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Art City Auto Body shop owner Daniel Arce poses in front of a rocket-shaped structure on Wednesday, April 17, 2026, in Springville, Utah.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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The old Suntana Raceway is shown.

Courtesy Springville City

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Art City Auto Body shop owner Daniel Arce poses in front of a rocket-shaped structure on Wednesday, April 17, 2026, in Springville, Utah.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Rod Mitani discusses memories from the Suntana Raceway on Wednesday, April 17, 2026, in Springville, Utah.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Art City Auto Body shop owner Daniel Arce poses in front of a rocket-shaped structure on Wednesday, April 17, 2026, in Springville, Utah.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Standing prominently on the east side of Springville Main Street, just before the road splits into U.S. 89 and South State Street, is a rocket-shaped structure painted in patriotic colors. 

The peculiar monument is a point of inquiry for many who stop at the Art City Autobody Shop, which owns the rocket, as many recognize it as a remnant of a former Springville destination.

The rocket is from the old Suntana Raceway, a 2/5-mile paved racetrack at 1600 South in Springville that hosted stock car oval racing before closing in 1997. The track is perhaps best known for a scene in “Ocean’s 11,” where “The Mormon Brothers” Turk and Virgil Malloy, played by Scott Caan and Casey Affleck, are introduced in the movie drag racing with a full-size monster truck and a remote-control truck.

“All the time we get people that’ll drive by, they’ll stop in and say, ‘Hey, is that the same rocket from the racetrack?’ Or, ‘I remember when I was a kid, I used to paint that,'” Art City Autobody owner Daniel Arce said. “There’s just so many fun stories behind it.”

The rocket had been at the racetrack since its beginning in the 1960s, when it was a 3/8-mile dirt track called Turpin Speedway. It served as a water tower, pumping water to service the raceway’s bathrooms. 

Rod Mitani, a retired Apache helicopter mechanic who lives in American Fork, spent much of his childhood at Turpin and Suntana with his father, who was the track’s announcer. As a 6-year-old in 1969, Mitani’s father taught him how to “fire up the water pump,” he recalled.

“There’s a couple pipes at the bottom, so the higher the water gets, the more pressure you get out of it at the bottom,” he said. “He would teach me how to keep it running, because it’d die and it started running out of water, so I’d have to run out there and put gas in and fire it back up.”

When the track was sold after closing, the rocket was going to be scrapped. But the Art City Auto Body owner at the time, Billy Rhatigan, swooped in and bought it, then propped it up in the business’s parking lot.

Arce bought the autobody shop from Rhatigan in 2021, in what served as a full-circle moment.

It was Rhatigan who gave Arce his first job in the industry as a teenager, after Arce showed up to Art City in his Toyota Celica that he had customized in his Spanish Fork High auto body class.

“I asked Billy for a job,” Arce said, “and he looked at my car, he’s like, ‘Did you build that?’ I said ‘Yeah, I built that.’ He said ‘Why don’t you start tomorrow?'”

Arce’s history with the shop didn’t mean he knew about the “eyesore” of a structure he inherited, though. The rocket looked in bad shape, faded in color, and Arce was ready to get rid of it.

That was until he got to know the Springville locals.

“They all started talking, ‘Oh, you’re over there by the rocket. I know where you’re at.’ And so I realized real quick that it’s basically a monument here in Springville,” Arce said. “It’s part of Springville, and so instead of scrapping it, we decided to refurbish it.”

They painted it red, white and blue, wrote “Suntana Raceway” on one side and “Art City Auto Body” on the other, and built wings on it.

What stands out to Arce is the memories the rocket elicits out of people when they stop by.

“It’s interesting to hear these guys talk, because it seems like those were the moments in their life where they were just really having fun and enjoying life,” Arce said. “They were building a community. A community with other car people, spending time with your wife, with your kids at the racetrack.”

One of those people is Mitani, who said much of his life success traces back to his racing days in Springville and at Roundabout Raceway in Pleasant Grove.

He was 13 when he started racing, fitted with an all-teenage pit crew. Flipping through an old scrapbook, Mitani remembers winning the midseason championship, along with other triumphs. He met his late wife at the track when he was 16.

The auto skills he developed working on cars growing up got him a job as a helicopter mechanic for the Utah National Guard and ultimately led to a 39-year career in Army aviation.

“There’s a whole legacy behind it, and the past started with my racing career — not so much a career, a racing hobby,” Mitani said. “It’s more of a hobby than a career, because there’s no money in Utah for racing. But it’s been very good to our family.”

More than a quarter century after Suntana Raceway closed, grassroots racing in Utah has largely gone away. But for Mitani and several others, the memories will live on, as will the rocket.