Williams is one of our sport’s premier manufacturers of chassis and driveline components, his company having celebrated its 50th anniversary a few years back.
WE’RE SHINING THE PROVERBIAL SPOTLIGHT ON SOMEONE WHO WOULD JUST AS SOON LABOR IN ANONYMITY AND LET HIS ACTIONS SPEAK FOR HIM. But wouldn’t you know it, this year Mark Williams is being honored by NHRA and enshrined in the National Hot Rod Reunion Hall of Fame. The cat is out of the bag.
A resourceful, self-sufficient type by nature, Williams has always eagerly embraced technology, and the Mark Williams (M-W) Enterprises facility in suburban Denver is a showcase of state of-the-art manufacturing.
Typical of his generation, it all began when as a teenager he joined the Strippers car club of Denver and jumped into drag racing. He started his career as a machinist for Martin-Marietta (a major aerospace company), and then went on to do machine work for John Bandimere Sr. (founder of the fabled Colorado drag strip bearing his name) and refurbished a World-War-IIera tube bender in the shop, which was put to good use building a dragster with his long-time friend (and highly respected machinist/ fabricator), Ron Bement. The car was subsequently sold for the munificent sum of $924, which became the seed money for Williams' fledgling chassis enterprise. While doing machine work for Bandimere, his chassis business grew to the point where in 1964 Mark Williams Enterprises was born.
This story is from the September 2017 edition of Drag Racer.
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This story is from the September 2017 edition of Drag Racer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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