it over 200.

He said, I can't wrench it and drive it.

He said, I want you to drive it.

Yeah.

And I went, okay, but what is this?

And what's this Bonneville?

And he told me, I said, okay, I'm in.

And I said, won't this be something?

You know, that.

And at the time, you know, Argus Publishing and Pearson Publishing was, it was like, you know, a boxing match.

You didn't, you didn't get in the ring to be friends.

You got in the ring to beat living the heck out of each other, you know, at the newsstand.

Yeah.

So the fact that he and I were doing this thing, I was getting the wrinkled eyebrows from a lot of people, and so was he, but we didn't care.

We were friends.

And then he had to stop because Ford Motor Company wished him away to do PR for them.

And in that doing, he had to take a little time off.

And when he was going back to putting the car back together, he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer.

And from the time he was diagnosed to the time he died was about 90 days.

Right.

Oh, it was absolutely incredibly heartbreaking.

And because of that, I never went to the salt.

Not because I didn't want to, it's just.

I just couldn't see myself going there without him.

But that's how I was introduced to Bonneville and learned all about the details.

And of course, he taught me how to drive in my head.

Yeah.

Much like a lot of the other folks that taught me the tricks of the tray.

When I would go test driving cars for my, my freelance career, I, I didn't have the money for the big fancy driving schools, but when they would take us on test drives, the various car companies they'd inherit inevitably bring somebody that was a big shot driver and well known.

And when I'd get in the car with them, I would say, please find one thing that I'm screwing up and that I'm not doing well and will you please fix me?

I would appreciate, because I don't have the money to learn, but I know that, you know, and if you're kind enough, you can help me be a better driver.

Every single one of those people helped, one way or Another.

So I went to the driving school of, you know, American racing, sometimes European.

Racing, because that's what.

That's.

That's where you came into contact with the legendary Carol.

A.C. cobra, Ford GT4, Shelby.

Yep, that was it.

And he was.

It was at one of those driving events that he.

He saw what I could do and he helped me throughout my career, little by little.

I mean, it wasn't every day.

I mean, he didn't come over for dinner, you know, we weren't the best friends and go out drinking, but he understood that I was focused on this.

But I'm.

I was also a writer and a photographer, and that was where my dream was.

But I wrote about cars, trucks and motorcycles, and I only thought that the duty of someone who wanted to do that needed to understand how to drive the thing and operate them safely and to warn people of something that might be an engineering failing or a mechanical failing or something that wasn't built right.

It was my job.

And if I didn't do that, I could have all the flowery words there were.

But if somebody took my words and I wasn't honest and they got hurt, or, God forbid, one of their children got hurt, what the hell kind of journalist would that make me?

I would say that's one of the problems with a lot of modern journalists.

They write a review of a car to keep the manufacturer happy.

I used to write a review of a car which invariably used to upset most of the manufacturers.

The motoring journalist, in my opinion, is not very good at his job.

Yeah, that's it.

And that was part of the deal.

But yet, even when I had retired from the daily test driving, there were still quite a few manufacturers.

Even though I didn't write something or I could maybe find a place to put a picture here or there or that.

I would call and say, hey, I need to.

Blah, blah, blah, for this reason, which was, you know, it was a high profile, but it didn't result in something printed.

Yeah.

And I was.

I think that's where I learned that there was a value of what I did.

They still gave me the cars.

Yeah.

So, I mean, Rolls Royce, for God's sake, gave me a roller when my husband was getting his master's degree and I wanted to drive him there to go with his little square hat on to go fetch his piece of paper.

That took him four years to get, so.

Or two rules.

Good amount was bachelor's degree, master's degree.

But I just thought, after all that work, he deserves something.

Yeah.

And.

And roll was just Incredibly kind, and gave me the car for a week, not just the weekend.

Yeah.

So that was.

That.

That was the part of it.

But anyway, to get.

Actually go to Bonneville, it was again, back in the journalism thing.

Yeah.

I.

Somebody.

I had been involved with, Craig Breedlove, with these.

What we call the Supersonic Showdown.

Yeah.

In 97, I helped build that last car.

I was, you know, part of the team, that whole process.

And there was an upset with Craig and some of the guys, and I just.

I.

After the public showing of the car at the Peterson Auto Museum, I left the team.

I.

The second part of my contract, I chose not to, shall we say, activate, because I didn't care for a couple of the people that were part of the team that had managed to get Craig's attention more than they should.

Yeah.

And I was really worried on what the hell was going to happen.

I really, really was worried.

And I didn't want my name associated with that.

And I tried to talk to him.

I tried to talk to his daughters and his son, and, you know, it just none of that worked as I didn't want to be there.

And then also the engineer, Walt Sheehan and I were of the same opinion who had been responsible for Craig getting all of his records.

And it was the damnedest, weirdest situation.

So I was just the journalist.

Yeah.

And got to know, you know, Andy Green and Richard Noble and the whole team.

And Ron Ayers.

I love Ron Ayers.

And Glenn Boucher.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And for some reason, they love me, the fools.

Anyway, I thought that'd be a hell of a book to write about that from the background of having the background knowledge, the mechanical knowledge, where I could take the mechanical wildness and make the average person, you know, understand it or give them the opportunity to understand if they read it.

Yeah.

So I approached Motor Books International with this idea.

I want to do the book called the Supersonic Showdown.

Well, they were lukewarm.

They didn't think it would sell.

They didn't think it was a big deal.

I said, for Pete's sake, I just got the COVID of Sports Illustrated spreads and I've got, I don't know, like, 25 different articles just in the past few weeks on this thing.

Yeah.

Why don't you think people would sell?

Well, it's.

Those are.

Those are articles, you know, this is a book.

This is very serious business, you know, And I'm up, my head spinning, so they turn me down because it's not interesting.

And about three weeks later, I get a call from that Same crazy publishing company.

Yeah.

And said, well, we need somebody to write the history of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Are you interested?

Yeah.

Well, Tom Center's head, you know, mine came and face came into my head and I tried to maintain my composure while I was trying to bounce off the ceiling.

That's how I got to do my first book.

And when I first saw the playa, before I actually got to the actual entrance, I had to pull off the road and have a moment about that.

And it is a wondrous thing where you can.

It's so much wide and so much nothing that if you're in the right place and I can take you there, you will see the curvature of the earth.

There's so much nothing.

And when rainbows show up there, they often show up in doubles and triples.

Yeah.

It's also a place, and I mean this seriously.

Well, may not do it now, and that's another deal because Bonneville is in critical condition and it's on life support.

But at the time, I went there for many, many years.

Baby, you can drive a hundred miles an hour.

Yeah.

With your eyes closed for a minute or two.

Yeah.

And turn any way you want and you won't hit a damn thing.

Try that.

Yeah.

See how long lasts before you have to open your eyes?

Now, the one thing you have done and you are known for is championing the lady speed record holders, aren't you?

I mean, you were telling me a fascinating story that Bonneville didn't allow women to compete there.

And all of a sudden, was it.

Since the early 70s, women have set over a thousand land speed records, haven't they?

Yep.

And this is interesting.

Well, when I started to do the book, I thought, well, wait a minute, you know, there were women involved and they did a little dry.

But I wondered why there were so few of them.

Well, because, you know, on a team of 10, maybe there'd be one or two gals.

So there was always more guys than girls.

But it was unknown to me until I asked the right question.

It wasn't that I asked how many women are driving?

Because there were quite a few that drove at Bonneville.

Yeah.

When I got involved.

But when I asked the question, how Many have set national and world records.

That's where I got the knowledge smacked in my head and I learned.

Okay, now tighten up, listeners.

This is not for all of you, but there are some of you who own this.

But the teeny, tiny testicles of the day did not want women driving cars because.

Because they in many ways did not want to get beat by a girl.

Didn't matter if that girl was 40 or 50 years old.

If Bob beat Bill, it was great.

But if Louise beat Bill, you got beat by a girl.

Which, like we said before we went on air, you know, Michel Mouton.

And there was a lot, there was a lot of problems about being beaten by a woman.

And it was only due to family tragedy that she never claimed the World Rally Championship title.

But, I mean, the men hated the fact that they could not beat Michelle Muto.

That's it exactly.

And I met her and talked with her about that particular thing and most of the other gals.

So when I.

During the pandemic, it was a good thing for me.

I had thousands of pictures that I'd never used.

And I had done one of those small little picture books by Motor books that Bonneville Salt Flats.

And you know, it was the black and white with the sepia tones.

And I took it from the very first running out of Bonneville all the way through to the modern day.

And this was against.

Against the.

The guys who were the snox about this.

They had certain prejudice that.

Prejudice.

Prejudice that I had noticed over the years.

One was motorcycles.

Yeah.

Under no circumstance could a motorcycle be a hot rod because it only had two wheels.

The second one was thrust powered cars.

Well, thrust forward cars.

There's no, there's no hot rodding to that.

You can't call that a hot rod.

It doesn't even have a piston.

Yes.

Well, the most feared and the worst of it were women.

And I thought so I had three chapters in there.

Motorcycles, Thrust Cars and Women.

Yeah.

And that women chapter at Motor Books.

Not Motor Books, I'm sorry, Arcadia Publishing.

That they came back to me and interestingly enough, the executive staff were mainly all women.

They said, we had no idea that women did this.

And there were so many man.

There weren't more.

We could do a book.

I said, there are.

I will.

And I did.

Yeah.

So that was the.

This is my latest book.

It's called Bonneville's Women of Land Speed Racing and it's into Four chapters.

Yeah.

Automobiles, Motorcycles, Thrust.

And then I wanted people to understand that some of them are also the people that put these things on.

And then it's called the unsung heroines.

There are some women that do all of this.

Ride a bike, drive a car, have driven, trust powered cars, and give their time to put events on throughout the world.

Matter of fact, the current Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials was designed and is promoted by a woman, Delveen Rebar.

And she takes care of all the motorcycle racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats, boys and girls.

And she does a damn good job of it.

Yeah.

So that's the book.

And on the COVID of the book was my dear, darling, lovely friend, Paula Murphy, who was the very first woman to run a jet car out on Bonneville Salt Flats because of Annie Granatelli.

He was her knight in shining armor.

Yeah, Paula.

Paula is one of those gals.

I don't think gender has anything to do with it, but her and I talked about this quite a bit.

I don't care what the thing was with wheels, Paula could drive it.

Not only did I learn about this, as I did several articles and contributed to a book about her, but let me share this that most will never know.

When she was in her early 90s, I would go and visit, and by this time she was using a walker but still able to drive.

And when we would go out, I was not allowed to drive.

First time this happened, I thought, oh, but I love.

Oh, okay, just tighten that belt a little more.

Well, I'll tell you what, in the first 10 minutes that we were in that car, I didn't have to have and have the belt on, for God's sakes.

Yeah.

That woman was as much in control of that car at plus 90 as she was at 20s.

Yeah.

And she could not only drive well, but she had situational awareness.

And she'd see him coming up behind on the side, she'd see him before I would.

And she would not only be driving, but she'd be bitching about somebody not doing the right thing in another land.

And her driving was exemplary.

It was just that the body was a little broken about walking.

And I was stunned.

And I had talked to Andy a few years before that because she was the first woman to drive a car on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Oh, yeah.

And when we were going, I said, you know, I've never come gone.

And she said, why don't you come?

And she called Annie and we went to Indy.

The reason I went to the Indy 500 is because of Paula.

Yeah, and Andy.

You don't go with Andy.

You are in his.

It's like over there in England.

You got, you know, the king and the queen.

He's the king.

Wherever he goes, doors magically open.

He never has to touch a door knob.

Yeah, it opens for.

We went everywhere.

And so I called Chevrolet and said, she's coming.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

How about for have a little fun, get a little more press.

Why don't you let Paula take the car around?

I mean, this is not on the day.

While we were there for several days in advance.

Yeah, let her take.

I think it was carburetion day.

We did.

I don't remember.

Anyway, they agreed and Johnny Rutherford was the pace car driver.

He knew him.

I knew him, actually.

Johnny had helped me learn things in the past.

And so off we go.

And I'm in the back seat and I'm thinking, and that woman, man, she left that pit roll, went up onto that oval, onto that embankment as though she had not.

She'd only been going a week or two.

Yeah, I was stunned.

And I think Johnny, where he started with a little bit of gription on each hand.

He folded his hands in his lap.

We were only supposed to take three laps and then come in.

And she said, all right, I'm coming down after the third.

He said, no, no, you said, you want to take a few more?

And she said, they told me three.

He said, don't worry about it.

I'll take care of it.

Six or seven laps.

I undid my seatbelt in the back so I could bring my camera up to get photographs of her hand on the steering wheel with the speed on the speedometer on the instrument panel and Johnny's folded hands in his lap.

That was just a glorious thing.

That's another part where I learned what this woman could do.

And it's also where Mark and all of you listening, I understood and I am very adamant on this.

There isn't a car, a truck, a motorcycle, an airplane, because I'm also a licensed pilot or a boat, and I do tall ship sailing.

Not a one of those.

It was there that I understood that it didn't matter the gender of a human being.

What mattered is the skill level and what you want to put into it.

And Paula taught me a lot of that just by virtue of what she did.

And she didn't want ever to say that, you know, guys should be behind her.

She just.

She just wanted the chance to drive and to do what she could do.

And I honestly believe that now, for not just cars, but trucks, motorcycles, airplanes, boats.

It's input and response.

That's it.

It's good input, good response.

And I doubt anybody that's a decent driver of anything or a decent pilot or especially like.

And I've this same discussion with some of the Blue Angels, the Red Arrows and the Thunderbird, because I've done stories on all of them.

Yeah.

Talking this specific thing.

It really is input and response.

And of course, when you're flying like the Red Arrows or the Blue Angels and you're flying like inches apart, like way too fast.

You get it.

I mean, I'm a propeller pilot, you know, I like the little skies and, you know, but what they do.

However, if somebody, somebody asked me to go on a rocket trip, I would go in a second.

Yeah.

I wasn't a Barbie doll girl.

I was a Saturn V rocket girl.

I'm still a Saturn V rocket girl.

Yeah.

Now, besides everything you've done, what else is left for you to write about or what else is left for you to do?

Well, I'm working on a book now about a couple.

Couple, a married couple, who in their private lives, their separate lives, did things, exceptional things in the automotive and racing world and then married.

And I met them at Bonneville, their honeymoon was at Bonneville and, And both of them are in the 200 mile an hour club.

Yeah.

And then they decided that they wanted to go more than, more than, you know, one or two weekends a year and went into drag racing.

And the husband did the, the wrenching and the wife did the, the driving and they would go 200 miles an hour several times a week.

So that story is, is in development now.

And then once that's finished, I'm going to do my autobiography because all this crazy stuff and my, and it's not my idea.

I've been pounded into this.

My husband and others have said you need to write all this stuff down and you only know about the motorsport stuff.

You don't know anything about the sailing stuff and some of the other things.

And you know, what I did with whitewater rafting or did with the Buffalo Bill Wild west show of Congress of Rough Riders of the World in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Yeah.

You know, I did, I've done some really wonderful things and I, I think it's only because I've, I've been curious and interested.

Yeah.

And, and the idea that I grew up in a household where nobody ever told me, well, girls don't do that.

I was always, I was always encouraged to find, to find my place you know, to find my joy.

And I think that's why you talking here, Mr. Stone.

Yeah, it's like I said before we.

Once again, before we went on air, we now have racing drivers at the tender age of 20 writing biographies.

And you think you haven't done anything.

It seems to be the current trend to write a biography about somebody who hasn't done anything.

That is the great thing.

And don't take this the wrong way about the new batch of biographies and autobiographies of older people because they have lived, they have done things and that's what makes them so fascinating.

That's why I enjoy talking to the old racing drivers, the old rally drivers, because they've lived their life, they have their stories to tell.

Yeah.

And I'm very grateful, you know, for this and hopefully.

Look, I don't need any accolades or golden light shined on me, but I hope that some gals that are listening, and I don't mean just young girls, I mean some of you old gray haired ones that diet so you don't want people to know you're getting old.

No idea that you're young or you're old.

Get in it and try it.

You may not like it, but you may find out like Paula, that you loved it because she didn't come to it, you know, like I did.

She came to it because somebody asked her to help.

Yeah, I, I just want you to know that it's a possibility and it's, it's, it's not ours.

Nobody says you got to go from 0 to 150 miles an hour on your first run.

But you know, you can learn little by little.

You didn't get on a bicycle and you know, turn corners, you know, very quickly right away you got to learn it, but it's, it's, that's part of what it is.

And all the years that I've put into land speed racing, I have an incredible archive of books and files and interviews and photographs and ephemera and programs and details and time slips, all kinds of.

Because there was no archive.

It's not like, you know, the, the FIA that's got this great library somewhere or NASCAR, NHRA and drag racing or, or IndyCar.

You know, where they have a whole library for the thing.

Yeah.

It's down to some of us who have put this together.

And I'm looking for a university library to put it or, and, or a, a collection that will allow it to be a museum that will allow it to be ref.

And my dream is this.

When I'm dead 50 years.

This.

This pile of stuff that I've put together will still be available.

Yeah.

And it might still matter for somebody who's looking something up and I hope to God they can find it because they'll find the truth.

Because I've pissed off a lot of people.

Like me.

Like.

Like me.

Like me.

Yeah.

They want me to.

Well, no, you should say this.

Piss off.

It's.

That's not what happened.

This is what happened.

You might have learned something or.

I got a feeling, maybe because you're giving me shit about this.

You haven't learned a damn thing.

Well, it's like where I'm sat.

I'm sat in my office and technically it's a bedroom for a double bed and everything else.

There's a chair on the desk.

It is just full of books, ephemera, anything and everything to do with motorsport, plus my other sport that I no longer compete in for a variety of reasons.

I used to do a lot of clay pigeon shooting, so there are books on shooting and all sorts.

So I look at this and think, what the hell's going to happen to all this?

Yeah, And I'm.

I'm looking at that now.

And there are two places that I think are worthy and I'm talking with them, but it's going to be talks because it'll be on piece of paper and they will have to sign a legal document on what will happen.

And even when I'm dead, you know, it's not like some museums that'll say, oh, you're wonderful, you know, and they blow sunshine up your butt and then over a few years they start to sell off parts of it because they need money and they don't.

They don't really give a damn about what Louise or Mark Stone did, but what Mark collected, we can make some money off of that guy Stone.

Yeah.

Now, slight, slightly off subject, you one racing, one lady racing driver, you know, who has not been trekked very well.

And from the story you told me, she reminds me of the great heli.

Nice.

The Bugatti Queen, and that is Danica Patrick.

And you.

I've watched various things on Danica, I've read various things on her.

And you are, shall we say, a champion of Danica Patrick, who in my opinion deserves to be tret a lot better.

Oh, yeah, I.

Listen, you know, somebody's going to say prove it in court, but I think it's pretty common knowledge with most folks in motorsport that she didn't get treated properly.

It was.

There was always A gang of somebody, a gang of one or a gang of 10.

I don't know that their whole job or their dad, they would try to take her out or they would do things to just be teeny, tiny testicles.

Thank you very much.

And any of you that don't like that, come and visit me personally.

We'll have a conversation about it.

They would not let her run her race.

They wanted her out.

And when she moved over to nascar, there were actually groups of guys that would get together and say, okay, who's going to take her?

Who's going to do the job today?

And the job shot was not just to not let Danica win or podium, but they didn't want her to finish.

Yeah.

And sometimes they would do that to wreck her.

They'd wreck themselves just to make sure that that happened.

Yeah.

Now, how many people out there that have something that they love?

How long could you do that?

Well, she did it for several years, but then after a while, honestly, and I don't blame her at all, she just probably had enough of it.

Would she say that in an interview?

Probably not.

Maybe not now, maybe in an autobiography later.

Yeah, but that was what was happening out there.

And other people saw this and they couldn't say things for whatever reason.

But, you know, when you go to a race and you see that, and as a journalist, I see things, I also get speed secrets because I don't tell the other one what they're doing.

Yeah, I, I understand it.

I'm not saying I'm brilliant at it, but I'm, I'm mindful and I'm sensitive to it.

And you see that stuff.

Yeah.

And I, I.

And she's not the only one.

There have been others that have had that happen.

And frankly, once the women were allowed to drive at Bonneville, which if, you know.

Advertisement Advertisement if you buy a copy of Speed Racing by Land Speed, Louisiana in there, it tells the story of how the hot rod boys were forced into allowing women to race.

And it is a brilliant, elegant, refined story of how they were made to come into the modern century and why women were allowed to race.

And it was all down to one girl on a motorcycle.

Yeah.

So that makes that difference.

And she didn't want to go first.

When they come to Bonneville, they come for one thing, they want to know how fast Will it go?

And in late speed racing at the Bonneville Salt Flat, it is a segment of motorsport, all amateur, and they are people that have done extraordinary things.

They are the fastest people on Earth, the amateurs, and they have attracted the stars from every other segment of motorsport on the planet.

Yeah.

Every single one.

Now, the only one, I might be saying out of, out of tone, I don't know that we've had any swamp buddy buggy drivers there, but I and Louise would like to go drive a swamp bucket.

That's, that's the deal, you know, and that's, that's more than any and F1, any of the others.

I don't care.

Yeah.

They're the fastest ones on Earth.

And that's where you just want to find out, baby, how fast will it go?

Yeah.

Because you're not against anybody.

You're against the clocks.

And the clocks do no.

And the clocks don't judge either.

The clocks just tell you how fast you've gone.

That's exactly it.

And I think that's one of the reasons I stayed with and I appreciate, because I see the magic.

I see the hopes and dreams foment and percolate and spread out into the team and the people and the spectators, and you have this collective joy.

And I'm going to tell you something, Andy Green was not any happier than the guy that set the record on his mini bike at Bonneville.

The joy was the same when they set their records.

And that what I appreciate about land speed racing, it gives you the hopes and dreams come forward dozens of times a day for a week at a time.

Unlike at a race where you get 1, 2, 3, and everybody else is a bit disappointed.

Yeah,.

I mean, no offense.

I mean, it's, I look, I like a good sports car race or a good, you know, Indy race.

Sometimes I might go back to an F1 race if they weren't so snotty.

I, I, it's, to me, the motorsport, it's the reason that Danica liked it.

Yeah.

She loved the operational.

It's the reason that Leah Pruitt is now Leah Stewart.

Yeah.

And I got, I got a flash for you people.

Take one guess who taught Tony Stewart how to drive that Top Fuel car.

He was taught by a girl.

All right.

Not the only one.

And you know what?

He's loving it and having a great time.

Yeah.

And they are both making each other exquisitely happy.

I was like, you know, sometimes God provides.

John.

John Force was like the man's man there for Dr. For drag racing.

Yeah.

You Know, John decided to teach him a lesson how to do things.

He gave him all daughters.

Yeah.

Every single one of them a champion.

I bless them and keep them and, you know, sometimes I think the champion in that family is Lori, the wife, the mother.

So in any event, that's my take on it.

I'm fascinated with motorsport because I see the human condition improve and I see people who will put stock racing there, their record setting cars or the chance to have a record.

Yeah.

Or take the thing apart.

I've actually seen people take it apart, take an operational part off their race car, give it to someone else in the same class who's going for the same class record because that person is closer and they didn't have that part and it broke or something went wrong.

Yeah.

I have seen it happen, not once, not twice, but all the time.

When one gal, Betty Birkin, was given a ride in another person's car, four other teams parked their race car to be the team for her so that she would set as a grandmother a 263 mile an hour land speed record in a competition coupe.

That was this thundering, snorting bull of a car.

Yeah.

And did a great job of it.

And when you.

I took a picture, I made them all stand up and stand together so that I would remember and she would remember.

The gift that was given was not just the car, but the friendship of all those people.

That type of thing happens all the time at Bonneville and there may not be any Bonneville.

So this is.

I might end with this.

This.

Let me tell you, Bonneville is on life support.

Yeah.

It has been legally.

Legally, and I emphasize this, ecologically raped.

Yeah.

For 40, 50 years.

Because the Bureau of Land Management, who put the federal leases together in the mid-60s, have not really updated or changed them from the ore mining precedent into the type of mining that happens out there, which is evaporative mining.

Yeah.

And that means that the people who have those leases at this point, Intrepid is their name, because they hate me.

So I don't care if they hate me more.

They are.

They have more than a dozen leases, some of which are not producing, but they have to pay a fee every year.

Yeah.

Keep the lease even though it doesn't produce.

Now, if you were in a business deal, if it's not producing, you'd want to get out of that.

No, no.

The reason they keep it is because once they give the lease up, the second part of the mechanism begins the restoration.

They have to pay an annual fee, they have to pay a percentage of all the minerals that they extract from the brine that they take off or the silver result.

But they don't have to put a damn thing back until they give the lease back.

Because that's ore mining.

Right.

Dig a hole, you take off the goal, you take finish with the gold and then you fill the hole up and you go somewhere else and dig another hole.

Yeah, well the way it works at Bonneville, it's all just precipitating out the chemicals from the sun and dehydration, so to speak.

Yeah.

So they have been taking all the brine and all the salt off one side of the freeway, taking it over to their evaporation ponds to the other side of the freeway since the mid-60s, early-60s.

And so the imbalance of salt is cataclysmic.

And the only thing we would like is to have them put back enough that the Bonneville International Speedway that you were talking about earlier, straight line one, not even the circular one, the 10 or the 12 mile one, just that, just the Bonneville International Speedway which is part of the historic register here in the United States.

United States.

So that it could be restore safe racing for amateur motorsports in the United States.

Yeah, we have been trying to do this since the 70s.

This has been.

And we've had one excuse after another.

I can't tell you the number of above studies that have been done.

But if you go to the Save the Salt website you can read it all for yourself.

Just read the timeline, make sure you have an adult beverage because you're going to swear and you're going to need to drink when you read some of this.

But that's what they've been doing.

And it's to the point now where I truly believe.

Yes, and I'm going to say this for the first time publicly.

I believe that if you go more than 250 miles an hour out there, you better be damn good at what you're doing and you better know the surface that you're at.

And anything over 300 is asking for a little bit of trouble because the salt is no longer feet thick and not really even inches thick in places in some cases where this year it's down to a quarter inch.

Right?

Yeah.

And have said, and having said that, a fellas out there with a new car, but they had a hell of a lot of experience went out and I think they ran 3, 309 or 339, I don't remember exactly because I wasn't out there there.

But it's only on virgin salt they only had 20 cars out there.

When you've got speed week coming up, when you have dozens and dozens of cars, trucks, motorcycles and all of their ancillary vehicles that have to go along, you're going to beat the salt up.

It's going to get dangerous.

I won't get into details but I don't think that Bonneville for high speed world record set beyond 300 is something that many people should try.

It's down to those that know and what people who know how to dry out there.

It's different.

I firmly believe that we are at the beginning of the end of land speed racing in the United States.

If the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of the Interior for the United States does not, not help the amateur motorsport.

And that's not just me the journalist talking, that's me the racer.

And it's not that we're the best in the world that nobody else can catch us.

The salt hasn't been in good enough shape for a long time for anybody to come out there and do that.

And I'll just add at the end we did take the record away from Donald Campbell.

Neener, neener, neener.

We can't have an old record from Andy Green.

But I would love for somebody, I would like an American woman to put the tiara on her head and take that crown off Andy's head.

Yeah.

But that's back to that, to being serious.

I really, really believe that in our lifetime I will probably see the end of it if things do not change what the government for the Department of the Interior, if they don't tell the Bureau of Land Management what they need to do and we've even paid for and got studies on what needs to happen.

And we don't want to put the mining company out of business.

We know that it'll happen because when we set that record, the previous company, Riley had been putting the salt back for five years as a test program.

Yeah.

And that was the first time that the Vescos had the confidence to take the car out there because Don didn't want to die.

Rick doesn't want to die.

Nobody wants to die when they go racing.

It's not the first thing in the head.

And we had 11 miles of great salt and that's why he could do 458 and change down.

Yeah.

And 450, change back.

Because that was all that car would do at the time.

And that's when Don and Rick rejiggered the thing so it would get more air.

More air, more power.

Yeah.

The thought was never the same again.

And then, of course, Don contracted and.

And fell ill and died from prostate cancer.

So all you boys that think you're.

You're.

You're invincible, go get checked.

Anyway, that's.

That's my.

I'm sorry.

I'm just.

I'm.

I'm.

I running away with your show.

Sorry, I'm just going to say.

Louise Noeth, Land speed.

Louise, who still exhibits an incredible need for speed.

It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.

So thanks very much for joining me on the backseat driver.

And if you'd like to, when it's out there, send me a copy of your autobiography, and I will be delighted to read it and promote it for you.

But once again, again, Louise Noeth, thanks very much for joining me on the backseat driver.