maxxTORQUE | THE Magazine of the GM Diesel Community

In 1978, Bill Heath envisioned himself racing at Bonneville. That vision remained out of reach until last Year. Now, he plans to race there this Summer – in a 6.5L GM Diesel of course...

Bill Heath has visited the annual Speed Week event at Bonneville for the last 30 years. This Summer, when he steps onto the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway, he will arrive as a registered contestant and not a visitor, a distinction that makes all the difference in the world to him.

Given Bill’s dedication to the 6.2/6.5 GM diesels, you might have guessed – even if no one else has ever done it at Bonneville – that Bill will be racing something powered by a 6.5L diesel. As it turns out, that something is a full-sized Chevy pickup.

maxxTORQUE plans to join Bill and the Heath Diesel team at the Bonneville Race Week as he pursues his dream of setting a land speed record with the Heath racer. As Heath Diesel rushes to prepare for the August event, we slowed Bill down long enough for him to share his dream of racing at Bonneville, why it has taken three decades to get there and a little about the truck he plans to do it in.

The Beginning

Bill Heath’s Bonneville initiation occurred 30 years ago in 1978. He still speaks of that revelation in other-worldly terms:

“Bonneville is the Valhalla of Hotrodding; it and the dry lake beds of Southern California are the places that spawned hotrodding as we know it today; so the first time I rolled out onto that great white expanse, I was awe struck by the shear vastness of it. The place is so flat that you can actually see the curvature of the earth. I was sufficiently overwhelmed that I may have heard the voices of angels singing.”

Perhaps the voices told him that he someday he would be more than a visitor:

“I knew then, on that first visit, that, one day, I was going to build a racer of some sort and run wide open across the salt.”
So why has it taken 30 years for the vision to take shape? Too many other things have gotten in the way. Back then, summers were consumed by drag racing – Bill had been racing since 1964 – and by airplanes that needed flying and motorcycles that needed riding. Later, Bill was blessed with a wonderful wife, many children and a very changed focus. The dream of racing on the Salt Flats must have seemed far off at times.