Anyone who knows Amir Rosenbaum understands that he is, at his core, a hardcore car guy. That’s why he started Spectre Performance nearly 30 years ago, and why he continues to push the envelope of speed and performance on a regular basis. The Spectre 341 Challenge, Bonneville land speed records, even uncorked daily drivers with LS7 dry sump engines. Everything he does is at full throttle. Rosenbaum first got a taste of land speed racing in his Ferrari F40, where he ran over 200mph and pushed the car faster than any other Maranello built machine had ever gone before on the salt.

That short wheelbase F40 wasn’t particularly stable, however, so Rosenbaum and the Spectre team decided to join the big leagues, and procured a streamliner. The car ended up undergoing a complete transformation, and nearly three years later the reborn Spectre Streamliner has set four records in less than one year, and we continue to inch closer to the 400mph barrier.

The following posts are Amir’s thoughts, feelings and stories about the world record attempt, getting inducted into the prestigious 300mph Chapter of the 200mph Club, how the car handled at well over 350mph, and why he got started in this crazy race to 400 in the first place. Enjoy, and please leave comments here on the blog if you’d like to learn more or have a specific question. Thank you for reading!

Land Speed Racing is the oldest and most simple of any form of racing. Point A to Point B as fast as you can. The pure speed itself is quite a rush, especially in its’ distilled form found here. But probably the coolest aspect of Land Speed Racing is that, for an amateur racer like me, it presents a level playing field [ Ha, a funny pun! Get it? Level playing field? ].

What I mean by that is that as a gear head and also as a highly competitive person, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is racing. And winning. I’m not content with just showing up, I won’t be there unless I have a shot at winning.

But, I also have to work for a living and am very thankful and blessed to have a beautiful family that I like to spend time with, which leaves out the two things it takes to win in most racing series; Time and Money. This is why I don’t participate in the types of racing most people are familiar with like drag racing, open wheel, SCCA, NASCAR and so on. To me, these forms of racing have established formulae that are common and consistent for all participants with the winning team being the one that’s able to find that last 1% of an advantage over the others. Time and Money are spent in huge quantities in testing and testing and more testing and all that testing is designed to find that last fraction of a percent of an advantage over the competition, so you can win.

But there’s no testing in Land Speed Racing and there’s no formulae. Everybody has their own thoughts and ideas and theories about what it takes to go faster, and because there’s no established formulae, and no way to test other then at the race itself, everyone has a shot at winning.

I would absolutely love it if McLaren F1 and Penske Racing and Hendrick Motorsports all formed Land Speed Racing teams and brought them to Bonneville because it would give little guys like me the chance to hand them their asses on a platter. I don’t care how much money and time and engineering talent they have. I and everyone else that races at Bonneville still have a legitimate shot at beating them. You hear that Dennis? Roger? Rick? I only have two words for you wimps; Bring It!

Our team goals are to have our car, The Spectre Performance Infidel become the fastest gasoline powered wheel driven machine on the face of the earth [ 370 MPH ] and then to drive the car at 400 MPH. If those goals are met then we’ll look at switching to fuel to go even faster, but for now, that’s what we hope to accomplish.

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In the beginning, some caveman invented the wheel out of a round rock and attached it to a piece of wood. Then another caveman modified the original design by making a wider lower profile rock with raised lettering on the side attached to a stouter piece of wood. That second caveman was the worlds first Hot Rodder and Hot Rodding was born. This went on through the ages with the chariots and all that up until it got interesting and that was when some guy in Southern California stuck a Cadillac engine between the rails of a stripped down Model T and created a faster car. A Hot Rod.

To me, the essence of Hot Rodding has its roots with Cadillac. Before there were small and big block Chevy’s, before the Flathead, before there was even an aftermarket with go fast parts, the only way to go faster was to take the most powerful engine and stick it in the lightest car. And as soon as the cars got too fast for street racing, they took them to the dry lakes. And once those lakes got too small, the next step was Bonneville – The Fastest Place on Earth.

I like tradition. I like the history. I wish I was born earlier and could participate back then. That’s why it’s so important and means so much to me, to do what we do with old school Cadillac power.

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I made 8 passes during Speed Week, all of them over 300 MPH and learned an incredible amount of knowledge on each run, as well as gaining experience and confidence. But the high level of respect and awe for the speed never diminished.

Although it seems fairly straightforward and simple there is actually a tremendous amount of pedaling and steering involved, along with counting gears, remembering what parts on the course are rough or soft and need to be avoided, looking at RPM, paying attention to the sounds of the engine and the car and being on alert for the unexpected to happen. And let me tell you, unexpected stuff happens! Boy, does it ever. To see some of this unexpected stuff log on to our blog and watch the videos at www.SpectrePerformance.com/blog

Pedaling the car is especially important in the beginning part of the run when wheel spin is at its most violent. Although you can experience wheel spin at all speeds in all gears and on every part of the course, the start is crucial. On one run I let the car go a little too much and the back end came around. I was able to catch it [ I got lucky as the car is 39' long with a rear wheel track of less than 3 feet ] and I was told later that there was a collective and loud “Ooooh” at the start line as the people who saw it thought the car was coming around. But pedaling is effective and I got the car straightened out.

Unfortunately, this also costs time and distance. The secret of Land Speed Racing is in establishing good speed early on, so that by the 3 mile mark you’re ready to get on with the program. A rule of thumb is that 10 MPH more at the front end could mean another 20 MPH or even 30 MPH through the back door, so the start and the first mile are critical. On a boosted car you don’t want to back off the throttle because you lose the boost. But when you get wheel spin you have to save the car. What do you do? You consult an experienced driver like we have on our team; Kenny Hoover, and he tells you a “secret” that allows you to maintain boost and keep the car relatively straight. What is that secret? I can’t tell you, it’s a secret. But I can tell you that it works. Thank You Kenny!

The next part of the run is to bring each gear to its designated redline and get to top gear [ 5th in our case ] as fast as possible. For me, that means that once 100% throttle is established in 1st gear, it stays that way through the next 4 gears, all at 100% throttle. The idea is to never lift. One obvious reason is that you can’t go fast if you lift. Another is that if you take enough load off of an air shifted Liberty transmission, it can pop out of gear into neutral, and the run is done.

Then there is steering the car and remembering what gear you’re in. Steering is done very gently. I hold the cut down wheel we use with a thumb and one finger, very lightly. The car looks for ways to try and go off course, and you have a 90′ wide track, and for the most part you let it take you where it wants to go until you start getting close to one side and then you need to gently bring it back. In some cases I went through the last 1-1/2 miles with the steering wheel crossed up at 90º, one hand on top, one on the bottom. This is not comfortable with a butterfly style wheel intended to move only an inch or so in either direction. But that’s what it took to keep the car going straight. This can be caused by a cross wind, or the condition of the salt, or who know what. Oh, and when that happens both hands are now clenching the wheel, no more of that gentle finger and thumb crap. It also means that the shift light and tach are covered up, so you rely on remembering what gear you’re in and the sound of the engine.

So, how hard can it be to count the gears? There are only 5 of them. You start off in first by releasing the clutch, matching revs and then need to shift only 4 more times with the air shift button; 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th. One, two, three, four. Really now, how hard can this be? Well, I must be a moron because I found it incredibly difficult. And I wasn’t the only one. I met a guy in impound who after struggling with this problem for years finally gave up and converted his car to an automatic transmission. And after a few beers many other drivers will also admit to this problem. I think I know why this is so.

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Driving a car at these insane speeds takes more concentration than you would normally use on a daily basis. It takes an incredible amount of focus, all of it intuitive, not thought based. At the speeds I’m driving, covering almost two football fields per second, there is no time for regular thought-to-action type of behavior. By the time you are made aware that something needs to be done and your brain tells a part of your body to take action, it’s too late. In other words, by the time you think it, it’s too late. Every action has to be reflexive and automatic, without conscious thought as we know it. Counting gears takes conscious thought, and I have not found a way to have both conscious thought and intuitive thought at 366 MPH.

Example: Your vision is transmitted to your brain via two channels; the 3º of vision that you focus on, that you think about, and the other 177º that are peripheral, that is intuitive and takes no conscious thought. Take a look at an object in front of you. What you are looking at, in actuality focusing on and thinking about takes up approximately 3º of your vision. All the rest of the stuff in front of you, which takes up 177º of your peripheral vision is still streaming into your brain, but you’re not thinking about it. Yet if something were to happen in that 177º of vision you would react to it, which means your brain is aware of it, but your conscious mind is not.

This is why when you drive to work, you can look down, tune in a radio station, dig for the pen that fell under the seat, and then when you finally look ahead you say to yourself; “man, I looked away for a long time there but I’m still going in the same direction. Whew”

Well, what was happening there [ and you know it's happened to you many times, it's happened to us all and will continue to happen as long as we drive at such incredibly slow speeds ] is that your brain drove the car based on inputs from your peripheral vision. And you didn’t have to think about it while you were digging for that pen, or tuning the radio, or whatever. You drove your car intuitively based on peripheral inputs you didn’t have to consciously think about.

That in essence is what you need to do, consciously, at 366 MPH, while staring straight ahead. For me, in order to get to that state, I had to finally stop looking at emails and taking phone calls for hours before I was to drive. You have to have confidence in yourself and your team. You absolutely must believe in yourself and your team, or it won’t work.

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More than anything else, it takes a team. I feel so fortunate in finding the guys on our team. I trust them with my life. The car started out as a 1995 Fjastad [ as in Roy Fjastad, the guy who makes the Full Bore fasteners ] streamliner. This provided us with a great foundation to start building on, to take the car to the next level; 400 MPH. The guy responsible for that is Steve Schmalz, the owner of Performance Fabrication in San Carlos California. I’ve known Steve a long time. He’s the one who built the Dave MacDonald and Lionel Pitts 308 MPH Firebird, the fastest stock bodied car ever. He also built the previous fastest Firebird before that. Steve will not compromise on safety, and he hates to lose, and he’s intelligent enough to know an awful lot of race car building stuff, and also smart enough to ask the right people when he doesn’t. No one knows everything [ personal advice: be afraid, be very afraid of those who claim that they do ] so what you want is a car builder who asks and learns and keeps asking and never stops asking and is always learning. Over the last few years Steve has modified and improved the car to the point that less than 5% of the original car is left. So now it’s really a 2009 Schmalz SpeedLiner. We also have a great aerodynamicist and nostalgia drag racer Ken Rappaport. Ken was responsible for the design of the back end of the car. If there’s one thing that Land Speed Racers do know it’s that speed is made at the back of the car, and Ken has done an incredible job.

Our Stock Block Cadillac engines come from Courtney Hines, owner of The Cad Company in Albuquerque New Mexico. These engines are late ’60’s to early ’70’s Cadillacs, stock iron block, stock iron heads, stock iron cranks. I will repeat that last one, stock iron cranks. Yes, we went 366 MPH on cast iron cranks and haven’t gotten anywhere near the limit of the engines. What does that mean? It means that Courtney builds one hell of a Cadillac engine, and that we are tremendously fortunate to have him on our team. Shameless plug: you should seriously think about putting one in your street rod or street machine instead of another 350 Chevy. Be different. Be fast.

Last but not least, when I bought the car from the guy that Roy sold it to, I got some extra parts as well as what is probably the best bonus a guy could ask for, yes, even better then finding spare change under the rear seat cushion; the car came with its own driver. Kenny Hoover drove the car for Roy and the guy I bought the car from, so naturally he came along as part of the package. Kenny has been Land Speed Racing for over 35 years, has set dozens of records, many of which still stand today. How about 280+ MPH in a front engined roadster. On a dry lake bed. In less than 1-1/3 miles? And so that is why I was able to get up to speed so quickly. Kenny has been and continues to be a great mentor, teacher, advisor and a valuable asset to the team. How do you repay a guy like that? Well, when I finish setting all the records I want to set we’ll stick Kenny in the car and he’ll break ‘em!

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If you’ve watched our videos, you know we have some issues we need to resolve, mainly parachutes. The car only has 11 runs on it in total, 10 of them over 300 MPH, so there’s still a lot more development work to do. I want to run 370 and become the fastest gasoline powered wheel driven car ever, and then I want to drive at 400 MPH. We’re so close. We’ll try to get a lot of our issues resolved before World Finals at Bonneville this October.

Thanks,
Amir Rosenbaum #86