Dirt
By Mary Lendzion
W
hile Bob Motz began driving
jet engine-powered dragsters and
Funny Cars nearly 50-years ago,
he’s undoubtedly best
known for the Kenworth truck he
climbed into nearly three decades
ago, and for good reason.
The behemoth beast powered by
a General Electric J79 jet engine
leaves a path of flames and fury as
it flies down tracks across the country at well over 200 mph, but, now,
after flabbergasting fan after fan,
he’s preparing for what is to be his
final performance. As part of the
39th annual Kelly Services Night
Under Fire at Summit Motorsports
Park in Norwalk, Ohio, on August
13th, Motz will join a host of other
top-tier exhibition drivers to put
on a show what will certainly be a
sellout crowd.
Motz and his wife, Sandra, live
in Wadsworth, Ohio and have three
children, Scott, Nicole and Melanie, plus several grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, and when he’s
not spending time with them or
cruising in his highly combustible
capsule, he can be found working
on classic cars and motorcycles. He
recently talked with Drag Illustrated about how he got into driving jet engine-powered vehicles, and how he has
had many highlights, as well as some lowlights,
along the way.
You went from simply hanging out with people
who had jet engine-powered vehicles to having your own highly recognizable jet enginepowered vehicles.
Working on cars for other people and being
around people who had jet vehicles was a hook,
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and made me want to try it. I started driving
jet vehicles in 1968, including Funny Cars and
dragsters, first for other people, and then I got my
own Funny Car and my own dragster, and then I
started driving my own truck in 1979.
engine all these years. We’re taking about engines
that are worth millions of dollars, and sometimes
you get one that lasts a year, and sometimes you
get one that lasts a month. We made a parachute
system that nobody had ever made before, and it
What was involved with building the truck?
My son, Scott, and I built the chassis and all
of the suspension pieces and the steering with
guidance from some very good people, and then
we put a stock Kenworth truck body on it. We
got a General Electric J79 jet engine, the kind
they used to use in F-4 Phantom fighter planes,
and we learned how to put the engine together
from pieces, and we have stayed with that type of
took about a year-and-a-half to build the truck
and work the bugs out of it. It was challenging,
but we wanted to do something nobody had done
with the big vehicles, and as a result, we were the
first jet engine-powered truck to come onto the
scene, and the next one came out about five-years
later. For the first truck, we bought a whole truck
to get the body, but after that, we’ve bought the
bodies from wrecking yards.
Issue 112
PHOTO: DRAG ILLUSTRATED ARCHIVES
Bob Motz’s Fury