An unusual fundraising effort involving 55 naked women has provided a $40,000 push towards getting Kiwi Bill Ward and his custom-built roadster on to salt flats at Bonneville to chase a land-speed record next month. As his custom-built car began to take shape in Barb Sundgren's Whakamarama garage, her idea fora nude fundraising calendar began to gather momentum of its own. The Kiwi-a-Salt team already had a growing number of supporters' club members, each with their name painted on the boot of the car, but Ms Sundgren came up with the calendar as a way to inject more funds into what proved a pricey project. "(I thought) if I can find another 11 old hot-rodding broads like me we can probably do it,' she said. Instead, she got 55 hot-rodding and drag-racing women, ranging in age from their 20s to 70s, keen to pose naked in the name of speed. "We just had a ball, every single woman said she'd do it again in a heartbeat. It became very liberating," said Ms Sundgren. The rules were simple; every woman had to be completely naked during the shoot but the photos would remain tasteful. Before posing, Ms Sundgren advised the women to stand alone in front of a mirror and decide what they felt comfortable revealing: "We all had a bit of wine before our shoots, most went further than they intended." Ms Sundgren said the calendar built and mended friendships. "It was just an amazing voyage," she said. The calendar was shot over seven months of what has been a two-year build-up to the 60th anniversary of racing at Bonneville, and the August 18 start to Speed Week '08. In 1979, Mr Ward became the first Kiwi to build and race a car on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. However, an error with the timing equipment meant there was no official recording of his run. Nearly 30 years on, he hopes to crack the 200mph (320km/h) mark driving a Blown Flathead Ford Rear Engine Modified Roadster in the XF/BFRMR class. Racing in this new class, he has to reach 180mph and plans to set the record at 181mph. "Once we've got him his record we'll aim for 200 (mph)," said Ms Sundgren. She and her partner, Colin Prouse, who helped build the car and supplied the engine, are among a team of 120 supporters bound for Bonneville next month.
