Hot rod builder, racer Edward Binggeli dies at 91

Legendary hot rod builder and racer Edward Leo Binggeli never lost the urge to go fast, even after he became an octogenarian and a great-grandfather.

“Bing,” as he was known, spent thousands of hours working in his Windsor barn on a replica of the hot rod coupe he piloted to decisive victories at drag strips in the early 1960s.

Only this time, the yellow replica of the 1941 Willys with a flathead, V-8 motor was built with lightweight materials and with even more muscle - at least three times the horsepower of the original.

Binggeli finished building the car by his 90th birthday, but his dream of once again hurtling down a drag strip at speeds reaching 115 mph would not come to pass.

Bingelli, 91, died Dec. 27 in a Santa Rosa skilled nursing facility from complications due to pancreatic cancer.

“He was a great engineer, a builder, a manufacturer, a machinist, a race car driver and an owner, ” said Jack Helmke, who knew Binggeli for more than 50 years and worked on engines alongside him. “His expertise was making things go a lot faster,” said Steve Lehmann, president of the Windsor Historical Society and Museum. “He was like a granddaddy. He was everybody’s mentor in building flathead engines.”

Binggeli’s ability to beat hopped-up Corvettes and Camaros with more advanced overhead cam engines earned him the cover of national hot rod publications more than five decades ago.

An article in the November 1962 issue of Hot Road magazine declared that his souped-up Willys coupe “gobbles up Chevys for lunch and then has Buicks and Chryslers for dessert.”

Binggeli raced on quarter-mile strips and ovals on now-vanished speedways in Santa Rosa and Cotati and raced on numerous tracks in Northern California. He worked on race cars at the Indianapolis 500 in 1947 and went for records on dry lake beds and salt flats.

But a serious crash at a former Santa Rosa track on Russell Avenue landed him in the hospital in 1954 and helped convince him to concentrate more on building engines instead of driving a race circuit. He still kept up drag racing, a straight quarter-mile speed contest he considered less risky.

His eponymous business was Bing’s Speed Shop, which he ran from 1953 to 1976 and was first located on Santa Rosa Avenue before moving to Barham Avenue.

His love for cars started in his youth when he began tinkering and customizing them. He owned his first car when he was 12, according to his family.

Binggeli was born in 1923 on the 22-acre family farm off Starr Road which his Swiss immigrant father George bought in 1916, raising chickens and cows and growing prunes and grapes.

Farming didn’t appeal to the young Binggeli, who graduated from Healdsburg High School in 1941 before going to junior college in Sacramento. He worked as an aircraft mechanic and joined the Army Air Corps during late World War II. He trained as a bombardier before he broke his neck in a plane crash, according to his nephew, Jack Orme of Windsor.

Binggeli credited his experience in the Army Air Corps, working on bombers and other combat aircraft, as invaluable once he switched to high-performance automobile engines.

“Everything there ?(in the Air Corps shops) was precision-done,” he told The Press Democrat ?in 2013.

“And everything was perfectly smooth and strong, but light.”

After the war, he and his brother Walter opened a garage in Windsor across from the landmark Pohley’s Market before Ed Binggeli would go on to run his own speed shop.

But it was his Willys coupe that helped give him a measure of drag race immortality. He set a speed record for such cars in 1963, hitting 106.38 mph and covering the quarter mile in 12.65 seconds.

He sold the original, but it became his passion to painstakingly build a replica.

Once finished he considered the new car to have the best engine he ever built, the best engine he ever owned, and the best he ever heard, Helmke said.

Although it was up and running by his 90th birthday and he was able to drive it around Windsor, some technical deficiencies prevented him from being able to race it at the Sonoma Raceway as he had long planned.

Last year, Binggeli had an intestinal obstruction that landed him in the hospital and further delayed his plans.

But he still intended to get it to the drag strip.

“He never lost his will and hope. He was always talking about in the spring, getting over to Sears Point,” said his nephew Orme of Windsor.

Binggeli was known not only for his willingness to help and mentor others, but his humility.

“He was just a very kind and generous man, very knowledgeable. He would give you the shirt off his back if you needed anything. He was a loving father,” said his daughter Tami Campbell of Windsor.

In addition to Campbell, Binggeli is also survived by daughter Suzie Binggeli of Forestville; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A celebration of his life is planned for July 18, his birthday, in the Windsor area with the location and time to be determined.