Need for Speed

Written by Charlie Durgin

If you heed the advice of Guinn Construction accounts payable clerk Kathy Bernard, you’ll act fast to catch up with company President Gary Guinn.

“He’s a moving target,” Bernard says. And she isn’t kidding.

He owns a DeLorean, the iconic gull-winged sports car made famous in the Back To The Future film series. He tools around Bakersfield in a souped-up Ford Lightning pickup, complete with the throaty and unmistakable growl of a Hemi.

If you meet up with him, and show his powerful collection its due respect, he may even offer to let you drive a specimen.

At the very least he will tell you great stories. About how he acquired the DeLorean from Mr. Sangera in a swap for some grading work he did on a poorly draining grape field.

“I didn’t want to swap, I wanted the green,” he said with a chuckle, “but I went down there and saw it in the showroom in all its glory, and a few cocktails later, I had a new car.”

Later, when an engineer from Europe inspected the car, he pointed out to Guinn that the serial numbers indicated it was the third car made available in America.

He may tell you about the first hot rod he owned, a homebrew Ford Coupe with a Chevy V8 that he and his father built. They created such a stir during a trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats that photographers from Hot Rod magazine dubbed it “Chevord,” and used it as the centerfold in an issue.

If you are really lucky, he’ll tell you the unlikely tale of how he came to be a world record holder at the spry age of 73, piloting a landscaping implement to just over 85 miles an hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats, besting the old world record by a measure of seven miles an hour.

“It was an old Montgomery Ward riding lawnmower we got from a fellow at Minter Field. He was using it to tow his aircraft, but the belt was slipping as it was too much work for that machine,” Guinn said.

In another small coincidence that contributed to a history-making event, a friend of the Guinns asked to store a wrecked Kawasaki motorcycle at his equipment yard.

“The motor from that sucker fit right into the engine compartment on that mower,” Guinn said, “as if it were built for it.”

The 550cc, four cylinder, carbureted Kawasaki motor pushed the mower’s potential to 86 horsepower. With the addition of sway bars and other tweaks, Guinn was ready for history.

But not without reasonable reservations.

“They wanted me to run it in the quarter mile at the racetrack, but the front end gets a little light at 85. There’s a retaining wall, and if I lost a tire, I didn’t want to run into it,” Guinn said.

Guinn doesn’t approach things lightly, despite outward expressions, according to his son and Vice President of Guinn Construction, Tim Guinn.

“We’ll be on the lake in his boat going 100 to 110 miles an hour, and if you think that’s fast in a car, you should try it in a boat,” Tim said. “I’ll be digging my fingers into the dash ready for the end, but I look over at my dad, and he’s completely relaxed and in control, as if we are on a leisurely cruise.”

While the son does not share the father’s enthusiasm for speed, he respects the pursuit and inherent dangers because he knows his father.

“He’s been around racing his entire life, and so when he says something is OK, I believe him,” Tim said.

Racing runs thick in Bakersfield’s history, from the early Smokers Car Club to Kevin Harvick’s present day exploits on the NASCAR circuit. And Gary Guinn has a connection to most every racing event in between.

He grew up near Roger Mears and his family, spending several evenings in the family garage enjoying beverages provided by the fine folks at Anheuser-Busch. It was on one of these evenings that Guinn spied a hollow midget chassis hanging from the rafters. He inquired as to why it wasn’t being run, and the elder Mears pointed out that there was no engine. So Guinn fired up the company jet and they flew to Fullerton to pick up a Volkswagen engine from the best maker of midget racing engines.

When the mechanic realized the engine would be run by Roger Mears, he took a recently completed motor intended for a professional racer in Australia and sent the men home with it that day.

“We crated it up and put it on the plane and brought it back to Bakersfield,” Guinn said.

Mears would later break his wrists wrecking the car, but not before winning four races lapping the field, and losing one on a technicality.

“The sponsor was not happy to hear Roger was racing that midget, and they thought he was going to miss a race because of it, but he didn’t. He drove the sponsor’s ride with broken wrists and didn’t miss a beat,” Guinn said.

The proximity to racing history and a supportive family environment have kept him from slowing down.

“We do whatever’s fun,” Guinn said.

And it’s not just a cliché for Guinn. He’s extremely hospitable, and parties have a way of just happening around him.

Take for example, a recent photo shoot held at Guinn’s Minter Field airplane hangar for this story.

At ten o’clock in the morning, it was just Guinn and a photographer. By noon, there were close to 30 people in the hangar’s lounge enjoying lunch provided by some men at another hangar who ran out of space and tables. Pretty soon, people are gathered around the granite countertops and Guinn couldn’t be happier in the crowd.

His eyes take a special glint when his oldest child, daughter Jana Daniel, drops by.

“My dad loves telling stories,” she says, and remembering a favorite, she offers her father a segue, and Guinn instantly begins weaving tales about days hanging out with world-famous pinstriper Von Dutch. Von Dutch has since become a worldwide brand, but Guinn new him when he was making his name.

And not always in a friendly way.

Dutch was very eccentric, and while he was working in his shop, he didn’t like people talking to him. He still needed to communicate with clients, so he posted a large poster board on the wall, and it was a Rosetta Stone of sorts for speaking to the pinstriping genius.

“It was numbered one through, say, ten. And each number had a response like yes, no, maybe, screw off, and so on and so forth,” Guinn explained. “Well, this loud fella came into the shop while I was there, and he had this Honda Goldwing touring motorcycle that he wanted to have worked on.”

The man attempted to speak to Dutch, who kept giving one-word answers that directed the man to the list.

“The guy told Dutch that he wanted his bike to look original, like no other bike in the world.”

So right in front of Guinn, and without saying a word, he mixed up random odds and ends of paint and, “ended up with a sort of awful bronze and flung the paint at the bike from the bucket. Just poured it all over the bike, and it ran down the engine,” Guinn said.

He wasn’t around for the man’s return, but Guinn was pretty confident that Dutch wouldn’t care.

“Dutch would say that it’s exactly what the guy asked for.”

Guinn takes a pause from his storytelling to talk jets with some of the other plane aficionados assembled in the lounge.

His plane, a Citation, is used mostly for Guinn Construction business that is scattered all over the Western United States. But he does like to have fun.

“You know, if you wanted to have lunch in Vegas, we could be there in under an hour,” Guinn says. The twinkle in his eye makes you feel like he’s daring you to do a little gambling in the desert with him.

He’s hardly an aging playboy, jetting around the country, though.

Gesturing to another jet owner, he says, “That guy is using his jet to pick up a lady up north who is terminally ill. She wants to die in her own home and we are going to make that happen.”

Guinn himself has used his jet for similar emergencies and mercy trips as well. He doesn’t brag about it, though.

He knows the best airfields to land at. The ones that eschew a landing fee in favor of a 100 gallon fuel purchase. The jet is sensible, and not ostentatious. Like many of Guinn’s other luxury purchases including the towing cart for the plane, it was bought used. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t like nice things. On the contrary, Guinn’s hangar is immaculate and he takes great care of his things.

His daughter indicates that her father loves the relationships just as much as he loves the speed. Their annual trip to Nevada now involves a large barbecue undertaking that feeds over 200 people.

“Dad loves making new friends, and we would go to Laughlin and he’d start telling people, ‘come to my barbecue’ just as he met them during the day, and over time, it’s become a really big thing. People look forward to this barbecue every year,” she says.

He’s been able to work in the family business maintaining a legacy started by his own father, and one being passed on to his own children. But they shouldn’t be in a hurry to cash in their inheritance. Their father, despite engaging in high risk activities like piloting boats over 100 miles an hour and setting land speed records when most people are listening to Laurence Welk records, moves around very well and remains extremely active. During one photograph, Guinn notices an orange cone in the background and says he’ll move it. The photographer holds his position, somewhat uncomfortably, and Guinn sprints across the hanger in the fashion of a man half his age. His stride is strong, no wobbly gaits for Gary Guinn.

He pulls out the record-setting lawnmower, and its throaty, Kawasaki-fueled growl draws a few men from other hangars. Guinn quickly offers to let them drive it. They respond tentatively, but gamely, and maneuver the mower around the tarmac in the 20 to 30 mile an hour range. Guinn bats cleanup and turns in a brilliant performance. He tears around one corner, quickly leaving his hat in the dust, and gets the mower up over 50 miles an hour. If you haven’t seen a riding lawnmower travel that fast, you really should. He’s without helmet and protective suit during the run, and the two men who test drove it are standing with their hands on their chins, free arm held tightly across the stomach like men ready to flinch.

When Guinn wheels the lawnmower back around, his eyes are on fire and he looks completely satisfied. The men, on the other hand, look relieved.

“You know you scare us sometimes, Gary,” one says.

Guinn, for his part, never broke a sweat or looked like anything less than the picture of control.

Article appeared in our 26-2 Issue - June 2009