Author Archives: James

Last month, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president J. Douglas Boles posted this picture of a core sample taken of the track:

Read the story over on Jalopnik

The very first Ford Mustang, the 1964 model, cost $2,320 and produced 210 horsepower, while coming in at 2,556 pounds. The 2018 Mustang GT produces 460 hp, weighs 3,705 pounds and costs $35,095. There have been a lot of Mustangs in between.

This truck. Just look at it. Read its name, chew on it: the Ford F-150 RTR Muscle Truck Concept. Look at all its black trim. My God. I think I need chest hair just to steer it.

This Muscle Truck has a 5.0-liter V8 (five-oh!), pushing out 600 horsepower. It has RTR long-travel coilover suspension and 33-inch tires!

Johnny Bohmer has been breaking records in his 2,700 horsepower BADD GT for a while now, first taking it to 250 mph before going up to 275 mph and, then, 283.232 mph, which still stands as the Guinness World Record. On Friday, Bohmer beat that, going 292 mph at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, though coming back down to zero turned out to be the hardest part.

Bohmer’s original plan was to try and top 300 mph, but he lost some boost pressure once he got into 6th gear, so he had to settle for 292. More harrowing was stopping since, as you can see in the video below, his parachute ripped into two pieces as it deployed.

What happened next? A hard brake, which Bohmer told me, put cracks into the rear rotors.

“When I stopped I thought the car was on fire,” he said. The car was not on fire. But the wheels were very, very hot, and Bohmer said he was just happy he was on a long enough track, or things really could have gone south.

While 292 mph is faster than 283.232, Bohmer did not break the Guinness World Record for a street-legal car because the Guinness people weren’t on hand to certify it. He says they’re pretty serious, too, requiring the car to have air-conditioning that can cool to 60 degrees and the ability to drive for 15 minutes prior to the record attempt, in addition to the normal things, like valid license plates, insurance, and so on, all of which the BADD GT complies with.