if you've ever ridden the Chunnel from Paris to London, you know that you get to boom through the Loire Valley and Normandy at fantastic speeds, enter the Channel Tunnel, emerge in Olde Blighty just south of Dover and then putter about for for 45 minutes until you reach London. Not any more! The Brits finally installed high speed rail on their end of the run and today, on September 4th, 2007, a Eurostar train did the journey in 2 hours and 3 minutes, down from the previous record of 2 hours 35 minutes. The train was stripped of food trolleys and was only half full, allowing one of the journalists on board to record a peak speed of 192 mph on a GPS thingy. Anyone wanna bet it was Clarkson doing some recon work for next season's inevitable Top Gear race? We think a McMerc SLR Convertible is the logical choice. [MSNBC]