Using no jets and no special fuels, the company is attempting this feat in the Spectre SpeedLiner, a sleek missile-shaped speeder with an 8.8-liter Cadillac engine with a pair of intercooled 88 mm turbos good for close to 2000 HP. So while this isn't exactly, or even remotely, a street car, it is attempting to show just how far a gas-powered car can be pushed. We'll let you know when, or if, the record is made.

Godspeed.

So you've made the decision to drive your car as fast as possible? Fantastic! But you haven't made the deep personal commitment necessary to prepare yourself and your vehicle to the performance standards, and more importantly the safety standards, of the Southern California Timing Association? Magnificent! And you can't be bothered to actually travel out to upper Utah, even if you hadn't already missed Speed Week this year? Stupendous! Now that we've established your bona fides, let's take a look at where you can top out that magnificent machine of yours. Keep in mind that this is going to be tough –- what you and your machine need is a big, long, flat stretch of a suitable surface, and only an idiot goes all-out on something like a public highway.

Public Highway

Well, hell, you're an idiot right? These things are everywhere, just begging to be used!

Pros: They're usually in fairly good repair, well-lit, and usually come with mile markers. Long straight stretches are plentiful. Equipped with built-in radar-equipped speed-certification service employing remarkably professional uniformed men and women who will provide documentation, certify your top-speed run before judges, and in the case of truly remarkable achievements, provide you with limited accommodations.

Cons: Audience on public highways can be remarkably unappreciative. Fines double in construction zones. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Country Road

Congestion too much of a problem on the highway? Do what our much-storied forefathers used to do: find a long, straight piece of backroad and mash the gas on the ol' Probe!

Pros: Less vehicular congestion than the public highway. Lots better scenery on which to become a thin red smoking layer. Out here, the ambulances are often helicopters, and helicopter rides are badass.

Cons: What traffic there is tends to be more substantial and includes tractors, milk and cattle trucks, and pickups. You may also hit deer, cows, raccoons, and/or possums, all of which are smarter and more useful than you are. Road surface can be iffy and seems to narrow dramatically at upwards of 90 MPH. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: geograph.org

Abandoned Mall Parking Lot

Whoah, that back road was like a tightrope when the ol' Celica got up there, huh? Luckily, retail has collapsed-this is why you showed up to Lidz last week and it was all locked up-and malls nationwide are going out of business, leaving nice wide parking lots like little Bonnevilles all across decaying suburbia.

Pros: Big, flat, and wide. Rent-a-cops have all been laid off. Lit at night, sometimes. The kind of women you like still hang out here from force of habit.

Cons: Not as big, flat, and wide as you'd really like, plus there's this big building in the middle. Real cops now watch the lot extremely closely. Lights are on big solid metal poles. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: camdennewjersey.org

Urban Drainage Facility

Okay, now we're getting somewhere! A huge ditch, like the ones you're always driving your Cavalier into, but paved! It's like they knew you were coming.

Pros: Is in a lot of cool car movies, like the one you think you're in. Banked sides will keep you inside, probably. In cities like L. A., they're huge. Sound carries nicely.

Cons: Flash-flooding. Mud. Once you're in, getting out can involve snickering guys in wrecker trucks. There's usually a yard-wide rut down the middle. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: lashp.com

Abandoned Factory

Luckily for you, it isn't just the malls that are going under! Industry is collapsing too, which sometimes leaves really hulking factories empty-except for you and your Stealth, that is!

Pros: Loading doors often wide open. Machinery has often been shipped to China, leaving floor empty. Driving in a big building is just wicked rad, dude-bro. Harder for the Man to see you, even with his helicopter.

Cons: Machinery has not always been shipped to China, or if it has, may have left large holes in factory floor. Your loud aftermarket exhaust may shatter skylights, showering you with plate glass. Crashing into rusty drums full of old chemicals not as cool as in Toxic Avenger movies. Harder for the Man to find you in his ambulance. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Abandoned Dragstrip

Now we're talking. Asking around will often point you and your Geo to a paved, quarter-mile strip that's as bankrupt financially as you are intellectually!

Pros: It's a real racetrack, just without the mechanical or medical support equipment or personnel or any recent maintenance. Therefore, you are a real racer, just without the training or experience or safety equipment or anything.

Cons: You could damage what might be a perfectly salvageable racetrack. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: Yellowbullet

Abandoned Airstrip

Have you seen that one foreign show where they drive on an airstrip? With the loud guy with no chin, the short guy who's kinda pretty, the smart guy with bad long hair, the silent guy in the white suit and helmet? You can be the silent guy in the white suit and helmet! Except you talk too damn much and you think suits and helmets are for losers.

Pros: Runways are often even longer than dragstrips, and wider too. There's probably runways going more than one direction, which is good because you get bored easily.

Cons: It can be hard to find them. The surface is often quite poor. You could damage what might be a perfectly salvageable airstrip. They're often Federal property, which could get you into brand new flavors of trouble. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: freeman.com

Abandoned Highway

It's looking like the highway was your best bet after all, but it had all those pesky people on it. Luckily, there are highways no one uses, like parts of Old Route 66, or the Pennsylvania Turnpike, pictured here. As long as you can get the old Impulse over the dirt berms that some tightass put up, this seems perfect, right?

Pros: It's a highway! But with no cops and no other drivers! Truly this is heaven on Earth.

Cons: It still has hikers and bicyclists. Also, they stopped keeping up the pavement when they abandoned it. And depending upon the right-of-way's current legal disposition, you will come across park rangers, who may wear funny Smokey Bear hats but often have terribly serious attitudes, plus sidearms. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: pahighways.com

Frozen Lake

Okay, maybe you're not thinking right. Think! You've heard the Salt Flats were a lake, once, right? So you need, like, a solid lake. Therefore, this winter, you and the Justy will take a fast drive off a short pier.

Pros: Wide open. Good visibility. Interesting traction and slip-angle dynamics. Speedo can maxed out when car doesn't seem to be moving, for some unknown reason. Law enforcement may harass you, but mysteriously, there's a point beyond which they won't pursue, allowing you to think you've outrun them for a few seconds.

Cons: You will feel stupid explaining how you ran over a fisherman. You may scare the fish. You have no way of judging ice thickness, density, or structural integrity. Being trapped under ice not as cool as Metallica song of the same name. You will get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Dry Lake

Maybe what you need to do is find a dried-up lake or something that could be just as good as Bonneville! Or maybe, in the absurd progression of poor reasoning common to persistent idiots, you've managed to talk yourself into a substitute that will cost you just as many resources as be the real thing.

Pros: Huge, open, usually has a consistent surface.

Cons: Not that common. Often already in use. For instance, this one in Nevada is called Groom Lake and is used to test military aircraft. Frankly, if you're the kind of person who would actually do any of this stuff, we really hope you do wander onto Groom Lake and get exactly what you've got coming.

Look, we're all for speed, but if you want to go to flat-out, then make the commitment to go to a racetrack, or even Bonneville itself. By and large, driving flat out anywhere else is just a good way to get yourself and others killed.

Photo Credit: Militaryimages.net

It was on the last day of my pilgrimage to Bonneville when the full importance of the place came into focus. I broke camp before the sunrise and watched the light blue melt the stars away and the fiery red sun rise rapidly on the horizon, turning the sky into a painting the Renaissance masters could never have captured. I drove out to the starting line well before the beginning of racing, and stood in the silence, occasionally taking photographs of the cars parked in anticipation of the day. It was cool, with a light breeze, and they'd moved the track over to a new path, virgin salt awaited the man eager enough to make it to the line first. A special kind of privilege on a day like that day.

One of the line officials asked another gentleman and me if we'd mind helping him set up their tent for the day, and of course we obliged. Afterward, I and the older fellow got to talking. This was his first time on the salt since 1963. He'd been active in the racing community in his youth and drag raced with friends all over southern California during the 60's. The joy which came from recalling those memories played on his face and in his voice. He recalled his plans of a Bonneville racer, but his life got in the way. He took a wife and had some children, and his drag racing had to be put on the shelf along with his land speed record chasing dreams. He gladly shouldered the responsibility of working for his family rather than himself. But that dream was still there, the salt fever was always present. For 45 years he'd played with various projects cars and eventually started his own shop having nothing to do hot rods or racing, but bears the name Bonneville as a reminder. An homage.

As he stares retirement in the face, he's honest about age in this sport; vision must be acute, reaction times fast, and strength at the ready. He can sense his window of opportunity closing, but it's not closed yet. Coming to this event, this Mecca of speed, he's found some measure of resolve, after the decades of "maybe next year"s, maybe it's this year. He's got a car perfect for the salt, and an engine that would do the job in a modified stock class. He'd be happy with just one run, just one time down the salt which has carried so many legends to their glory.

This is Bonneville. It is important not because of the records, but because it is a goal, a community, a dream. A marking post by which men and women measure their future and pay respect to the past. At every pit they share each others insights, their failures, and their successes. It puts men to the test as much as machine, and makes them think bigger, bolder. They live more because of Bonneville. It is said there is only one class of people on the salt, a community of people who leave their wallets behind. From the slowest stock class to the most unfathomable streamliners, the only difference is the record they chase, and all are given equal respect. Any man behind a wheel faces the same danger of death as another.
There are sponsors for the event, but they remain transparent. This is a rare commodity when modern wheeled sports are oftentimes in danger of dilution through promotion. The remoteness of the place and the brutality of the conditions filter out the riff raff and the hawkers and the television crews and the ready market demographics. Bonneville happens because of a burning competitive spirit and force of will, not because of network contracts and merchandise deals. Bonneville is important because it has somehow in this day and age managed to remain pure. It is important because it can seduce a man to hold a dream for 45 years.

Eventually the salt will go silent. The memories of the racers and their triumphs will disappear. The record books will reduce to dust. Our rational mind tells us when these things happen the world will go on, this dry lake bed will continue being a dry lake bed, and the trivialities we place importance on will continue being trivialities in geologic time, but a little, irrational part of us hopes the salt will remember.

Mr. Moore has long been a land speed racer, holding multiple records in Corvettes and currently holding title to the worlds fastest Vette. But this is a different peak to climb. The Maro Special is being called the finest streamliner ever built out here on the flats, a car seven years in the making and two years in construction, it's a stunning construction of aluminum and innovation. Number 33 is running a 498 cubic inch Chrysler HEMI V8 with a massive centrifugal supercharger strapped to the front. Everything else is pretty much purpose built right down to the differential and transmission. It's not a mistake the car looks like a jet plane without wings, it was designed by a Boeing engineer.

When we saw the car earlier in the week, it was having some teething problems. On its first run, the car wouldn't shift into second gear, turned out to be a clutch problem. On the second run the starter wouldn't work at the line and on the next attempt it wouldn't fire, but the team was diligently working through the issues and hope to get a series of test runs in before unleashng the hounds of hell and aiming at that 409 MPH record. As far as we know it's been up to about 25 MPH. We can't wait to see what it's capable of when all the kinks are worked out.

The last time we caught up with Eric Burns the car was falling a little flat at the high end and not quite hitting the blistering 101.5 MPH top speed it's hit at Bonneville in the past, so he was working out the kinks still. "Evil Tweety," in case you weren't aware, is the worlds fastest stock class Honda 600, here we see Eric hard at work on the laptop tuning the fuel injection system and loading the engine with a water dyno, which puts this operation right in the top tier of technically advanced pit tuning. Check out the video and listen to that 700cc's of stock-block Honda fury wail. This is plated door slammer by the way, he actually drives this thing around Rohnert Park, California.

(EvilTweety has a commenter account here at Jalopnik by the way)

We sought out the owner to hear about the details and it turns out the truck is a lot more interesting than meets the eye. While it's a 1950 cabin, it's riding on a 1970 Chevy K10 3/4 ton chassis, and one might imagine something like a 350 or 454 under the hood but again, nope, it's a 5300 V8 out of a modern Chevy pickup. Interesting. The truck looks like it rolled off the factory floor like that, instead the bed is off a similar vintage truck but the rocker panels and steps are all hand fabricated and the front fenders have been trimmed down to fit the lower profile. We've got a soft spot for these old Chevy's and this cabover is a special kind of cool.

Wes Messick is the builder of this monster and he put it together in 2007, this is the firs time he's taken it to the speed week though as it's a perfect platform for watching the runs — up high and easily shaded. Wes tells us he's built a lot of weird cars like this for different people over the years, and his wife eventually asked him to build one they could keep, so he built this. Not sure what kind of relationship Wes has with his wife, but it's pretty funny he decided to build this as a keeper.

Yesterday, Seth Hammond set a qualifying speed for A-motor unblown gas lakesters at a blistering 301 MPH though the traps and a 304 MPH exit speed. The time destroyed the previous record set in 2001 by team Dauerheim - Bigelow at 274.813 MPH. The car is a little awkward in shape, but the build quality is unparalleled, the attention to detail at every level is neurotically perfect. It's quite a machine and we hope they're able to match their top speed run sometime this week.

The accident occurred around 5:55 PM Sunday, when Byrant lost control of the car and, based on eye-witness reports, rolled multiple times, resulting in a quarter mile debris field which ended racing on the long course for the day. Emergency crews responded immediately and were forced to cut Bryant from the car and rushed him to Intermountain Medical Center which is, unfortunately, about 120 miles away. He passed away on the way to the hospital. Our condolences to the Bryant family.

Officials of the Bonneville Nationals Inc. report that Barry Bryant, 46, from Anderson, California, died after competing at the speed trials on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The accident occurred at 5:55 p.m. when his racing vehicle went out of control while traveling approximately 200 mph. He was transported by ambulance off the race track to Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.
Race Officials were informed that Bryant died before arriving at the Medical Center.

Since it's all aluminum, this Divco is in one way one of the more appropriate vehicles for this environ, though its meager powertrain makes it a counterpoint to everything here. What it lacks in horsepower it makes up tenfold in cool. How could you not love a front engine, mid-driver delivery van converted to a pseudo-RV with enough pin-ups and race car articles pinned to the walls to keep anyone busy?

So the car made the trek from Haily, Idaho to Bonneville, a total of 308 miles, with an average speed of 21.4 miles per hour and a blistering top speed of 37.5 MPH, it took 14 hours and 37 minutes. On the way the truck fouled a spark plug, burned through 2.4 quarts of oil and 3.1 quarts of trans fluid and ran out of gas just 12 miles away from the flats. That's okay though, there's no cooler observation platform anywhere on the lake bed.

We landed in LAX last night at 11 PM with one bag full of camping gear and one of clothes, picked up a car and headed north towards Wendover, stopping only in Vegas to pick up supplies and watch the sunrise over Sin City. By noon we were stepping foot onto the most legendary salt in the world. By 12:15 it was decided this is going to be a spectacular week. The rain has kept at bay, and the salt is hard and smooth, the temperatures are cool for August, in the 70's for the weekend and in the 90's towards the end. It'll make for denser air and fast times for the beginning of the week.

Yesterday was only Friday and the pits are already a mile long, filled with everything from cobbled together garage machines, Caminos and Rancheros and tons of retro rods have descended to take in the spectacle. Tech is busy working through inspections with all kinds of cool stuff, high dollar streamliners, belly tankers, giant-turbo'd RX7's (seriously the bus turbo on the blue RX-7 is almost as big as the block), diesels, a modified Honda Dream of all things. The Buick Straight 8 is a flipping amazing piece of machinery.

Bonneville is the Valhalla of speed. People have been chasing its horizon for almost a hundred years now and it's mystique has not diminished. The remains of a once massive lake which still undergoes a yearly cycle of flooding and drying, the salt flats at Bonneville are used twice yearly as a place for anyone with the courage to press the envelope of performance. For a week in August, volunteers from the Southern California Timing Association host Speed Week. They prepare the salt, select the runs and lay out the famous black lines, the only thing guiding drivers down the straight and narrow.

People travel from all over the world just to see the spectacle of Speed Week, if you've got the skills, you bring your machine along to put it to the test. Gearheads toil in their workshops thinking about it, lying awake at night dreaming of it, honing their machines to perfection, only to return to their garage to push for more in the next year. The competitive spirit is as much internal as it is external here. The race for a personal best as important as a world record. In this place, speed is the religion.

This is the same salt where Ab Jenkins pushed the Mormon Meteor. Where Sir Malcolm Campbell raced his Bluebirds on, finally breaking the 300 MPH barrier. Craig Breedlove took the Spirit of America past 600 MPH here. Men have died at Bonneville in pursuit of speed. It's a shrine to speed and a must-do pilgrimage for any car junkey. And we're going.

From Saturday through Tuesday, we'll be camping out on the flats, trekking across the salt, poking around the pits, standing in awe of the chariots of speed and taking in one of the greatest spectacles in the auto world. We can't promise regular updates, but we'll be bringing you as much as we can.

Photo credit: CG on The HAMB

Can your penalty box go 123.224 mph with a destroked one-liter engine? Didn't think so. Back in the late 1980s, a wonderful gang of engineers began tweaking a less-than-2000-lbs. Subaru Justy to set the Class I Production World Speed Record. The first problem they ran into was that the rules stipulated a maximum engine size of 1000 cc. The stock, US-spec Justy sported a (relatively) massive 1.2-liter three-cylinder mill. So they replaced the crankshaft and rods with the 1.0-liter parts from Japan. Butting right up against both the letter and spirit of the rules, Roger Banowetz and his team managed to squeeze 99 hp from the puny engine. A few more engine tweaks plus the removal of rearviews/windshield wipers and the addition of aluminum moon disks allowed the über-Justy to set a two-way record that stood for 18 years. Sadly, to save weight, they went with the FWD variant instead of the true econo-hero AWD model. Still, we love the #440 Justy. We simply love it. (Thanks to Ric Hawthorne and Roger Banowetz for the images.) – Jonny Lieberman

Featrued in Drive Performance Magazine [driveperformancesubaru.com]

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