Sport: It’s Speed

“For some men, it’s dope. For others, liquor. For others, tobacco, skiing, football, anything.” The grease-smeared hot-rodder from El Monte, Calif, grinned. “For me, it’s speed.”

It’s always been speed for Mickey Thompson, 30. who last week went to the annual Bonneville speed trials on the salt flats of Utah with Challenger I, the flashiest hot-rod of them all. To get ready for his run, Thompson quit his job as a pressman for the Los Angeles Times seven months ago, spent up to 20 hours a day —and most of his savings—working with an engineering friend named Fritz Voigt on the long (20 ft.), low (30 in. at the hood) monster.

Powering Challenger I were four 1959 Pontiac engines—two driving the front wheels, two the rear—that delivered a total of 1,800 h.p. on alcohol and nitromethane. The engines were coordinated by a hydraulic arm that controlled all four clutches simultaneously. Said Mickey: “We want to prove we can coax more speed out of one engine—or two, or three, or four—than any other men alive.”

Early one morning Thompson struggled into an all-black, leather driving outfit, snuggled his face into an oxygen mask, and climbed into a seat that slanted back like a chaise longue. A station wagon pushed Challenger I until her four engines caught at 80 m.p.h. Mile markers whipped past like rungs in a picket fence as the pale blue, aluminum-bodied car made a pass up and down the range at an average speed of 330.513 m.p.h.—64 m.p.h. faster than the American record he set last year.

But even that was not fast enough for Thompson. Later this month he plans to take a crack at the world’s land-speed record of 394.196 m.p.h. set in 1947 by Britain’s John Cobb. The hot-rodders who turn respectfully on the salt flats to watch Thompson are confident that he will eventually hit 400 m.p.h. in Challenger I. And so is Mickey Thompson: “There’s plenty more where that 330 came from.”