page_title: Ab Jenkins
section_title: Ab's Passing
hierarchical_section_title: Ab Jenkins / Ab's Passing
caption_attribution_description: Pontiac Bonneville Convertible 1957
context_page_description: David Abbott "Ab" Jenkins was the 24th mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah from 1940 to 1944 and was a professional race car driver. Jenkins' interest in motorsports began with racing motorcycles on dirt tracks and cross country. He then became interested in land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He was instrumental in establishing Bonneville as a location for such events, and in attracting overseas drivers such as George Eyston and Sir Malcolm Campbell to compete there.
  He drove the Duesenberg "Mormon Meteor" to a 24-hour average land speed record of 135 miles per hour in 1935. In 1940 Jenkins set the 24-hour record of a 161.180 mph average that lasted for 50 years.
  He died on a visit to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
context_section_description: In August of that same year, Ab went to drive a Pontiac pace car at the Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Returning to his hotel from a baseball game with Pontiac executives George Bourke and Robert Emerick on August 9, Jenkins noticed a billboard with a farm tractor on it and started telling the men about his 1935 wild ride when he suddenly grabbed his chest and died of a heart attack.
  The next year, General Motors introduced the 1957 Pontiac “Bonneville” in honor of Ab and Marv's achievements making it the first, and perhaps the only car to ever “earn” its name and not simply be “given” its name by an automaker.
  Of the 630 limited production run, each dealer got only one, making it the rarest of all Pontiacs ever produced. The new Bonneville was the fastest of the division – zero to sixty in 8.1 seconds thanks to the new fuel injected V8 that cranked out 300HP plus. 
  All convertibles, all automatics, the car delivered loaded with options for $5,782 – approaching double that of the Star Chief Custom Convertible ($3,105) with which it shared the 124-inch-wheelbase chassis.
caption: A 1957 Pontiac Bonneville, the rarest of all Pontiacs--in honour of Ab and Marv
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