Car Throttle

Speed, like everything in life, is entirely relative.  You might think you're "only doing 90, gosh!" but the cop writing you a ticket for doing that speed in a 45mph zone probably disagrees.  And when you hit the speed limiter at 155mph in your BMW M3, you might think you're going fast - but the guy in the ZR-1 with his foot planted in 5th shooting for 200mph can't even see your headlights.  And that ZR-1, well, it'd seem pretty mundane from the seat of a Bugatti Veyron. So what makes a Bugatti Veyron seem a little slow?  Considering a current Veyron Super Sport is good for 268mph flat out, it'd have to be something really, really fast. But when your hobby is Land Speed Record racing,

Hands down, one of my favorite motorsports events has got to be the Texas Mile. In short, it's a balls-to-the-wall test of acceleration and top speed.  You've got a full damn mile to accelerate as hard as you can, and when you're done they give you a slip telling you how fast you crossed the traps at.  It's held in a small town in Texas called Goliad on a mostly-abandoned airstrip, and it's currently in it's seventh year of existance.  Initially only 35 crazies showed up to see how fast their cars could go; this year there were 220 participants with 40 on the waiting list.  Over 1000 runs were made down the air strip over the two-day event, and each of them was epic in

See, this is why they keep you on an island. It would seem that some Englishmen decided that what the world needed was not just a riding lawn mower capable of going 100 MPH, but they also want its top speed certified by the Guinness Book of World Records people. Sure, it's good to have goals. I've known that there has been lawn mower racing for some time. In a certain, hair-brained way, it has a certain appeal. There's different classes, so that gives you room to fiddle, and it's probably pretty cheap too. But like with any form of racing, some one is bound to ask, "Just how fast can one of these go?" The current answer is 81 mph which was set in 2006 by

Steve Fossett was known for his world records and adventures in balloons, sailboats, gliders, and powered aircraft. He was the first person to circumnavigate the globe via balloon, for example. Next on his list was to set the land speed record, and he died while piloting his plane in search of a suitable site for which to go for the record. The tragedy of his death, where his plane first went missing, and the wreckage not found for months, brought out all of his friends to aid the FAA in the search; people like Burt Rutan and Richard Branson. One of the interesting aspects of his ill-fated LSR venture was the car he was going to use to do it. It was, of all things, a used car,