Last August, Brent Hajek brought his Ford F-250 Super Duty to the Bonneville Salt Flats for some wide open throttle driving. By the time he’d left, the team had set two new land speed records, including a 171.123 mph run which earned a B Production Diesel Truck record. Switching to B20 biodiesel, the team recorded a 182 mile per hour run, destroying the old record of 130.614 miles per hour. Read More…
Brent Hajek and his F-250 at Bonneville. Image: Ford Motor Company
Would you drive a Ford F-250 Super Duty Crew Cab at 182 miles per hour, even at the Bonneville Salt Flats? My answer to that question, without much consideration, would be a resounding “no.” Ask Brent Hajek, a farmer from Oklahoma and owner of Hajek Motorsports, the same question and you’re likely to be met with an enthusiastic “hell yes!”
Hajek just set two land speed records in a slightly modified 2011 Ford F-250 Super Duty pickup equipped with the new 6.7-liter PowerStroke diesel engine. On pump diesel, the truck ran a top speed of 171.123 miles per hour. Running B20 biodiesel, the truck clocked a top speed of 182 miles per hour, besting the old biodiesel record by over 52 miles per hour. Read More…
Just a few weeks back, we told you about a new ice land speed record, set in a drop-top Bentley Continental Supersports driven by Juha Kankkunen. The Bentley topped 205 miles per hour, achieving the two-way average speed of 205.48 miles per hour. This was enough to break the previous record of 199.83 miles per hour, but it wasn’t enough to keep the competition at bay for long. Finnish winter tire manufacturer Nokian used an Audi RS6, fitted with studded Hakkapeliitta 7 tires, to set a two way average speed of 206.05 miles per hour. The car was piloted by Nokian Tires’ in-house hot shoe, test driver Janne Laitinen, and was fitted with off-the-shelf 255/35R20 Nokian tires. Somehow, driving an RS6 at 200 miles per hour on ice seems slightly more sane than driving a ragtop Bentley at the same speed, but I still won’t be signing up for a record attempt myself. Read More…
If you’re sane, the answer to that question is either “No” or “Hell, no”. If you’re four time World Rally Champ Juha Kankkunen, your answer would probably be “miksi ei” (Finnish for “why not”). As Autoweek reports, Kankkunen just broke his own record of 199.83 miles per hour, driving a Bentley Continental Supersports convertible to a two-way average speed of 205.48 miles per hour. In the interest of safety, the car was equipped with Pirelli winter tires (although I seriously doubt they were rated beyond 168 MPH), a roll cage and a parachute, but I question how much good any of that would have done if Kankkunen had lost control at speed. Read More…
*Photo Credit: PopSci
The fastest I’ve ever been on any type of land craft is 189 mph. I did that years ago when I was a lot younger and dumber on a friends modified Suzuki Hayabusa. I just remember clamping down on the bars, tucking behind the windscreen and keeping the bike at wide open throttle until I hit terminal velocity. I was also clad in full race leathers and safety gear, but still, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Regardless, going just a tick under 190 mph is really moving, but what if you had the chance to go over five times that speed – would you do it? The guys of the Thrust SuperSonic Car Team would, and they are in fact building a craft that will hopefully do just that.
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Photo: CEN
I’ll bet you didn’t know the answer to that one, did you? If I had to venture a guess, it would have been far below 100 miles per hour. And no, we’re not talking about the terminal velocity of a Trabant dropped out of an airplane at 20,000 feet over the Nevada desert.
These are tough times for us Americans. The economy is in shambles, our government is run by crooks, thieves and liars and we just shot down a chance to put men on the moon again. Worse, the lawn mower world speed record was snatched from our hands last May, when Don Wales, a Brit, ran 87.833 miles per hour at Pendine Sands. It was almost the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I for one was ready to riot in the streets.
This is the Buckeye Bullet 2.5, an electric powerhouse that just broke the land-speed record for battery-powered vehicles on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The car was built by a team of engineering students at Ohio State University. It’s powered by a 600 kilowatt lithium-ion battery pack and runs a massive electric motor that shredded the car’s gearbox after just one run. The car hit a maximum velocity of 320 miles per hour and logged an average top speed of 307.7mph in two runs. The average speed shatters the previous battery-powered vehicle speed record of 245mph set in 1999 by White Lightning. The Buckeye Bullet 2.5 is sponsored by French electric vehicle manufacturer Venturi Automobiles. Hopefully the company will use what the OU team learned to build some electric road rockets for the streets.
Remember the 200 mph attempt by Road & Track editor Sam Mitani we told you about here? Good news, sports fans: the turbocharged Kizashi hit 203 mph in a qualifying attempt, besting the previous Blown Gas Coupe class record of 202 miles per hour. The bad news is that this doesn’t go in the record books just yet, since this was only a qualifying run.
Of all the things I don’t currently associate with Suzuki automobiles, 200 miles per hour is probably close to the top of the list. I liked the 2010 Suzuki Kizashi well enough, but I had a hard time thinking of it as a sport sedan. Suzuki’s out to change all that, by campaigning a modified Kizashi prototype at the Bonneville Salt Flats, in an attempt to break the 200 mile per hour barrier.
