Bonneville, Utah - This is Challenger 2, as of Sunday 14 August officially the fastest piston-engined, wheel-driven car in the world, with a two-way average of 650.72km/h at Bonnneville Salt Flats' Speed Week.
But what's amazing is that the car was built to break the then world land speed record record in 1968!
Way back in the early 1960s, when world land speed record attempts were dominated by British drivers in gas-turbine powered monsters with enormous industry backing, a California hot-rodder named Mickey Thompson came achingly close to snatching the record with Challenger, a home-built hot-rod driven by two 427 Ford V8s - one driving the front wheels and one driving the rear - in which he became the first American to drive at more than 640km/h.
Eight years later, he built the cigar-shaped and very much more sophisticated Challenger 2 - but Bonneville Speed Week was rained out that year. By that time, the FIM had lifted the requirement that a world land speed record car had to be wheel-driven and jet cars - basically wingless aircraft - had taken over.
But Thompson always believed that in Challenger 2, standing unused in his Huntingdon, California workshop, he had the world's fastest 'real' car, with piston engines driving the wheels.
He and his son Danny tried again in 1987, but before they could go back to the salt in 1988 Mickey Thompson and his wife were murdered, and Challenger 2 was mothballed again.
Bitten by the speed bug
Until 2003, when Danny Thompson, now retired from racing, was invited to Bonneville to drive one of his father's earlier streamliners - and the bug bit. He went back every year and finally, in 2010, decided to haul out Challenger 2 and go for the wheel-driven record, which had stood since 1964 - before Challenger 2 was built with the aim of breaking it.
The car was completely rebuilt, the Ford V8s replaced with two thundering naturally-aspirated Chevy crate engines running 80 percent nitromethane and delivering more than 730kW each, and in 2014 Challenger 2 was back on the salt for the first time in 46 years. But history repeated itself and Speed Week was rained out.
In 2015 Challenger 2 burned out its clutch after a scorching one-way run of 670km/h (speeds are decided by the average of two runs, one in each direction) but on Saturday Thompson ran a superb 657.6km/h, and backed it up on Sunday with a run at 643.2, for an official average of 650.72, beating the old mark by 2km/h.
Mickey Thompson would have been thrilled - the 1964 record of 648.73km/h was set at Lake Eyre in Australia by Donald Campbell in the iconic, gas-turbine powered Bluebird CN7.
Subscribe to our