George Poteet (February 22, 1948 – July 16, 2024) was an American Memphis-based land speed racer and winner of the 1996

Ridler Award The Detroit Autorama, also known as America's Greatest Hot Rod Show, is a showcase of custom cars and hot rods held each year at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan, in either late February or early March. It is promoted by Championship Auto S ...

. Poteet's 1937 Ford roadster (built by Don Pilkenton) won the 1996 Ridler Award. This car would go on to take "America's Most Beautiful Roadster", top prize at the

Oakland Roadster Show The Grand National Roadster Show (otherwise known as GNRS, or unofficially as the ''Oakland Roadster Show''), is a showcase of custom cars and hot rods held each year at the Fairplex in Pomona, California, in either late January or early February ...

. In 2011, Poteet drove ''Speed Demon'' (built by Ron Main) to at Bonneville, and eventually broke both the C/BFS and D/BFS (supercharged

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

streamliner A streamliner is a vehicle incorporating streamlining in a shape providing reduced air resistance. The term is applied to high-speed railway trainsets of the 1930s to 1950s, and to their successor " bullet trains". Less commonly, the term i ...

) records. After making "the fastest piston engine pass ever", ''Speed Demon'' was displayed at the 2018

Detroit Autorama The Detroit Autorama, also known as America's Greatest Hot Rod Show, is a showcase of custom cars and hot rods held each year at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan, in either late February or early March. It is promoted by Championship Auto S ...

Personal life and death

Poteet was born on February 22, 1948, in

Mantachie, Mississippi Mantachie is a town in Itawamba County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,121 in the 2020 census. It is located northeast of Tupelo at the intersection of Mississippi Highways 363 and 371 and north of Interstate 22. History Th ...

. His father was a sharecropper and his mother worked at a garment factory. Growing up, he tinkered on his family's car. He worked at National Safety Associates (later

Juice Plus Juice Plus is a branded line of dietary supplements. It is produced by Natural Alternatives International of San Marcos, California, for National Safety Associates (NSA; Collierville, Tennessee). Introduced in 1993, the supplements are distribute ...

) from 1970 to 2020. Poteet married Cathy in 1990, with whom he raised four children. He was married twice before. Poteet died on July 16, 2024, at the age of 75, of a

pulmonary embolism Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a blockage of an pulmonary artery, artery in the lungs by a substance that has moved from elsewhere in the body through the bloodstream (embolism). Symptoms of a PE may include dyspnea, shortness of breath, chest pain ...

Notes

External links

''Hot Rod'' online
1948 births 2024 deaths American racing drivers Land speed records Racing drivers from Memphis, Tennessee {{US-autoracing-bio-stub