Speaker 1: Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hi,
Speaker 1: and Welcome to Car Stuff. I'm your host Scott Benjamin
Speaker 1: and I am Kurt garn Well. We've got one today
Speaker 1: that I think is going to pique your interest and
Speaker 1: hopefully the interest of a lot of our listeners as well.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a very specific event, a
Speaker 1: very um it's kind of I think it's one of
Speaker 1: a kind. I don't I've never heard of an event
Speaker 1: like this any other place in the world. Really, it's
Speaker 1: different than a drag race, but it's called the Texas Smile,
Speaker 1: and it has a lot of similarities to a drag race,
Speaker 1: but this is a unique competition of speed and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's worthwhile for us to dig into this. And
Speaker 1: I do want to tell you, Kurt um, just so
Speaker 1: that you're not not taking off guard by this. But um,
Speaker 1: we we have done a previous episode of this. You know,
Speaker 1: this archive goes back all the way to two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and back in August of two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: we did a an episode that really was kind of
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of the Texas Smile and kind
Speaker 1: of what it's all about and where it was and
Speaker 1: everything and the record holders that were you know, the
Speaker 1: current record holders, and how some strategies I guess to
Speaker 1: to get the best time, and you know whatever. We
Speaker 1: just had a whole bunch of topics that were we
Speaker 1: covered in there. Of course, all of that's changed now
Speaker 1: since since two thousand twelve, and I mean it's seven
Speaker 1: years later. You can imagine that not only is technology
Speaker 1: growing and leaps and bounds, you know, since then, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the guys building the cars are learning a
Speaker 1: lot more, and they're and they're they're going faster and
Speaker 1: faster every year. There's been some notable events that are
Speaker 1: things I guess events, you can call it events. I
Speaker 1: guess that happened. And uh, there's even been a change
Speaker 1: of venue since then. I mean, it's just just real quick,
Speaker 1: and I want, I'll be honest with you. We're gonna
Speaker 1: jump into the topic a little bit later. There's a
Speaker 1: little bit of other stuff that I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about before we start here. But I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you just just a second about what
Speaker 1: you what's your gut feeling about the Texas smile. I mean,
Speaker 1: just just like a general when you first heard about
Speaker 1: this initially, I compared it to a drag race. Um,
Speaker 1: But as I looked into it a little bit more,
Speaker 1: I drew vast differences between this particular type of racing
Speaker 1: and a drag race. First of all, it's a time
Speaker 1: trial type set up. It's not two cars aren't competing
Speaker 1: against each other. It's more like a qualifying event, and
Speaker 1: a drag race would be more than a head to
Speaker 1: head race. But but what I mean getting we'll get
Speaker 1: to the specifics I think, but but getting to like specifically,
Speaker 1: what you thought when you first saw like maybe a
Speaker 1: car going I'm gonna say I'm above two hundred miles
Speaker 1: per hour. That's not the record, by the way. We'll
Speaker 1: tell you what the record is later in the show.
Speaker 1: But let's see the first time you saw a car
Speaker 1: achieve two hundred miles per hour in one mile? You know,
Speaker 1: from standing still? I mean, it's it's it's crazy, isn't Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is crazy. I'm used to seeing drag races in
Speaker 1: a quarter mile, very different types of cars. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not over in a few seconds. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of factors that come into play. Um, cooling is
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah. Um, we saw some interest in
Speaker 1: cooling tactics, didn't we Yeah, normally they would cool the
Speaker 1: car with air flowing through holes in the car. That's
Speaker 1: not the way to go fast. Do you want to
Speaker 1: make the car as slick as possible. So there's other
Speaker 1: techniques that they use, the cool engines down. That's a
Speaker 1: good way to put it. I like how you said that,
Speaker 1: because like you can't have a ton of openings and
Speaker 1: vents and I guess full face of a vehicle that
Speaker 1: you normally would have. You're trying to minimize that because
Speaker 1: these are modified cars we'll talk about, and there's there
Speaker 1: are different tactics that these racers employ to go and
Speaker 1: do what they do on these Uh. Well, it's two
Speaker 1: weekends a year. And again, all of this we're gonna
Speaker 1: get too, I promise, because the Texas Smile Is is
Speaker 1: definitely an interesting and unique event in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: And you can see my notes are crazy again today.
Speaker 1: I have a pile of notes in front of me
Speaker 1: and and for new listeners or listeners that aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with with my note system, I I'm very analog. Before
Speaker 1: we begin, I've got a kind of a banged up
Speaker 1: front bumper on my car and it's got a crack
Speaker 1: in it right now. So I'm looking to do something
Speaker 1: that's called this. This is the term I've seen used
Speaker 1: for it, called the drifters I think it's called the
Speaker 1: drifters stitch. Is that with zip tized. Okay, I've seen
Speaker 1: that before. Okay, Yeah, and you know what, It's surprisingly
Speaker 1: easy to do and surprisingly holds well really well. Um,
Speaker 1: I've done it already on this repair, just in a
Speaker 1: minor way, but I did it in a very not
Speaker 1: haphazard I mean it looks good. You can't even see
Speaker 1: them hardly that that's there. It makes the makes the
Speaker 1: crack and the bumper disappear really and holds everything together.
Speaker 1: It's it's just you drill a couple of holes on
Speaker 1: each side of the crack and then run a zip
Speaker 1: tie through and you do that a couple of times.
Speaker 1: It looks like like stitches that you would put in
Speaker 1: somebody's you know body, you know, head arms, wherever you
Speaker 1: get to cut. Um. It's it's a lot like that. Umm,
Speaker 1: I've always cracked it. It's kind of funny, yeah, like
Speaker 1: anybody would go and get stitches at the doctor. It's
Speaker 1: it's very similar for your bumper and it's it's a
Speaker 1: low cost, easy way to do repair. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on the color of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: I've got a dark, dark blue vehicle, so I'm using
Speaker 1: black zip ties, and uh, you know, the wound in
Speaker 1: the in the bumper pretty much disappears. It's it's really nice.
Speaker 1: And I think I need um maybe at the most,
Speaker 1: like two more stitches to make this whole thing work out.
Speaker 1: You're in there at the moment right now, I've got three,
Speaker 1: um three, and I mean I need two more. I've
Speaker 1: I've just discovered that, you know, the the supporting structure
Speaker 1: behind it was jostle just enough that it's not quite
Speaker 1: holding up in the corner, so I need to add
Speaker 1: some to the corners. I know this is all very
Speaker 1: uh specific to to me and my my car, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if anybody else out there has has either
Speaker 1: done you know this this drifter stitch, or has heard
Speaker 1: of it or anything like that. If you haven't look
Speaker 1: at it online, you look at some photos online and
Speaker 1: you'll see some good versions of it, some bad versions
Speaker 1: of it, and it looks kind of neat. It looks
Speaker 1: like like a Frankenstein kind of repair made to a car,
Speaker 1: but um, it works in a pinch, and it definitely
Speaker 1: is not going to cost you a whole lot of money.
Speaker 1: Makes it makes a huge improvement in the way the
Speaker 1: car looks after you know, a minor a minor incident.
Speaker 1: I've had a minor incident my car, and they employed
Speaker 1: this technique a lot up north, I believe. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What what do you mean? Well, that's where I've seen it, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: like where Boston it snows a lot there, so maybe
Speaker 1: there's they you hit things a little more often. The
Speaker 1: one I saw last was I didn't count, but it
Speaker 1: looked about like forties stitches in the corner of a bumper. Yeah, no, dint.
Speaker 1: It was just a straight crack. It's weird. It's about
Speaker 1: forties sometimes holding it it almost looks like a decal
Speaker 1: that somebody's put in the car. Doesn't close to appreciate
Speaker 1: it completely. Yeah, it's interesting, and that's a great theory
Speaker 1: behind behind why maybe you would see this more in
Speaker 1: the north. I guess that's true. I just got a
Speaker 1: new bumper. Every time you know a little something happened, Scott,
Speaker 1: what happened? Tell you the story or is it too painful?
Speaker 1: I will tell you. You You know what, Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a little incident here in the office area in the
Speaker 1: parking structure. Bumped the wall, just put it. Was it
Speaker 1: one of the columns, And now you're gonna make me
Speaker 1: tell the whole story. I'm not going to know. It
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't a column. Now it was on one
Speaker 1: of the ramps. But um, anyways, there's so much damage
Speaker 1: on those columns down there, and I'm wondering who's doing it.
Speaker 1: All that was that was a first for me and
Speaker 1: hopefully hopefully now it's been the last. But Okay, to me,
Speaker 1: this is like, this is really personally upsetting because I
Speaker 1: try to keep them looking almost new inside and outside
Speaker 1: as long as I can, and I've been pretty successful
Speaker 1: with it my whole life. This little minor incident with
Speaker 1: the front end is really really upsetting to me. And
Speaker 1: you know, I know, you can take it to the
Speaker 1: body shop and just be done with it, but it's expensive.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, maybe it's too much inside baseball
Speaker 1: about my own vehicle, but but I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people find themselves in the same position and look
Speaker 1: into that. Um, you know that the drifters stitch if
Speaker 1: you want to for a for a simple answer, an
Speaker 1: inexpensive answer, it's uh, maybe try it yourself. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an option. It's an option. Maybe you could even practice on,
Speaker 1: you know, a Junkyard bumper or something if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: But it's very easy to do, very very simple to do,
Speaker 1: and uh and a lot less money than taking it
Speaker 1: to a body shop a lot less sure. Yeah. Okay, well, listen,
Speaker 1: I I probably have wasted more than enough time. I
Speaker 1: think maybe it would be a good time to take
Speaker 1: a rake and we can come back and then finally
Speaker 1: begin our talk about the Texas Smile. And we're back
Speaker 1: in your host, Scott Benjamin, and across from me is
Speaker 1: Kurt Garen. How you're doing, Kurt, I'm doing well, Scott,
Speaker 1: still hanging in there, huh okay, okay. I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: checking in with you until finally, you know, one day
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, you know, I'm your host, Scott Benjamin,
Speaker 1: and one day you're gonna I'm just gonna jump right,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like, and I'm kurk Garen and today's
Speaker 1: a beautiful day or whatever I do or now something
Speaker 1: like that. It's a real beautiful out there. Actually is
Speaker 1: it's a really nice day, you know. And you know what,
Speaker 1: now that we're talking about beautiful days, I guess we
Speaker 1: probably should mention that it will probably be a beautiful
Speaker 1: day in late October in Texas, just guessing when they
Speaker 1: are running the next edition of the Texas Smile. This
Speaker 1: is an event that runs twice a year. They're running
Speaker 1: in March, which is no problem for them. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be no snow. Of course, you might might have issues.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they ever have or not. And
Speaker 1: then there's another one in October. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: run twice a year every year, and this year they
Speaker 1: are running it at a new place actually they have
Speaker 1: for a couple of years now called the Victoria Regional
Speaker 1: Airport in Victoria, Texas. And they've completed this race since.
Speaker 1: And I keep calling a race, I don't mean to
Speaker 1: do that. It's we should just say event maybe and
Speaker 1: just call it an event or speed event. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's weird they call it. And here's the funny thing
Speaker 1: is they put it in the in the genre of
Speaker 1: auto show, and it's not an auto show by any means.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know why they did that. But
Speaker 1: I see it more as like a contest or even
Speaker 1: a test of your vehicle, or an exhibition, an exhibition
Speaker 1: of speed maybe um approving ground. Yeah, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people do look at it as a test event. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I think that's how they view it. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a chance for them to go out and just show
Speaker 1: what they can do, show it they can put together.
Speaker 1: It's not a show in the traditional sense where you
Speaker 1: walk around the car and peek in and look at
Speaker 1: the interior, but you can see it run down the track,
Speaker 1: which is nice. Yeah, I mean, it's it's nice to
Speaker 1: be able to do that because a lot of times
Speaker 1: you don't see cars in motion. You go to a
Speaker 1: car show and you see all these fantastic vehicles, but
Speaker 1: they're all parked. You know, you might get to hear
Speaker 1: them start off or watch them pull onto a trailer
Speaker 1: or something like that, but this is one where you
Speaker 1: get to go and see them actually run. It's it's
Speaker 1: like you know, going to the drag races, like where
Speaker 1: it's amateur and pro and you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a big mix. And yeah, I guess any day at
Speaker 1: the track really, but you don't get quite as up
Speaker 1: close and personal when you're at the typical racetrack unless
Speaker 1: you spring for the optional pit pass and you know,
Speaker 1: get to go and walk around the vehicles and get
Speaker 1: a little more hands on or not not hands on,
Speaker 1: but just you know, closer to them and talk to people.
Speaker 1: Let's just kind of go through some real simple basics
Speaker 1: of this whole thing, and then we'll move on to
Speaker 1: some specifics, because there's some interesting specifics. I guess. The
Speaker 1: most notable change, I guess is the change in venue.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is its third home since two thousand three.
Speaker 1: It's been run since two thousand three. It began in
Speaker 1: a place called Goldiead, Texas Goliad and I look at
Speaker 1: how to pronounce Goldiead. That's that's correct. Uh, go ahead.
Speaker 1: It was ran there until about I think March of
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, so it ran there for a good
Speaker 1: long time, around eight years. The funny thing about this
Speaker 1: is that it started with only about thirty five people.
Speaker 1: It was began by a couple out of the Houston,
Speaker 1: Texas area, a guy named Jay Maddis and his wife
Speaker 1: Sharon Madis, and they had a company I think that
Speaker 1: they called J and S. Maddis Motorsports Incorporated. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure that that's still around. I think I think it
Speaker 1: is in some way, of course, A couple still still
Speaker 1: around there. They're still running this thing. It started again,
Speaker 1: thirty five participants and almost no spectators because no one
Speaker 1: really knew about the event. It wasn't, you know, heavily promoted.
Speaker 1: I guess the people that participated probably told friends maybe
Speaker 1: and that was about it, but very few people showed
Speaker 1: up to that. It's a lot different today, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I Mean, we've they've changed venues three times. The second
Speaker 1: move after they went from Goliad, they went to up
Speaker 1: the town's name is Beville, Texas, and the forum or
Speaker 1: the actual venue's Chase Field Industrial Complex. Then they finally
Speaker 1: relocated just in seen to the new place that they're running,
Speaker 1: which is the Victoria Regional Airport, which is in Victoria, Texas.
Speaker 1: Now these are all kind of around the Houston area,
Speaker 1: which makes sense, you know, from where the couple began,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to move it too far, I
Speaker 1: guess because it's you know, it's a it's a regional
Speaker 1: specialty event. But the number of spectators has gone up immensely,
Speaker 1: from this, the number of participants has gone up incredibly
Speaker 1: from from the first days. Just it's become a huge,
Speaker 1: huge thing. It's one of the only places you can
Speaker 1: go and enter your car and test it out in
Speaker 1: an event like this. Of course, there's regional drag strips
Speaker 1: that you can go to every Thursday night or whatever
Speaker 1: and see what you can do. But to get on
Speaker 1: a mile in a straight line, have professional timing equipment
Speaker 1: and medical staff and just everything there for you to
Speaker 1: do this. It's it's rare that you find out. Don't
Speaker 1: how much is it to to sign? You know, I
Speaker 1: was looking at number I might have an average person
Speaker 1: can't do it? Do it anymore? Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I wouldn't be so sure for an event
Speaker 1: like this because it was like they try to keep
Speaker 1: it somewhat open. Let me just I'm just gonna just
Speaker 1: let it out here. Why not? I why hold back
Speaker 1: on this? But here's here's a just an idea of
Speaker 1: what you're paying for these. You know, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not a high dollar event like you would think. I'm
Speaker 1: looking right now. It's information that came from the Texas
Speaker 1: Mile website, which is um Texas Mile dot net. So
Speaker 1: if you want to go there and look up all
Speaker 1: this information, you can, but just see you get an
Speaker 1: idea of how low dollar this whole thing is tickets
Speaker 1: for it's a three day event, it's a whole weekend.
Speaker 1: If you're a just a spectator, twenty five dollars per
Speaker 1: person for all three days. You just get a risk
Speaker 1: band for twenty five dollars. It gets in for three
Speaker 1: days of activities. And now that you can even if
Speaker 1: you if you wanted to, you could stay on site.
Speaker 1: You can camp there, I guess on the on the
Speaker 1: on the property, which is really cool for a very
Speaker 1: low price. I mean, I know it sounds well. Just
Speaker 1: compare this to to renting a hotel room. But one
Speaker 1: night is only sixty bucks. If you want to want
Speaker 1: to stay two nights is undred and twenty three nights
Speaker 1: is a hundred and sixty dollars. And that's if you
Speaker 1: want to set up you know, a motor home or
Speaker 1: a camper on site and stay there. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they allow tents. Uh, you know, the information wasn't
Speaker 1: pacific about that. You can contact them and find out.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to sell tickets for them or
Speaker 1: anything like that, I promise, but it says they do
Speaker 1: not sell out of tickets, but I guess they never
Speaker 1: run out. But the number of spectators here and you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I should say this, kids under twelve are free, so
Speaker 1: that's a bonus too. I think that there, yeah, so
Speaker 1: or free is really the price point for something like this.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the registration is for the drivers.
Speaker 1: It can't be a whole lot of money. There's they're
Speaker 1: shaded seating, there's bleachers, but they say you probably should
Speaker 1: bring a folding chair if you want to just kind
Speaker 1: of hang out and you know, one of the grassy
Speaker 1: areas and watch and catch everything because it is a
Speaker 1: long day. I mean they start in the morning early,
Speaker 1: goes all the way until dusk. I would guess, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not sunset but dusk. So it's um. It seems
Speaker 1: like a good mix of cars to uh, mix of
Speaker 1: shops that are really into the speed and then just
Speaker 1: average folks with nice cars. I'm just want to go
Speaker 1: out there and run the mile. There's a healthy mix
Speaker 1: of both amateur and I would call him professional. There's
Speaker 1: these people that do the speed runs are professional race shops,
Speaker 1: professional engineers, absolutely. Yeah, they're they're in shops building cars
Speaker 1: to specifically run in this event, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about one car and specific that's what was built,
Speaker 1: the record Holder. Of course, we'll get to that later
Speaker 1: in the podcast, I promise. Gosh, I'm all over the place.
Speaker 1: I apologize Kurt and and listeners because, um, I'm just
Speaker 1: skipping all over the place. But I feel like there's
Speaker 1: just that there actually is a lot of new information.
Speaker 1: You know that the spectators and the number of entrance
Speaker 1: is something we should talk about, because I just kind
Speaker 1: of breezed over that a moment ago, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, back in two thousand three in Goliad, they
Speaker 1: had thirty five participants and almost no spectators, So there
Speaker 1: are very few people there outside of the timing individuals
Speaker 1: and you know, the staff that operates it and the participants.
Speaker 1: There were very few people there outside of that. Well, now,
Speaker 1: as of two thousand eighteen, or at the two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen event, I think it was the March event, they
Speaker 1: had something like twenty hundred spectators at this thing, so
Speaker 1: it's really grown in popularity. I can only assume that
Speaker 1: it will go up, you know, with social media, you know,
Speaker 1: reach and all that, you know that they're kind of
Speaker 1: able to garner more attention from this community and from
Speaker 1: you know, people that are interested in this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and not just from the United States, but everywhere. People
Speaker 1: come from, you know, from Mexico, from Canada, from Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: from France. They're from all over the world now participating
Speaker 1: in this thing, which is really cool. And the number
Speaker 1: of participants they went from thirty five again in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, is climbed steadily now they allow something like
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty or more participants. And one thing
Speaker 1: about this particular event, when you throw it back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of spectator type racing, which I guess goes
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the car um the fact
Speaker 1: that you can watch these cars do this thing and
Speaker 1: maybe it's something that you can go and watch with
Speaker 1: that hope of maybe one day you can get your
Speaker 1: car out there and do it. Unlike going to a
Speaker 1: professional sports car racer indiecr NASCAR, you can't really dream
Speaker 1: of doing that if you're just the spectator, the fan. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: like you you said earlier that this is a nice
Speaker 1: health the mix of people that have built a car
Speaker 1: in their garage and want to bring it out and
Speaker 1: try it. It could be a really like kind of
Speaker 1: a hot street car that they have just never been
Speaker 1: able to really push to the maximum, to the limit.
Speaker 1: And it also could be like these shops that specifically
Speaker 1: build cars for this event with the one mile run
Speaker 1: in mind, and that's the main goal, and that's all
Speaker 1: they do. They just do that with that one car.
Speaker 1: And you know, they might have a customer that comes
Speaker 1: in and says, I want to be in this, here's
Speaker 1: my budget, here's the car I want to start with,
Speaker 1: here's you know whatever. You know, they have lots of
Speaker 1: sponsors and all that is. It's a lot like professional
Speaker 1: racing would be for some people. But you don't what
Speaker 1: you don't see is you don't see like a Formula
Speaker 1: one team pull up with their F one car and
Speaker 1: run this mile. You don't see and and honestly, they
Speaker 1: would probably be beaten by some of the guys that
Speaker 1: build cars in their own garage, which is unbelievable to me.
Speaker 1: I'm and it's it's such a strange contest and maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we should talk about just like I hope them
Speaker 1: saying this right way, the right way, but some of
Speaker 1: the uniqueness of this event because there's so many things
Speaker 1: about it that are different. So, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: a full mile run. It's not a quarter mile like
Speaker 1: you would find in a dragstrip. It's not a long
Speaker 1: distance run either. It's it's a full I guess a
Speaker 1: mile is a long distance. But you start a standing start,
Speaker 1: standing start, not a rolling start as a speed record
Speaker 1: would be, for example, the land speed record. Generally they
Speaker 1: want to get up to a certain speed before they
Speaker 1: start the Yeah, so okay, so when we start talking
Speaker 1: about times and they're not times rather because that's another
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about. But when we started
Speaker 1: talking about start talking about like top speeds in this
Speaker 1: one mile, you gotta remember it's a car that's going
Speaker 1: zero miles per hour. The clock starts as it crosses
Speaker 1: that one mile mark. That's the all their measuring is
Speaker 1: just the speed, not the time. And that's unique in
Speaker 1: that if you're going for a top speed run typically
Speaker 1: like if you're out in Utah and the Salt Flats
Speaker 1: or you know, any desert run or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked about the thrust SSC, and you know,
Speaker 1: the land speed record attempts and we'll probably talk many
Speaker 1: more times about stuff like that. But they have the
Speaker 1: advantage of having this kind of a ramp up. I
Speaker 1: guess a long long run it could be miles long
Speaker 1: to ramp up the speed. Then there's like a timed mile,
Speaker 1: and then they have a long way to to shut down. Well,
Speaker 1: this one is just that mile. So you don't get
Speaker 1: to start at a hundred and eighty miles an hour
Speaker 1: and then try to get to you know, two fifty
Speaker 1: miles an hour. You have to start at zero and
Speaker 1: try to get to two fifty miles an hour in
Speaker 1: that short amount of space. The speeds are measured um
Speaker 1: along the way and displayed to the spectators. So there's
Speaker 1: great big boards that have led readouts that you know,
Speaker 1: show the speeds at I believe it's a quarter mile,
Speaker 1: and then another at a half a mile, and then
Speaker 1: they give them the final mile speed. I don't think
Speaker 1: they bother with three quarter mile speed. If they do,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in any of these videos. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that strikes me is like
Speaker 1: even the quarter mile speeds are about what you would
Speaker 1: expect from a dragster like you watch. You watch like
Speaker 1: the you know, the private teams at at drag strips,
Speaker 1: and you get about what you would think out of that.
Speaker 1: The half mile speed goes up considerably. I mean they're
Speaker 1: going really really fast, a lot of them are at
Speaker 1: this point. Then you have the mile speed. And what's
Speaker 1: what's shocking to me a lot of times is the
Speaker 1: difference in speed. As you you said this to me
Speaker 1: off air, the difference in speed. You would not expect
Speaker 1: it to jump up so much between the half mile
Speaker 1: and the full mile, but it does well even between
Speaker 1: the quarter mile and the half mile. I look at
Speaker 1: it as the first quarter mile they try to get
Speaker 1: the car to hook up as as opposed to drag
Speaker 1: race you wanted to to hook up right away. So
Speaker 1: the first quarter miles kind of getting everything stable because
Speaker 1: they're gonna start going much faster, and in cars that
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily designed to go that fast, or at least
Speaker 1: from the factory. So I guess one the point I'm
Speaker 1: getting at is from the half mile to the end,
Speaker 1: that's when they're really applying the power and trying to
Speaker 1: keep everything stable. And just interesting how how how much
Speaker 1: you could trying to hook up all that power to
Speaker 1: the pavement in a half a mile is interesting to
Speaker 1: watch that increase in so I agree, And and what
Speaker 1: we're accustomed to seeing from the production car speeds when
Speaker 1: we watch these record attempts from whether it be Bugatti
Speaker 1: or Lamborghini or whoever is running the Ferrari or any
Speaker 1: of those that running with these top end speed records
Speaker 1: or Kona Seg or any of those. Once you get
Speaker 1: to a certain point at in those cars, they relatively
Speaker 1: slowly increased speed after about I think it's like after
Speaker 1: right around two hundred miles an hour. Um, you know
Speaker 1: that's when things starting to get get a little dicey.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, well, especially between between like two fifty
Speaker 1: and three hundred, I mean, super incredible. Again, watching one
Speaker 1: of the one of the production cars do it attempted
Speaker 1: in a very professionally made YouTube video you know that
Speaker 1: is done in Germany. And again I'm gonna get to it,
Speaker 1: but we kind of have already talked about it. The
Speaker 1: guy says, and this is the way he put it
Speaker 1: out paraphrase. He says, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: or most people will at some point be able to
Speaker 1: achieve a h fifty miles per hour in their life
Speaker 1: in a car. And I don't know about most, but
Speaker 1: a lot. And again, this is the guy from he's
Speaker 1: a German race car driver, so he probably has a
Speaker 1: skewed view of what people can do. And let's say
Speaker 1: a few people are gonna go a hundred fifty. But
Speaker 1: then he says, you push it a little bit more
Speaker 1: and you go a hundred and eighty miles an hour,
Speaker 1: And that's a lot different than going a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles an hour. There's a big difference. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect it. He said, if you go from a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty to two hundred miles an hour, that's like
Speaker 1: a whole different world, they said, Like it's it's something
Speaker 1: that you only can get through experience, Like you don't
Speaker 1: know what that feels like until you've done it. And
Speaker 1: then he said, once you go from two hundred miles
Speaker 1: an hour to three hundred miles an hour, it becomes
Speaker 1: like this ridiculous just I don't know, just a mess,
Speaker 1: Like it really messes with your head, is what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not things that aren't aren't happening when
Speaker 1: you would normally perceive them to happen. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: much much faster, and it just doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: your brain. You can't even comprehend to what's happening because
Speaker 1: you know everything is line passed you. It's such a
Speaker 1: great rate of speed. And you know, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about being in a desert area where these runs are made,
Speaker 1: these production car runs are made. They're made on a
Speaker 1: track in Germany that has trees near it and guard
Speaker 1: rails and you know, cameras and everything all over the place.
Speaker 1: It's and lines on the road. It's a lot different.
Speaker 1: You get that real sensation of speed getting back to
Speaker 1: the Texas Mile. It's not just cars, because we're just
Speaker 1: talking about cars right now. It's uh, it's cars, sports cars,
Speaker 1: it's motorcycles, it's truck's, purpose built race cars that come
Speaker 1: out and do it. And electric cars. Electric cars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of category. They have this electric car
Speaker 1: that is the fastest. I need to make sure I
Speaker 1: phrase this right because I'm sure there's nuances. Don't worry
Speaker 1: on the world's fastest accelerating modified road car zero to
Speaker 1: sixty miles per hour and one point seven nine one
Speaker 1: point seven nine seconds. It kind of makes sense for
Speaker 1: electric I guess, to be the fastest because it has
Speaker 1: instant torque, like every bit of the torque is available
Speaker 1: the second you push that accelerator. However, I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: they're measuring zero to six you speed it. That must
Speaker 1: be just kind of their own thing probably, But the
Speaker 1: top I think I know which one you're talking about.
Speaker 1: The this is a this is an older car that
Speaker 1: they've retrofitted with Mustang sixty eight Mustang fast Back, and
Speaker 1: they call it the Zombie too. And I wonder, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: because they've called to two. I wonder if that's their goal,
Speaker 1: if that's what they're shooting for. That one actually has
Speaker 1: the electric vehicle speed record in the in the Texas
Speaker 1: mile add a hundred and seventy eight miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and I did that back in March off and it
Speaker 1: hasn't been beaten since. UM. Hundred and seventy eight miles
Speaker 1: per hour is pretty darn impressive for as six. Think
Speaker 1: about the aerodynamics of a sixty eight must Stang Fastback.
Speaker 1: Imagine pushing that up to a hundred and seventy eight
Speaker 1: in just one mile. I mean, that's that's impressive. That's
Speaker 1: that's the impressive part. If you had ten miles. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could get it up to that speed. Maybe you
Speaker 1: know you have to have a safe area to do it,
Speaker 1: and all the testing and everything you know to go
Speaker 1: along with it. But I think the one mile thing
Speaker 1: is probably the most important or the most I don't
Speaker 1: know that the most be the most important number in
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I ever run the Texas kilometer. I
Speaker 1: don't think they know not in Texas. I think you
Speaker 1: get shot if you even if you even mentioned the
Speaker 1: kilometer in Texas. But you know what we should you
Speaker 1: know we should say this though. And I know we've
Speaker 1: been just doing miles per hour here because we're a
Speaker 1: US based show. But I guess for anyone who's interested,
Speaker 1: the top speed if you if you're talking about going
Speaker 1: three miles per hour three per hour or something like
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty three kilometers per hour, and the
Speaker 1: distance we're talking about here would be if you're doing
Speaker 1: four and you're you're getting in a vehicle to four
Speaker 1: hund a eight three kilometers per hour in just one
Speaker 1: point six kilometers of roadway, if you want to look
Speaker 1: at it that way. So it's those are the types
Speaker 1: of distances and speeds we're talking about. If if you've
Speaker 1: been confused by the mile per hour thing, or you know,
Speaker 1: having to go to your your conversion chart and rapidly,
Speaker 1: you know, punching numbers. Before we take a break, I
Speaker 1: want to say one more thing, and I only want
Speaker 1: to do this because I don't like to end on
Speaker 1: a sad note, and I think we should talk about
Speaker 1: something a little bit sad. Well, it was sad, but
Speaker 1: it's not breaking news sad. I guess it didn't happen
Speaker 1: just now, something a lot of people probably already know about.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back with some happy news in just
Speaker 1: a moment. But one of the guys that we talked
Speaker 1: about in the previous podcast, in the Car Stuff episode
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, we were talking about him just
Speaker 1: breaking the record, you know, he had he had just
Speaker 1: achieved a record of something like two and seventy eight
Speaker 1: point six miles per hour at the at the Texas
Speaker 1: Mile and he was the current record holder. He's he
Speaker 1: was on a motorcycle. His name was Bill Warner. Of
Speaker 1: course we were talking about him in the present tense.
Speaker 1: He was still around doing what he was doing. But
Speaker 1: unfortunately Bill Warner died not much later the very next year,
Speaker 1: in a motorcycle accident. Um doing of course, doing what
Speaker 1: he does or what he did, which is a you know,
Speaker 1: achieving land speed records. So he broke the record again.
Speaker 1: He broke the three in a mile per hour barrier
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven at a different event, I believe.
Speaker 1: And then that is when actually you know what, that's
Speaker 1: when we had our podcast right after the three eleven,
Speaker 1: so we were you know, an mind about the you know,
Speaker 1: getting past three eleven miles per hour on a motorcycle
Speaker 1: on pavement at that time, and against some specifics I
Speaker 1: can go into in just a second. But just after
Speaker 1: that in July when when he died. Um again not
Speaker 1: breaking news by any means, but I think that we
Speaker 1: need to mention it because of, you know, the the
Speaker 1: focus that we had on him in the first podcast
Speaker 1: that we did. This bike at the time that he
Speaker 1: was riding at something like six and fifty horse power
Speaker 1: on a motorcycle. It's a high busa and they call
Speaker 1: it a conventional motorcycle, you know, where the rider's exposed,
Speaker 1: it's a traditional motorcycle. I supposed. However, when you look
Speaker 1: at it, I mean it's modified because it did have
Speaker 1: a turbo did have panels put on it. UM, So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like I guess the street modified Hyabusa
Speaker 1: with with a turbo Streamliner record is a lot faster.
Speaker 1: It's like another seventy eight miles an hour faster than this.
Speaker 1: So you know, once you enclose, the rider becomes much
Speaker 1: more aerodynamic. But this he was in an open bike
Speaker 1: and again he passed away. UM. I believe it was
Speaker 1: in July. I have two thirteen and it was well
Speaker 1: he was trying to break, um, break a record in
Speaker 1: I think he was in Maine, only forty four years old.
Speaker 1: But we've heard of land speed record people. That's how
Speaker 1: they die. Um. They kind of know the the risks
Speaker 1: and the dangers involved in that and they accept that.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry to hear that. You know he passed,
Speaker 1: but I figured we should just mention it. Um. You
Speaker 1: know that that that's somebody who we've lost along the way.
Speaker 1: I want to get into some happier news, so let's
Speaker 1: let's let's finish up by talking about the current record
Speaker 1: holder at the Texas Smile in just a minute. After
Speaker 1: we take a break, and we're back and I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin and I am Kurt Garin, Oh you got
Speaker 1: a Kurt great. Yeah, you called me off guard just
Speaker 1: a little up there. I had to run over to
Speaker 1: the mic from the from the computer, y'all out there,
Speaker 1: couldn't see that. Fantastic. Well, and you're quick, quick on
Speaker 1: your feet. Good work, good work, And I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to catch you off guard in this for GT we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about yeah maybe right alright, So so
Speaker 1: here's the deal. All right, the current record was just
Speaker 1: broken recently. This now, this is um. We're doing this
Speaker 1: podcast in twenty nineteen. We are in between events in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. So there's already been the March of nineteen event,
Speaker 1: and there's going to be the October nine event. We're
Speaker 1: doing this in September, so right before this, and it's
Speaker 1: always the last weekend in March and the last weekend
Speaker 1: in October. Yes, if you want to plan for it
Speaker 1: and you're in your schedules or you want to look up,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a time when you can travel down
Speaker 1: to the Houston area and maybe catch this thing live.
Speaker 1: Definitely do that. I mean, it's it's a worthwhile thing
Speaker 1: and you can go to you know, I'll give you
Speaker 1: the website so you can go and look at it.
Speaker 1: What was it Texas Texas. Yeah, Texas Smile dot net
Speaker 1: was the site, So check that out if you want to. Again,
Speaker 1: we're not selling tickets or anything, so it's just an
Speaker 1: awesome event. Go see it if you're in Texas, if
Speaker 1: you want to. I don't care anyway. I don't carry
Speaker 1: the way if you go. Yeah, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to be flipping about it, but I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't care. Yeah, you'd like to go, I'd like to go.
Speaker 1: I personally would love to be there and witness one
Speaker 1: of these because I think it's just it's just awesome.
Speaker 1: I would love to have been there last March. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so last March something incredible happened, right right, okay, So
Speaker 1: what happened? Um? Well, I four GT broke the three
Speaker 1: mark and the Texas Smile three hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: Now it's three I think the actual record. I mean
Speaker 1: just it's just barely above it. It's three hundred point
Speaker 1: four three point four. And I know that's nitpicky, but
Speaker 1: when you get to those speeds, that's going to be
Speaker 1: important because someone might go three hundred point five next
Speaker 1: year and and that will matter. Nine. It is not
Speaker 1: three hundred. That's how it is. This is a current
Speaker 1: record that's held at the Texas Texas Smile and it's
Speaker 1: by a company that built this car specifically for a
Speaker 1: customer that that wanted to do this or for themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the cells are customer, not sure,
Speaker 1: but they get Yeah, the focus has always been on
Speaker 1: the company anyways. The company's name is M two K
Speaker 1: Motorsports and the car itself is a is a first generator,
Speaker 1: I should say first. It's a version of the the
Speaker 1: g T, the four GT that was put out back
Speaker 1: in the mid two thousands. So it's a two thousand
Speaker 1: six four GT, not the current one, not the not
Speaker 1: the you know four dollar ones. It had a Gulf
Speaker 1: livery which I think is really cool. You know, the
Speaker 1: blue and orange. The number on the car is significant,
Speaker 1: you know the number in the car, just by the
Speaker 1: number on the car that they ran this year is
Speaker 1: to was their previous record that they had made back
Speaker 1: in I want to say it was two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: So the two thousand seventeen is when they ran two
Speaker 1: miles per hour and they were thinking like, we are
Speaker 1: so close to this, we're really really close to this.
Speaker 1: And I saw an interview that was done by the
Speaker 1: owner of this company on a local channel. It was
Speaker 1: it was done on KPRC. The interview the owner of
Speaker 1: the shop, and he said, you know, back when we
Speaker 1: started this whole object, the goal was something like two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five miles an hour. That was like
Speaker 1: the record, and that's what they wanted to beat. They
Speaker 1: wanted to go two three five, he said. Three hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour is it was never even a dream
Speaker 1: at that point. But as the years progressed, they decided
Speaker 1: that we've got to keep up with you know, exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on, and and keep up the speed with
Speaker 1: the current records, and and if we tune this and
Speaker 1: tweak that, and you know, re engineered this part and
Speaker 1: make this a little bit more, are dynamic underneath the
Speaker 1: car or you know whatever. They did a lot of
Speaker 1: work on the vehicle, and I'm I know, I'm just
Speaker 1: paraphrasing this in in a horrible way, simplifying what they
Speaker 1: did exactly. But they brought the car back just two
Speaker 1: years later, and they ended up topping three hundred miles
Speaker 1: per hour, and they did it in a series of
Speaker 1: several runs, and I kind of see it as as
Speaker 1: I think the Texas Mile people that have confirmed, Uh,
Speaker 1: these were kind of like shakedown runs for them. They
Speaker 1: knew that they could get close to three hundred or
Speaker 1: three hundred. They were hoping for it. Of course, big
Speaker 1: celebration when they did hit it, but the early runs
Speaker 1: were nowhere near that speed. The earlier runs were relatively
Speaker 1: low speed, and and of course they weren't sand bagging,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing, nothing to be gained from that. But
Speaker 1: over the course of a three day weekend, you know,
Speaker 1: they ran and I think I want to say it
Speaker 1: was four runs. The first run was something like a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five miles per hour somewhere near there.
Speaker 1: The second run they really they amped it up at
Speaker 1: this point two hundred and forty miles per hour in
Speaker 1: the next run. And that puts them already in an
Speaker 1: elite group, I guess, because the two hundred mile per
Speaker 1: hour club is a big deal at the Texas Mile.
Speaker 1: If you can get your car to go two hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour, that's that's pretty impressive by any standard. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's cool. So they're already in
Speaker 1: that and they had been before with their two ninety
Speaker 1: three or whatever. Um the next run they say the
Speaker 1: third and final run, but I think there was a
Speaker 1: fourth run. I think there was another one stuffed in
Speaker 1: there somewhere that, you know, maybe didn't go so well
Speaker 1: that they didn't even report. The third and final run,
Speaker 1: which they're claiming as the third and final run was
Speaker 1: the one that they read. They finally reached the three
Speaker 1: point four mile per hour mark. And I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: I I learned this along the way, and this is
Speaker 1: so impressive to me. You know, we talked about the
Speaker 1: difference between quarter mile, half mile, and full mile. At
Speaker 1: the half mile mark on the per hour run, they
Speaker 1: were already going two forty miles per hour and a
Speaker 1: half mile, so that's incredibly fast. Already they're already topping
Speaker 1: you know, what a lot of cars do in the
Speaker 1: full mile at the half mile. And then not only that,
Speaker 1: they gained sixty miles per hour in between the half
Speaker 1: mile and the full mile. And to gain that, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you in just a minute why that is so
Speaker 1: impressive to me. But to gain sixty miles per hour
Speaker 1: in that in that relatively short amount of space, and
Speaker 1: I know that time doesn't come into this, but we're
Speaker 1: only talking about a run that can you know, from
Speaker 1: beginning to end is like maybe twenty two seconds, one
Speaker 1: seconds somewhere around there. That's the full length of time
Speaker 1: it takes them to go one full mile. So really
Speaker 1: really impressive. I mean, it's just unbelievable that they were
Speaker 1: able to do that. But but again, it took them
Speaker 1: two years of engineering and refining and you know, changing
Speaker 1: things are round to be able to get that extra
Speaker 1: seven miles per hour out of this vehicle. And you know,
Speaker 1: they were just working at it all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to really amp this thing up to get it
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, that three hour mark. Because that's
Speaker 1: a huge milestone for them. They're always going to be
Speaker 1: in their record books as breaking that and doing that.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of infamy for them, I suppose. And uh,
Speaker 1: one interesting thing to me is that it isn't necessary
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a race car, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a purpose built dragster type car. No, it's a say
Speaker 1: standard two thousand six four GT if you can call
Speaker 1: it standard, right, But what I mean, what you're saying
Speaker 1: is is a car's body itself is not engineered like
Speaker 1: a dragster would know. It's example, it's a road going car,
Speaker 1: and and so therefore it has these built in limitations
Speaker 1: that overcome, such as holes for the production car would
Speaker 1: have for cooling and things like that. I would even
Speaker 1: imagine tire width. I don't know if they messed with
Speaker 1: anything like that. I think that they had to the
Speaker 1: I wanted to just a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: car itself, you know, about the about the engine, and
Speaker 1: just a tiny bit more because I don't know a
Speaker 1: whole lot about it. Just a little bit. And then
Speaker 1: I want to like make this comparison between the production
Speaker 1: vehicles that are trying to achieve three and miles per
Speaker 1: hour and then what this company has done. To remember,
Speaker 1: the car that's hitting the air is basically the four GT.
Speaker 1: It's not designed from the ground up to go fasts.
Speaker 1: It was built upon an already existing car. Engine block
Speaker 1: is I think a stock engine block as well. All
Speaker 1: that stuff, to me is cool because it's not completely
Speaker 1: customed exactly, not completely custom. It's modified. It's modified. I
Speaker 1: think it's in a tasteful way. I guess I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to get it, you know, it's the car is
Speaker 1: a classic. Yeah, oh yeah, sure, it's cool to see
Speaker 1: this classic cargo three miles an hour. Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's you've said a mouthful here. I
Speaker 1: don't even know where to begin. It's fascinating to me
Speaker 1: that they can take that design and push it to
Speaker 1: that extreme. We're talking about the Bugatti, the just the
Speaker 1: production car that three miles an hour, and it was
Speaker 1: designed with this in mind. Yeah, the body reshapes itself
Speaker 1: at certain speeds. Doesn't happen on this car. Yeah no.
Speaker 1: And there's so many little nuances to what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, And I know we're not going to do
Speaker 1: a justice by having this discuss. Maybe we can have
Speaker 1: a different discussion. I think we should someday about these
Speaker 1: modified versus production car requirements standards, you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: arguments against and four and all that. I think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot there that we can talk about. A
Speaker 1: ton and I know we've already mentioned a few, but yeah,
Speaker 1: when you start talking about like tires that have to
Speaker 1: go three hundred miles per hour, you're not going to
Speaker 1: go down to the general tire store and pick those up. Now.
Speaker 1: It is a and it is extremely sleek looking car.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at the two thousand six four
Speaker 1: g T and it's it has the appearance of a
Speaker 1: race car. It really does. But it's not a custom
Speaker 1: built dragster. It's not a car that was built to
Speaker 1: go three hundred miles per hour. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I'm gonna spit ball here. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: even begin to know the actual number. But let's say
Speaker 1: that the car was designed to go a d ninety
Speaker 1: miles per hour. That was the top speed and that's
Speaker 1: what they thought would be maximum on this They didn't
Speaker 1: test the aerodynamics beyond that for this thing to take
Speaker 1: off in the air at a certain speed, because that's
Speaker 1: what happens. You know, when when you mess around with
Speaker 1: the aerodynamics of a vehicle, you know, it becomes a
Speaker 1: wing and be you know, you become airborne at a
Speaker 1: certain point. I mean small airplanes and well large airplanes
Speaker 1: can fly at these speeds and do fly at these speeds.
Speaker 1: So keeping the car on the ground is a huge issue.
Speaker 1: There's so much that goes into these cars and the
Speaker 1: modifications that they have to make in order to do this.
Speaker 1: But a couple of things that m K two more
Speaker 1: Sports did to the four g T to keep it stuck,
Speaker 1: if you want to put it that way. And I
Speaker 1: I'm laughing when I say this, because when I read
Speaker 1: this next paragraph, I'm reading from an article that came
Speaker 1: from a site called The Drive, and it was written
Speaker 1: just after the record was broken on March two, nineteen.
Speaker 1: If you want to go and look at this article,
Speaker 1: you can do that. It's on the Drive. It's all
Speaker 1: about the three point for mile for our run. And
Speaker 1: it says, and I'll just read this one paragraph directly here,
Speaker 1: but it says, well, the M two K Motorsports prepped
Speaker 1: for GT retains the stock five point four leader V
Speaker 1: eight from the previous generation for g T. So you're right.
Speaker 1: It is a stock block and it's stock stock engine size.
Speaker 1: I guess it's been well, they say, seriously amped up
Speaker 1: to deliver stratospheric horsepower that not even a dine O
Speaker 1: can handle. The guests on this car is twenty hundred
Speaker 1: horse power. Five hundred horse power in that car that
Speaker 1: originally I don't know what it had. Probably I'm gonna again,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess, I don't know if the stats in
Speaker 1: front of me, maybe five hundred six hundred horse power
Speaker 1: at the most. There's somewhere around their ballpark to put
Speaker 1: you know, put dred in there. And this is only
Speaker 1: a guess, by the way, because when they said on
Speaker 1: a Dino, it's hard to strap a car down in
Speaker 1: a way in such a manner that you can test
Speaker 1: it beyond somewhere roughly around two thousand horse power. So
Speaker 1: it does exceed two thousand. They think it goes up
Speaker 1: to about hundred, but it's nearly impossible to keep it
Speaker 1: on the Dino at that point. I mean with chains
Speaker 1: and everything. I mean it's chain straps. We've all seen,
Speaker 1: you know, those Dino videos of cars breaking the straps
Speaker 1: or breaking the chains, and you know, just cataclosed, big
Speaker 1: failures that happen, horrifically expensive accidents that happened, you know,
Speaker 1: in shops. And you know, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: those those people, you know that that either own the
Speaker 1: car or hook the car off. You don't want to
Speaker 1: be either one of those on on either side of that.
Speaker 1: But horsepower is an estimate, and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: reaching three hundred, and we've talked about kind of the
Speaker 1: you know that it's quite an achievement. Tight. You know,
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree, right. The question that
Speaker 1: was posed by the author of this article is a
Speaker 1: good one, and he says that typically these types of
Speaker 1: records that are set by private companies or privateers, I
Speaker 1: think is what they call them. Typically the manufacturers don't
Speaker 1: get too rattled by these. They don't say, like, well, chiefs,
Speaker 1: we've were building five thousand dollar supercar, you know, why
Speaker 1: can't we get ours to go three? They don't say
Speaker 1: that to themselves. It's like a different sphere that they're
Speaker 1: operating in because they know they're not going to create
Speaker 1: power car. You know that it is specifically built for
Speaker 1: one event in order to break that one record, and
Speaker 1: then that's it. And a car company, a big company,
Speaker 1: just think about the money that they would have to
Speaker 1: unload on a project like that, and the teams and
Speaker 1: the testing, and it becomes a logistical nightmare for them
Speaker 1: to do that. Bugatti has done that in a sense.
Speaker 1: The question here at the end of this article is
Speaker 1: kind of funny because they're saying it's it's an impressive
Speaker 1: feat to reach three miles per hour anyway, and to
Speaker 1: do it in one mile is even more impressive. And
Speaker 1: then just that it's a private company that was able
Speaker 1: to do it out of some and I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: a little shop, but it was a motor sports shop.
Speaker 1: Will they take any notice of this? Will Bugatti take
Speaker 1: notice of it? Will Kona Seg take notice of it?
Speaker 1: Will they? Will they be kind of ruffled by this one?
Speaker 1: And again this is written in March. Will in August
Speaker 1: and August two, that's when Bugatti made through three mile
Speaker 1: per hour run. And I know they were working on
Speaker 1: it long before that. It doesn't just happen in a
Speaker 1: couple of months like that. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: And it was a production car well and wasn't in
Speaker 1: a mile yeah and yeah, okay. The tires, so their
Speaker 1: tires are really specific and that remember they were X
Speaker 1: rayed before they even put them on the car in
Speaker 1: order to make sure they are free of imperfections, and
Speaker 1: they're not. I don't think that they're doing that with these,
Speaker 1: you know, these tires on this this four G T
Speaker 1: I just don't think that it's happening that way. I
Speaker 1: know that they're they're extreme quality, and everything's well balanced
Speaker 1: and and you know, broken in and perfect. It's absolutely perfect.
Speaker 1: But they didn't go as far as to X ray
Speaker 1: the tires before they made their runs. Well, these are tires,
Speaker 1: they have to glue onto the rims. Apparently tires don't
Speaker 1: hold up very well at these speeds for very long.
Speaker 1: So we're talking you only have a short amount of
Speaker 1: time on a set of tires at these speeds until
Speaker 1: they just become obliterated. Yeah, And that's just one element
Speaker 1: of this, right, I mean, I mean there's so many
Speaker 1: things that we mentioned. You know, they are dynamics, and
Speaker 1: we mentioned that how the shape of the body of
Speaker 1: the Bugatti changed, you know, as it went faster and
Speaker 1: faster it was on a track. Here's the other thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Cash, I feel like I'm I'm going crazy or something.
Speaker 1: I got so much to get out and out turning out.
Speaker 1: I am, I really am. I I feel like, you
Speaker 1: know what, here's what's gonna happen. Here's's gonna happen as
Speaker 1: soon as we're done. And I say, you know, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and all that to our listeners, and you know,
Speaker 1: I send them on their way and they're out, you know,
Speaker 1: doing their own research and digging up all this stuff
Speaker 1: and looking at the Texas Mile and buying tickets and
Speaker 1: all that. I'm gonna remember about ten things I didn't
Speaker 1: say in this podcast, even though I've been going a
Speaker 1: mile a minute, just a mile a minute. It's funny
Speaker 1: that would be really slow at this at this comfortation,
Speaker 1: that'd be sixty miles an hour. That's not good at all.
Speaker 1: Um all right, anyway, So I was thinking back, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Okay, what's so, is this a response
Speaker 1: to the Texas mile record. I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: it is. I think the timing is a little strange.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little suspicious that, you know, they decided,
Speaker 1: all right, now is the time we're just gonna go
Speaker 1: do it. I just feel like the three d mile
Speaker 1: per hour mark for a car, it's that number nowadays,
Speaker 1: well nowadays it's like a two hundred mile an hour number.
Speaker 1: Was I don't know when sixties. I was gonna say
Speaker 1: years ago maybe or more. Yeah, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: the nice round number that takes a lot of fine
Speaker 1: tuning to get there. And we should talk about someday
Speaker 1: soon is four coming? But I don't know. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I well, technology, the whole talk about tires, that's a
Speaker 1: limiting factor. And um in all of this, and as
Speaker 1: technology gets better, I'm sure that we'll be looking at
Speaker 1: four you know, I mean, right now, you mentioned the
Speaker 1: electric car, the Mustang. It's interesting they chose a Mustang
Speaker 1: from the sixties to do it because the combustion Mustang
Speaker 1: in the sixties. It would be interesting to know how
Speaker 1: fast they could run the Texas Smile. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: almost like now electric cars there where combustion engines were
Speaker 1: in the sixties. Where are they going to be sixty
Speaker 1: seventy years from now? Where the combustion engine is going
Speaker 1: to be? Where where rubber compounds going to be? And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this, you know, boy again I'm skipping
Speaker 1: all over the place. But going back to the Mustang
Speaker 1: that you just mentioned, you know, the the sixty must
Speaker 1: the the electric version that did this Texas Smile run
Speaker 1: the record run. They give it an equivalent horsepower rating,
Speaker 1: you know how they can kind of extrapolate what it
Speaker 1: would be in horse power eight hundred horse power, So
Speaker 1: that's far far above what the sixty eight Mustang fastback had.
Speaker 1: Of course, um so it would be interesting to see
Speaker 1: what the you know, internal combustion engine version of the
Speaker 1: sixty Mustang could could muster in the one mile run
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe it's been run there. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: out of all the cars out of two twice a
Speaker 1: year for sixteen years, I would guess that somebody has
Speaker 1: run at Mustang you know, fast back at some point
Speaker 1: maybe maybe alright, so back finally maybe maybe we're gonna
Speaker 1: steer back exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this, this Bugatti thing and how they ran. They
Speaker 1: did a three four mile per hour run in August
Speaker 1: of two thousand nineteen, so not long after the Texas Smile. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was achieved at three hundred point four.
Speaker 1: I was watching these and trying to draw comparisons and
Speaker 1: you know, contrasts, and you don't figure out what's happening here.
Speaker 1: But now, remember I said the GT had horse power,
Speaker 1: and that's an estimate. It might be more, might be
Speaker 1: a little less. The Buggatti, of course, had Sharon had
Speaker 1: so many modify, had lots of modifications to it, and
Speaker 1: of course I'm sure that the GT does as well.
Speaker 1: But the big difference here is that this is a
Speaker 1: road going production car technically, I mean, it can be
Speaker 1: sold to the public, it can be driven on the
Speaker 1: roads and that's one thing that Buggatti has to deal with.
Speaker 1: The builders at M two K Motorsport don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with They don't have to worry about mass production
Speaker 1: of this not mass, but limited production of this one vehicle.
Speaker 1: It's a one of a kind, it always will be.
Speaker 1: But they're dealing with just that one event, that one record,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like we run it, we're done
Speaker 1: with it, and then maybe improve it for next time.
Speaker 1: But that's it. The other thing that about this is
Speaker 1: that Buggatti had a quad turbo W sixteen that was
Speaker 1: tuned up to like sixteen hundred horse power, so it
Speaker 1: had almost a thou wasn't like nine hundred less horsepower
Speaker 1: to get up to the speed. But one thing that
Speaker 1: is most the most striking about this to me, and
Speaker 1: the most maybe the most impressive about the Texas Mile
Speaker 1: and the four gt s attempt or that the four
Speaker 1: GTS record run, is that it did it from a
Speaker 1: standing start and it only went you know those when
Speaker 1: it's a mile five thousand two feet. I think it
Speaker 1: went that distance and achieved three hundred point four miles
Speaker 1: per hour and that short amount of time that I mean,
Speaker 1: just imagine the force on the human body and the
Speaker 1: vehicle at that at that time, when you look at
Speaker 1: the Bugatti run and again all the specifics the altered
Speaker 1: body and the tires and the engineers and the teams
Speaker 1: and everybody involved, find maybe maybe there's some of that
Speaker 1: going on with the GT. But here's the other thing.
Speaker 1: That they did it at the special track. You know,
Speaker 1: under very controlled, such very controlled conditions that they were
Speaker 1: able to enter the track at one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: miles per hour. That's where they start at when they
Speaker 1: enter the straight. Then it takes them the entire five
Speaker 1: miles straight to get to three hundred and four miles
Speaker 1: per hour. When you watch the way the speed grows,
Speaker 1: and I'll be specific here because remember the half mile
Speaker 1: speed for the four G T it was two miles
Speaker 1: and then it got up to three hundred. If you
Speaker 1: watch the speed grow on the dials, the readings or
Speaker 1: whatever they give you on the YouTube videos for the
Speaker 1: Bugatti run, once they get to you know, if they
Speaker 1: let's say that you could even started at two forty
Speaker 1: the way that the miles per hour count up is
Speaker 1: like it's like this, it's like two forty one two
Speaker 1: three to the four G t didn't have that luxury.
Speaker 1: It was like going leaps and bounds up to three
Speaker 1: hundred miles per hour. It was accelerating so fast after
Speaker 1: the two forty mark that it's just unreal to think about,
Speaker 1: I mean, considering when you look at the Bugatti and
Speaker 1: what it's intended purposes. You know, it's intended to go fast.
Speaker 1: That's what it was built for, go fast, and to
Speaker 1: break this three in a mile per hour run. This,
Speaker 1: this particular model, the run was built for this, this test,
Speaker 1: and it will be sold, of course, but the way
Speaker 1: that it grows from two forty to three hundred and
Speaker 1: four is much much slower, still impressive. These are all impressive,
Speaker 1: still impressive, but much much slower than for GT. This
Speaker 1: is a completely different race or test. The Texas Smile
Speaker 1: seems like a strict power test. It's a brutal test.
Speaker 1: It's a brutal, brutal test, isn't it? I mean, And
Speaker 1: the footage from it is incredible to be able to
Speaker 1: see it now. You don't get a lot of um,
Speaker 1: a lot of shots of like the car at the
Speaker 1: finish line going by a three. You don't see that
Speaker 1: because it's already in the distance. It's gone in the
Speaker 1: spectator area where all the filming and everything's happening. I
Speaker 1: wish they had more cameras on the track watching the
Speaker 1: cars go buy at that speed, but you kind of
Speaker 1: reliant on, you know, the GoPro cameras that are in
Speaker 1: the vehicle, you know, by the drivers themselves, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course that gets into weight and aerodynamics and all that.
Speaker 1: Then you're also dealing with the spectator views people that
Speaker 1: are there with them on the team to film the event.
Speaker 1: You don't get a whole lot of like sensation of
Speaker 1: the cars passing you at the top speed. And I
Speaker 1: don't know why that is. Maybe it's because they don't
Speaker 1: want anything on the track that could damage or harm
Speaker 1: the driver or you know, if there's something went terribly wrong,
Speaker 1: which sometimes does you know, anytime you're talking about these speeds,
Speaker 1: you don't want any obstructions in the way. You want
Speaker 1: to be able to have plenty of room. They've got
Speaker 1: a half mile slowdown area that they know run off
Speaker 1: area with sand at the end and everything. Um but
Speaker 1: I just I find this whole thing fascinating. But there
Speaker 1: are other mile events, the Arkansas Mile, the Arkansas Mile,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. That's another one, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to immediately look up the Arkansas Mile as
Speaker 1: soon as we get out here, I really am. The
Speaker 1: Colorado Mile is another One's color Arkansas Mile. The Colorado Mile. Alright,
Speaker 1: So I'm finding out new things every moment here. But
Speaker 1: if you don't know anything about the Texas Mile or
Speaker 1: you know a little bit about it, now, you don't
Speaker 1: know everything, of course, because we we're just kind of
Speaker 1: scraping the surface on this thing. And it's fascinating to watch.
Speaker 1: Really if you're into that type of racing, it's it's
Speaker 1: really really cool. If you just like speed, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of nuances that you can kind
Speaker 1: of dig into and and find out about, and you
Speaker 1: know specific drivers and types of vehicles that are run there,
Speaker 1: and you know current records and all that. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I probably neglected to, uh, you know, give
Speaker 1: you all of the information. So if you want to
Speaker 1: dig into the Texas Smile and find out what it's
Speaker 1: all about again, um, please do so. But I do
Speaker 1: want to tell you that we are on all forms
Speaker 1: of social media that you can think of everything under
Speaker 1: the sun. Really Okay, Well, there's maybe three. Al right,
Speaker 1: So we're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find
Speaker 1: us there. You can always, uh, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: give us a little bit of feedback there if you want.
Speaker 1: We are car Stuff hsw at all three of those
Speaker 1: and um we do have, of course a big archive
Speaker 1: of material that you can find on iHeart dot com
Speaker 1: if you get your podcast there, or you can go
Speaker 1: to Apple Podcasts and leave some feedback at either one
Speaker 1: of those places. You can find our extensive archive on
Speaker 1: iHeart dot com. If you want to go to Apple
Speaker 1: podcast I think you're limited to the most recent three hundred.
Speaker 1: Of course, tell your friends because we're always trying to
Speaker 1: grow the audience and and get more people involved. So
Speaker 1: we really do appreciate it, and we will catch you
Speaker 1: next time. That's right, see you later. Car Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts or
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.