The Importance of Honoring Tradition and Ingenuity

I would like to briefly pay homage to an influential mentor in my life. A person that, through demonstration, taught me to see the world in a different way. A person that on the surface would appear as cross purposed to my current path. However, I believe if he were alive today he would be right next to me at Bold Earth Scientific “diggin this shit.”

He was not a scientist, nor engineer… he was a 6’ 6” 300lb giant of a true humanitarian named “Big Willie” Robinson. Just like myself, Big Willie was a gearhead and loved drag racing. (Yes, I was brought up in the era of Detroit muscle cars, baptized in nitromethane, and loved anything internal combustion.) After returning from Vietnam, just after the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Willie wanted to do something to heal racial tensions. His love of drag racing, coupled with the dangers and risk of street racing inspired him to lease an abandoned Navy airstrip on Terminal Island and open The Brotherhood Raceway Park. It was $5.00 to watch or race, and everyone was welcome. This is where I spent most of my Friday and Saturday nights while I was in High School. In a 1994 article for Sports Illustrated, Robinson commented: "Black, white, yellow, brown, skinheads, Nazi party members, Muslims, we got 'em all. They're all here at the track, and they're communicatin.' And once they start communicatin' they start likin' each other, and once they start likin' each other, they forget about the hate." Robinson's mantra reportedly was If you're racing, you're not killing. (1) I remember him saying, “There’s no color on the track, only engines.”

All of this may seem disconnected, however I see it as a parallel to the challenges we face today. There’s no color, political party, or social status isolating anyone from the energy and pollution issues. If we could all define the current energy, air quality, global pollution, and waste as our common enemy, we could all start communicating to find a solution. In the process, if we’re all focused working on solutions, maybe we could ease up on arguing and being hateful..

It was this time and influence in my life back in the day that started an obsession with STS. The local high school industrial arts programs, specifically “auto shop,” would have competitions, including high school drag races once a year. We would also compete in fuel efficiency, with students building the most fuel-efficient vehicles possible to maximize MPG. These were such great times and I think we all learned volumes more about automotive technology based on participating in these contests than we did in class. It truly hurts my heart that most of the industrial arts programs have been eliminated from schools. This, in my opinion, has had a devastating impact on our collective knowledge base.

It is my hope that the STS engine along with the systemic approach Bold Earth Scientific is developing will offset the energy and pollution issues to the point that the Friday night drag races can still take place along with hot rods gathering at the malt shop, thus preserving this amazing chapter of American ingenuity and history.

Bold Earth Scientific will only be able to advance the STS engine to a point. The real advancement will come when a couple of kids get together to race it. If something has wheels and a motor, someone’s going to race it. One of my friends recently started racing “lawnmowers” to satisfy this basic human need, but that’s when our inherent, competitive nature will emerge. Mods, tweaks, and adjustments will take place, not in a laboratory but in garages, sheds, and barns across the country. This will launch a new wave of innovation that will greatly exceed the progress that I can achieve alone.

I hope that soon on Friday nights across the country there will be people gathering in the true spirit of competition, racing Bia-technology in a “silent, clean, and united” tribute to Big Willie and all the gearheads that came before us now.

-Andy Coppock, CEO/CTO

(1) McAlpine, Ken (19 September 1994). "A Peacekeeping Force: Warring gangs downshift at Big Willie Robinson's drag strip". Sports Illustrated Archive. Archived from the original on 24 January 2021.

(Photo: Big Willie Robinson, 1970)