Land speed racer

So I'm walking around my neighborhood when I see this beast parked a couple blocks away



Painted on the side it says "492" so I don't know if it's able to go 492 mph. Did some searches and sure enough, the car has a webpage

http://thompsonlsr.com/about/

If it's still around later I'll take a closer look and talk to the guy if I see him

 

Whoa, to see something like this live is brilliant. Cool stuff.

 

Wow. Sick. Did you find any more info on it?

 

Gone the next day....

 

Dude, here's what you saw: https://jalopnik.com/danny-thompsons-challenger-ii-set-the-piston-driven-lan-1828282279

450 freakin' miles per hour and a class record for piston-driven vehicles
The back story is pretty amazing. He's Mickey Thompson's son, for those who grew up appreciating hot rod culture; and Mickey built this car, it's 50 years old!

Edit: sorry, had not clicked the link in your original post

 

Thanks for the link @ergopower ! Maybe he lives in my neighborhood

 

The land rocket is cool for sure, but that trailer looks pretty disco...must drop near flush with those side-mounted air bags.

 

Where do they bring those things to drive/race? I'd imagine the 1/4 mile might be too short, plus track regulations and all. Must be some special track or spot.

 

Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah is one of the more well-known places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Speedway
https://saltflats.com/

 

Would any of you guys take that for a spin? A legit ride, going close to top speed? Proper conditions and all, training, etc. I don't know if I would. Be quite scary. I might have driven 200 mph once...my palms are still sweating from that, over 10 years ago. Lol

 

I don't think I've ever driven a vehicle that could even manage 100mph without feeling like it was screaming in the red zone. I think it'd be cool to try... but I'd like a decent amount of practice/training first before tearing through a desert at speeds that can be expressed as fractions of Mach. That's just for the wheel driven vehicles though. I'll take a hard pass on the rocket propelled land torpedoes.

 

I've driven numerous vehicles in speeds of excess of 140mph. Always a rush, and I never once felt scared, nervous, frightened, etc., excel once. Which was the 200mph time. That definitely scared the shit out of me and I haven't done it since. Just once. Car felt fine (basically brand new BMW M6 V10 engine), but 200 is 200... It's a rush and it's f'ing scary. One wrong move, one small issue, your f'ing dead. There were literally no other Cara around me and it was controlled by radio, no other cars would be near me and others. It was done as safely as possible and nobody but the people who drove or were involved were in danger.

 

I touched 100mph once on an empty freeway just so I can say I've gone that fast before. Otherwise I follow the speed limit.

Fastest I have been regardless of vehicle was when I went skydiving. It's kind of scary but a big rush. I'm pretty sure i went at least 140mph in that case.

 

Yeah, fastest I have been was 100mph, it actually didn't feel bad, but I slowed right down afterword. IDK the top speed of my car, but its at least 100 with 3 people in the car.

Double that though, and that's fast...

Reminds me of Richard Hammonds crash on top gear in a land speed record vehicle

 

My neighborhood has the most random shit



I'm going to walk by often to see how this evolves

 

Sweet X-wing fighter. Maybe for a Star Wars convention!

 

Wtf?? How f'ing weird.

 

I hope there's a TIE fighter after this

 

It's been done...

https://technabob.com/blog/2018/04/17/driveable-electric-tie-fighter/

 

Sort of related. I constantly hear my neighbor practice the piano and lately it's been Star Wars music.