Sports Museums Juneau AK

12/10/2008

The exhibit, which opened officially to the public on December 4, will continue through the end of September, 2009.

1/25/2010

Four hundred and six-point-six miles an hour (406.6). The fastest speed that an American driver had ever traveled over land in a wheel-driven vehicle. The date was September 9, 1960 and the driver was the legendary Mickey Thompson, racer, designer, builder, dreamer, showman, businessman, and first class hot-rodder.

Azusa, CA — On Friday, February 12, 2010, the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum will open a very special new exhibit honoring the late Mickey Thompson and celebrating the 50th anniversary of that motorsports milestone.

The presenting sponsor of the new show will be Gale Banks Engineering, a company that’s led by one of Thompson’s friends, contemporaries, and fellow hot-rodder Gale Banks.

“When we heard that there was an opportunity to help Tony Thacker and the Museum put this tribute to Mickey together,” Banks explained, “My only question was, ‘How can we get involved?’”

Banks and Thompson led remarkably parallel lives, both had fathers who were in law enforcement and both grew up in and around the San Gabriel Valley, a geographic area that produced more than its share of notable motorsports names, Thompson and Banks key among them.

“Mickey was ten years older and already pretty well-known when I opened my first little speed shop in 1958.” The two crossed paths often in those days but, somehow, they never became on or off-track rival...