![]() “I made the biggest mistake you can make in motorsports,” he continued. He also received two cash register receipt-sized pieces of paper with the official printout of his record runs. What did Danny Thompson’s achievement net him? Fame? Fortune? A sponsor? The story should wrap up there, with a happy ending for realizing a life-long dream. Averaged with yesterday’s speed of 446.605 mph, we achieved a new two-way AA/FS record of 448.757 m.p.h., enough to make us the world’s fastest piston-powered car.” “On Sunday morning, eight years of hard work culminated in a 450.909 m.p.h. “We did it!” he wrote on the team’s website. “In 1968, my dad, the mad scientists at Kar Kraft and an elite group of Southern California gearheads created a vehicle that they believed had the potential to become the world’s fastest hot rod,” Danny recalled, of the demoralizing wash-out. A loss of sponsorship canceled any 1969 return to the salt. It wasn’t until 1968, however, that Mickey made it back to Bonneville in 1968 with a new twin-engine Challenger II, but rain kept him from running. He had plans to do return and finish the job, especially when Craig Breedlove went faster three years later. But it was not officially recognized in the record books, because a back-up run at similar speeds in the opposite direction required to set a record, was aborted by mechanical difficulties. Thompson was the first American driver to break 400. That surpassed “The Fastest Man Alive” John Cobb’s one-way mark of 402 m.p.h., set at the salt flats in 1947. barrier he drove the same car, called Challenger 1 back then and propelled by four blown Pontiac V8s, to a one-way top speed of 406.60 m.p.h. My apologies to longtime friend Danny Thompson in advance for what I get wrong.ĭanny’s father, the so-called “Speed King”, Mickey Thompson, achieved international fame in 1960, when he became the first American to break the 400-m.p.h. There is actually quite a back story here. ![]()
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