For this year's Indianapolis 500, the marketing brains at Hot Wheels will attempt to break the world record for longest jump by a four-wheel vehicle. Doing so requires a 90-foot ramp mounted on a 10-story-tall bedroom door. Dear. Lord.
To make this kid's dream a reality — and to construct a vehicle that can survive jumping more than 301 feet — Hot Wheels enlisted a California firm which has been built the orange track and a Baja-style truck over the past few months. The driver, whose real identity is kept secret by Hot Wheels, will have to hit at least 90 mph by the end of the ramp to clear the record. As builder Jack Murphy told Wired.com's Playbook:
"This has been my life for the last 22 years, jumping people off of stuff...What really excited me is that no one else but Hot Wheels can own a stunt like this."
The current record is held by Johnny Greaves, the Toyota Baja racer who set the record back in 2009 on a dirt track (For comparison's sake, Travis Pastrana's 2010 jump in his Subaru rally car was just 269 feet. Slacker.) If things go according to plan, the jump will go off following the end of the Indianapolis 500, after which Hot Wheels will also reveal the driver's identity, unless Ben Collins writes about it first.
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