Fast, Faster, Fastest: The Bill Sadler Story
by John Robert Wright
The quantity, degree, and specificity of detail—coupled with the richness of never before published imagery—will make an immediate impression on the reader. Then comes the challenge to take it all in and learn who William George Sadler was and what all he was involved with and did over his 1931–2022 lifetime. Fast, Faster, Fastest does tell of the man but in snippets interspersed with the technical aspects of the cars and airplanes Sadler conceived and constructed.
Reading words written by a few of the best-ever automotive and motorsport journalists whose articles are reproduced in the “Scrapbook” appendix aids in that understanding. It’s actually a good place to begin reading.
These cars, all Mark IIIs, followed the Mark II as Sadler changed from the ladder frame used on the II to a chrome-moly square-section stock space frame on the III making them lower, smaller, and lighter.
One article, by Pete Lyons, is titled “Canada’s Maverick Genius.” Lyons described Sadler as “one of the most brilliantly innovative designer/ engineers [with a] reputation [for] conjuring silk purse racing machinery from sow’s ear components.” Sadler’s fellow countryman, pre-eminent Canadian auto writer Bill Vance, also referred to Sadler as genius, putting him in company with Colin Chapman and Jim Hall.
This book’s author John Robert Wright would likely have been acquainted with Vance for both wrote for the Bothwell, Ontario-based Canadian publication Old Autos. Though Wright is obviously younger than Vance (1935–2022) and has gone on to focus on vintage racing writing about ones he attends for publications such as Victory Lane magazine. Today he attends as many of those vintage events as possible. Wright had known Sadler since at least the 1960s for he’s written himself into Sadler’s story as the “People” sub-division of the Index indicates.
In the sixth appendix titled “Scrapbook” there are over 25 period articles about Sadler and his ventures—each and every one fine reading as all are crisply and clearly reproduced.
Then another appendix, this titled “Race Records,” is just that and shows drivers too. Wright is listed as the driver in two different cars in two different competitions at a 1962 meet at Mosport, but no results are shown for either. Then, although not included in the Index, there’s a photo of Sadler and Wright side by side in the cockpit of the circa late 1950’s Mark II about to make a circuit of the track during the 2005 Monterey Historics. The car at that time was owned and raced by vintage collector/racer Wes Abendroth who described it as, “faster than I was willing or able to race it, and it would handle the turns as well as any sports car in its class.”
The eighth chapter where this page pair is found is full of intrigue and a degree of mystery.
Bill Sadler was a high school drop out. Yet, after he had turned his back on racing over a situation that could have turned disastrous, he went on, after scoring extremely high on entrance exams, to achieve advanced degrees in record time even as he learned to fly. That also earned him his lifetime Mensa membership and landed Sadler at General Dynamics working on not just Top Secret but Super Secret projects in Area 51. After leaving General Dynamics Bill started his own business designing and creating digital instruments for aircraft followed by a succession of companies designing and constructing aircraft themselves.
This page pair from the third appendix contains very fine words and diagrams of over a dozen tracks on which Sadler and his cars competed.
The concluding chapter is essentially a photo essay showing Sadler’s return to racing—vintage racing. It does contain short blurbs about some of Bill’s fellow vintage racing drivers before drawing to a close. But wait, at this point the reader has arrived only at page 200. That which comprises the second half of the book are appendices—wonderful extensive appendices and a couple of additional sections as shown/listed at the end of the Table of Contents but not specifically classified as appendices. Moreover, it is only with the information contained in the appendices and additional segments that a reader can finally (if utilizing due diligence) sort out family and relationships along with other information relevant to learning who Bill Sadler was.
There’s so much information between this book’s covers that it will be the reader who invests the most effort into exploring the pages of Fast, Faster, Fastest who will gain the most from all it contains all carefully organized by author Wright working in conjunction with publisher Dalton Watson and its ever skilled and able designer Jodi Ellis.
Copyright 2025 Helen V Hutchings (speedreaders.info)
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