The Great Prix Tender

Old combat planes left to molder in museums, say some, are dead and ungraced eagles.

So true believers prowl barns and boneyards for Mustangs and Corsairs, restore them, fly them, turn them upside down for the sheer exuberance of airplane and pilot, and extend a war bird’s glory days into decades.

It’s the same with race cars.

You can slather them with Turtle Wax and reduce majestic vehicles to mummies in private collections.

Or you can rebuild them to original in your carport, keep them running and racing--and this Labor Day weekend, enter a precious 1962 Lotus 23 or scary 1965 Cobra 427SC in the inaugural Los Angeles Grand Prix for amateur racers and vintage cars through the streets of deepest downtown.

“I’m certainly not one of those stick-it-in-a-museum types,” says William Burke, president of the grand prix and 10-year dreamer of its creation. “I want to hear engines singing. I want to smell exhausts and hear tires scream.”

Burke, a 58-year-old marlin fisherman, gold miner, president of multiple business and civic causes, self-made millionaire, tennis player, smiling rascal and political insider, even subscribes to the anthropomorphism of what he has brought about.

“I would like to believe, in my heart of hearts, that cars care . . . and that a championship race car is happiest doing what it was designed to do, what it was built for.”

An estimated 400 pampered sports and racing cars from Hong Kong, Canada and eight states will spend three days romping around 1.6 miles of track that for the rest of the year are known as Alameda, Main, Los Angeles, Arcadia and Aliso streets. Like Monte Carlo, Le Mans, Long Beach, Macau and other car-rabid regions that offer up public streets to hot pursuits that do not include red lights and sirens, the Los Angeles event will be a public festival of food fairs, huge-horsepower noises, concerts and a concours d’elegance featuring a $50-million congregation of Ferraris.

Thirty-five classes of cars will compete in three dozen races, with one daily joust reserved for the Ford-powered Shelby Cobras of the ‘60s. With driver-designer Carroll Shelby--certainly legendary, maybe even immortal after heart and kidney transplants--at the races to bless his snorting flock.

Sponsored by Ford, sanctioned by the national Vintage Auto Racing Assn., and supported by 11 companies from British Airways to KFWB-AM (980), the grand prix offers the grand prize of spectating a rebirth of all classes of organized racing from the ‘50s to the ‘80s.

There will be Formula One cars from the European circuits, the Marches and Brabhams. Stock and modified sports cars that raced airport circuits when the sport was infant in America, MGs and Corvettes. Plus purpose-built, thoroughbred sports racers fast and strong enough for Daytona and Sebring, the Lolas and McLarens.

In small part, the event also will be a parade because a few of the vehicles are one-of-a-kind cars, irreplaceable and driven only on Sundays by cautious owners.

But there’s a quicker, majority breed that will go wheel to wheel at 160 mph and set speed records for those approaching Union Station and not rushing for a train.

Fretting and sweating the manic fun of it all, of course, will be founder Burke. He knows his event can go only two ways: thundering success, the start of a reign. Or whimpering flop, and Burke’s Folly.

He has already been warned that attendance could be skinny because city populations typically leave town for Labor Day weekends. Even Burke’s accountant, Lou Hasson, has questioned the wisdom of pledging $1 million in personal funds to an untried event. He also thinks Burke’s time has been spread wafer thin and has started signing himself: “Your chief alarmist in residence.”

After a 30-year involvement in state and local politics--and a 25-year marriage to former U.S. Congresswoman and current Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke--this man who has been associated with wine companies, mortuaries, mining and marathons, and now car racing, certainly is rich in critics. Three years ago, he was accused, but not personally cited, of laundering campaign contributions; as a result, his Los Angeles Marathon Inc. paid a $200,000 fine for hiding $51,000 in payments to city candidates.

There have been claims of conflicts of interest and insider political trading. Many charges thrown, none stuck. Several investigations launched, all dropped. Acquaintances call it Burke’s Law--an unorthodox, edge-riding, rule-bending, bull-slinging, but financially successful form of hardball business.

Burke remains twitchy about giving anything to city politicians--even small boxes of cookies being distributed to promote the grand prix. “I’m thinking of sending a box to every council member,” he explains. “With a note saying: ‘Eat them before the Fair Political Practices Committee gets to you.’ ”

Despite an initial failure to find grand prix sponsors--”I called all my salesmen in and told ‘em to go sell it . . . and they couldn’t give it away”--Burke is banking on the novelty of street racing in a car-wild metropolis.

He sees the growing popularity of all motor sports. Burke believes that in the economic recovery of Los Angeles, there is a fresh community spirit with suburban dwellers anxious to rediscover Olvera Street and Los Angeles’ pioneer core. And where else can one enjoy a full day of exotic excitement for $17.50?

Burke’s past dares have been enormous but rarely wrong.

On nothing more than his record as a tennis player at Miami University, he once agreed to organize a global tournament. His management as commissioner of tennis at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was not considered brilliant, but certainly capable.

Burke is no runner.

But in 1987, he accepted the presidency of the Los Angeles Marathon, brought in AT & T, Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz as sponsors, and converted a callow foot race--Runner magazine once dubbed it the “Bermuda Triangle for marathons”--into what experts have recognized as a marketing miracle, maybe poor in athletic stature but rich in profits.

“I’d been involved with the Los Angeles marathon for years without understanding what it was all about,” Burke remembers. “So I started running, trained for a year, and entered the New York Marathon. To finish a marathon has to be the greatest feeling of accomplishment that any person could have.”

Burke knew nothing about gold mining.

But a college friend surfaced years later as the son of the president of Liberia and suggested Burke might like to find investors for a gold mine. He says the 40 square-mile concession is worth more than $3 billion and has become his primary business.

Burke is intrigued by Africa and its history, but not smells of the bush nor the incessant din of its insect symphonies. He remembers the privations of early trips to the concession, the sleepless nights in hot tents, the miserable bugs.

Burke has no training as a diplomat.

“But an American black in business in Africa is pretty much a novelty,” he says. “So they called, I agreed, and became honorary consul general to the Republic of Mali.”

His resume is that of a 150-year-old man.

Chairman, South Coast Air Quality Management District. Member, U.S. Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Former chairman, Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Assn. Former president, California Fish and Game Commission and Wildlife Conservation Board. President, LA Events, which operates the marathon and grand prix.

And before that, Air Force officer, personal representative to then-Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh and deputy to City Councilman Billy Mills.

Most consider him an obsessive overachiever.

Says Burke: “The guy just can’t keep a job.”

Others accept his flaws and forgive his political trespassing because they understand soft guys rarely finish first, if they finish at all.

“Being around him you have this sense of his mobility, fluid movements, his ability to dodge anything,” comments a friend who asked for anonymity, a common request among friends of Burke. “But you see that with a lot of guys who have built empires out of air . . . and remember, the further you go up the pole in this world, the easier people can target your backside.

“I will say that Bill Burke is the most courteous, courtly man on the face of the Earth. But when he wants something done, that attitude is quickly adjusted. And don’t get him mad at you.”

If pressed, Burke says he knows what makes Billy run.

It has to do with being delivered by his father before a potbellied stove in a one-room home in Zanesville, Ohio, where love of family, hard work and country were commandments. He says it has nothing to do with being born black or developing an inner rage at a lack of opportunities.

“I just knew exactly where I wanted to go,” Burke says. “I wanted to have a lot of money, do all the things that everybody else did. Go marlin fishing. Fly an airplane. Travel around the world.”

A tennis scholarship paid for college. The degree earned an Air Force commission and pilot training. An easy grin and effortless charm, taking life seriously but making work fun, exquisite timing plus the salesmanship of a Fuller Brush man, have earned wily Burke his way around the world. Several times.

*

Now the man who has never driven his new Ferrari 348 Spyder in anger is poised to give Los Angeles its very own grand prix. Because he woke up one Monday morning, reexamined his old idea of a car race through city streets, and decided it was time. With or without sponsors. No matter that it would cost at least $2.5 million.

“There does come a point in life--and I always thought this was a public relations ploy for ballplayers--where you have to give something back,” Burke explains. “I’m at that point.

“I love this city, it has been good to me. It offers opportunity to anyone who wants to take advantage of opportunity. Even to a kid born in a one-room home in Zanesville,” says Burke, who now lives in Marina del Rey.

“Know what? I got out of the military more than 30 years ago and came here with $1,500. I’ve got $800 left.”

The conversation is in his LA Events office that is a cubic memento to the man. There’s a pair of Olympic torches on the wall, the ones Burke and his wife carried on the 1984 flame’s passage to Los Angeles. An Atari pinball machine is in one corner--”to keep the child in me entertained”--and an antique barber chair in another.

Burke--youthful, alive, with tight white curls and a face that to his embarrassment, but probably his profit, has been described as cherubic--points to another collectible. “See that old radio? We were both made in 1939 and we’re both working perfectly.”

Being a promoter has always led Burke into becoming a participant. He’s never met a personal challenge he could resist. So of course he plans to drive a race car in his personal grand prix.

“You know I’m going to do it before this thing’s over,” he says. “Even if it’s only running the Ferrari on Thursday night when the course has been shut down.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Orange County Entrants Orange County entrants in this weekend’s Los Angeles Vintage Grand Prix include:

* James Sechrest of Anaheim Hills, red 1971 Royale RP3A.

* Patricia Sechrest of Anaheim Hills, white 1962 Triumph Spitfire.

* Jim Swartzbaugh of Brea, silver 1972 McLaren M8 E/D and white 1969 McLaren M6B-GT.

* Jim Gronski of Costa Mesa, blue and black 1965 Corvette.

* Jim Scott of Costa Mesa, blue 1967 Austin Mini.

* Paul Wesselink of Dana Point, blue 1972 Chevron B27 and black 1982 Lola T600.

* Fred Trueman of Huntington Beach, green 1967 Porshe 911S.

* Terry Massa of Irvine, red 1969 Merlyn Mk 11A.

* John G. Miller of Laguna Hills, green 1958 Morgan 4.

* Loren “Bud” Sheldon of Los Alamitos, red 1966 MGB.

* Hans Glaser of Newport Beach, red 1970 Lola T192.

* Kenny Rogers of Newport Beach, green 1965 MGB.

* Doug Turner of Newport Beach, blue 1978 Wolf WR6; blue 1969 Brabham BT29; blue 1970 Chevron B19.

* Joseph Babros of San Juan Capistrano, red 1971 Titan Mk6.

* Richard H. Wesselink of San Juan Capistrano, yellow 1964 Elva Mk 7S.

* Fred Yeakel of Trabuco Canyon, red 1964 Cheetah.

* William Allen of Tustin, red 1967 NSU TTS.

* Doug Manista of Yorba Linda, red 1966 Shelby GT350.