Well, we thought this morning would be our big run. The car was in impound for a record run, the weather was cool with zero wind and our engine guru Courtney from Cad Company had just tuned up the boost profile for extra power. Amir said the car felt extremely strong off the start and the car was throwing a huge rooster tail of salt spray, and it was well over 300mph by the half course mark. Then he heard a loud “bang” noise, throttled the car down and pulled the shoots. At first we thought it was a blown tire, but as it turns out we think we hit a pot hole or a large chunk of salt… it tore an aluminum belly panel and made a lot of noise, but nothing else was damaged. We consider it a lucky run.
Metal master Troy Trepanier from Rad Rides by Troy (builder of the BlowFish land speed Barracuda) stepped up and TIG welded the panel for us, since we don’t have a welding rig on site.
The car is back on the ground now, and we’re planning on running again in the late afternoon. If all goes according to plan, we’ll make another strong run and hopefully be back in impound tonight.
At Spectre, we pride ourselves on building the ultimate high performance air filters, and we call them hpR Filters – for HorsePower Rated. We tell everyone that our filters offer the ultimate in performance and protection, but unlike other companies on the market, we prove it – BIG TIME. How? By punishing our filters in the most brutal environment on the planet, the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Most streamliners run a single air intake scoop on top of the fuselage, where they can get nice clean air and they don’t have to run a filter at all. We run dual scoops on the bottom of the body close to the ground in a high-pressure zone, so we get a ram-air effect (which is good), but also vacuum up salt the entire length of the five mile course (which is bad). We typically pick up over 20 pounds of salt PER RUN, and most of it goes into the airbox. How do we prevent the turbos from ingesting big hunks of salt and grenading? With hpR filters.
What you see here is the first sneak preview of our new “Black” series ultra high performance hpR Filters. They look cool, flow an incredible amount of air and offer unmatched protection. As you can see, the outside of the filter is loaded with salt, but the inside is clean. As for power, our twin turbocharged Caddy powered SpeedLiner is (as of this writing) the fastest car of the meet at 349mph and has already set a record. We hope our good fortune will continue and we’ll continue to post big numbers for the rest of SpeedWeek. In the meantime, we thought everyone would get a kick out of knowing that we believe in our own product enough to punish it in with pounds and pounds of salt blown into the airbox at 350 mph.
We just made our second run of the day, the third of the event so far. Mid-course we hit a soft spot of salt and Amir had to do some real driving to keep the car going straight, but he did… to the tune of 349.651mph! Our average speed on the course was 347.872! That beats our own record we set earlier today, so the car is back in impound. We have a few bugs to work out and the air will be cooler in the morning, and we hope to post even bigger numbers. Stay tuned!
We did it! At 7am this morning Amir strapped into the SpeedLiner, fired it up and rolled off the line. Soft salt caused him to have to really drive the car and pedal it quite a bit, but he exited the traps at 344mph! The two-way average and new A/BGS world record is 324mph – which also qualifies Amir for the exclusive 300mph Club! We’re getting ready for a second run now, to try and bump our own record….
We’re wrapping up our first day of racing on the salt. So far so good, the car is running great. Tomorrow we have to back up the run and post a big number, then we have a new world record in our class. Then we keep pushing to see how fast we can go!
Amir’s first run in the Spectre SpeedLiner went VERY well. He was as calm as Cool Hand Luke, and kept the car on track for a 300mph qualifying run. We had a speedometer failure mid-course, so he did his best to guess top speed and ended up running 312mph at the 5-mile and leaving the course at 320mph. That’s enough to qualify for a AA license and a new A/BGS (under 500 inch blown gas streamliner) record. The previous record was 286mph. We put the car in impound and had 4 hours to prep it. Then tomorrow we hit the salt again at 7am.
If all goes according to plan, Amir will back up the run with an even faster pass, lock in both a NEW WORLD RECORD, an unlimited license and the coveted blue hat of the 300mph Club. We will have lots of great high-def video and film coming soon, but in the meantime here’s a quickie little preview we pulled from the onboard cameras.
It’s August, and that means we are back on the salt with the Spectre SpeedLiner. Last October, we took the Cadillac powered, hpR Filter equipped race car out to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for its first shakedown runs, where it set a new world record for A/BGS (unlimited engine size, blown gas streamliner) at 330mph and became the fastest Cadillac on earth. Now we’re back, and even though the hotter weather means thinner air and possibly less power, we have a pumped up new motor from Courtney and the crew at Cad Company in New Mexico, and Steve Schmaltz and his team at Performance Fabrication in San Carlos spent the past nine months working on the chassis.
Our first goal: Get Amir some seat time in the car so he can get his Unlimited license (he’s currently allowed to go 250mph). Then break the A/BGS (up to 499 cubic inches, blown gasoline streamliner) record, which is currently set at 286mph. If Amir can run around 300mph, he qualifies for the new license, and the car qualifies for a record and goes into impound. Then tomorrow morning we make another run and really let the car wind out and see what happens. Wish us luck!
Spectre Performance announces 2nd annual hill climb road race challenge where the fastest street cars on earth will race up infamous Nevada Highway 341
When: June 17-19, 2011 Where: Nevada Highway 341, South of Virginia City, NV More Info: Available soon at www.Spectre341Challenge.com
Spectre Performance is heading back to Virginia City for the second running of the Spectre 341 Challenge on one of the most technical and thrilling mountain roads in the United States. After a stellar turnout at the inaugural event in 2010 that included world-famous drivers and high-profile media coverage, the 2011 event promises to be even better with a variety of exotic cars and new activities. The race, set for June 17-19, 2011, will pit supercars, muscle cars and imports against the clock in a full-throttle blast up the mountain road, which will be closed to the public for the event.
The Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge is a rare opportunity to drive flat-out on one of the most technical and aggressive stretch of mountain road in the country, without the worry of oncoming traffic or law enforcement. The paved course is 5.2 miles long with 22+ turns, a 1,216-foot rise in elevation, steep drop offs and no guardrails! Vehicles must be street-legal and registered. Tires must be DOT legal. Event highlights will include a track talk, warm up laps, class qualifying, a car show and parade through the iconic old-west style mining town, two days of racing and a banquet for all participants. The road will be closed for racing in coordination with local agencies, and once again competitors will have a chance to be inducted into the exclusive “3:41 Club” if they can crack the three-minute, forty-one second barrier.
“This is one of the only events in the world where a driver can show up with a street car and truly test the vehicle and themselves in a real-world environment,” says Spectre Performance founder Amir Rosenbaum. “We are in the speed business – we engineer and sell cold air intakes for muscle cars and late model vehicles. This is more than a race – it’s about having fun. We work with FM3 Marketing to present a professional, well-organized, fun weekend at a cool old-west town where the entire family can show up, hang out with other car nuts and have a great time. The 2011 Spectre 341 Challenge will feature even more racing and family activities.”
The original Virginia City Hill Climb was founded in 1972 and run through 2002. Rosenbaum holds the all time record for the event, running the course in three minutes, ten seconds in a Ferrari F40. Six new members were inducted into the 3:41 Club in 2010.
This Lancer Evo RS was one of the fastest vehicles at the Spectre 341 Challenge, thanks to a host of subtle engine and chassis mods and a Reno-based driver who knows Highway 341 like the back of his hand. That combo of experience, power and AWD created a nearly unstoppable and shockingly consistent competitor, and everyone in attendance was thrilled to watch Jeremy Kappus run.
The Spectre whirlwind “Car Show Tour of America” continues and we had a great time at the 41st Annual Street Rod Nationals in Louisville. There must have been more than 10,000 street rods on display and the quality of cars was outstanding.
As you’d expect from an NSRA show, there were great vintage based hot rods and a huge crowd. It may have been a street rod show, but we talked to lots of customers about the 9900 series modern air intakes, and the biggest topic of conversation was the LS swap and our new product plans.
Chip Foose was at the Mother’s booth right next to ours, and he signed autographs for tons of fans, including our own crew.
We were suppose to go Karting with the Mother’s group on Sat night at midnight, but we were so tired from the show that we all fell asleep! Too bad, it sounded like a hilarious evening.
Apparently, the Karting adventure included not-so-fast Go Karts, buckets of water and Depends (which many had to wear wet while driving around). It would have been worth staying up late to watch Chip Foose Go Kart race in a wet diaper! We’ll definitely have to participate next year.
World famous race car driver Steve Millen gives us a tour of his Stillen Nissan GT-R rally car at the Spectre 341 Challenge in Virginia City, Nevada. The Stillen #10 car was one of the fastest competitors at the event and and Steve is now a member of the exclusive 3:41 Club.
The Inaugural Spectre 341 Challenge
By Amir Rosenbaum – Founder
Mark Gillies, Car & Driver Executive Editor and accomplished race car driver extraordinaire looked me in the eye and murmured something to the effect of; “You know, they lose at least one a week at the Nürburgring…… ”
No, I didn’t known that.
Was that supposed to be comforting?
It was 4:45 pm. Our First Spectre 341 Challenge had just finished and the last 2 cars were up on the course. The paramedics and fire truck crews stationed at the top and bottom of the hill had packed up their stuff and were ready to pull out and go home when the call came in on the radio “……… car over the side……… ”
Shit!
The Spectre 341 Challenge is a very unique happening in that it is very real. It is all about reality. And I’m not talking about reality TV, which is anything but real. Reality consists of intangibles. The human condition consists of intangibles. We are all irrational illogical creatures trying to act rational and logical. But we can’t. We live in a super high tech world where we try to break everything down into precisely defined measurements using micro-metrics and nano-bytes. And while we are able to measure just about everything, the most important stuff, the intangible stuff, can’t be contained within any sort of metric.
The Spectre 341 Challenge is a 5.2 mile mountain road with 22 [ or so ] turns and is most emphatically not a race track. It wasn’t designed by a race track designer, it was built to conform organically to the side of a mountain so that ore carts, and later, trucks, could bring their deposits to a place where they could be processed.
It is as real a road as you will ever encounter anywhere, other than probably the Nürburgring. None of the turns are the same. The camber of the roadway changes radically, for no rhyme or reason. From afar, some of the straight sections of roadway look like a long piece of orange Hot Wheels track, twisting back and forth. Never straight or flat. A “correct” line here means avoiding the snow markers, which are sometimes positioned right where you would want to apex a corner. And sometimes not. And they get replaced every few years with new ones that crop up in different spots.
There are very few guardrails. None where you think they should be. There are no run-off areas, no tire walls, no hay bales, no berms, no nothing. The drop offs are everywhere and they are unforgiving.
It certainly wasn’t an easy event to put on. On our first day, just as we were scheduled to start running it started to rain. That’s right, in the Nevada desert. In June! Are you kidding me? This cannot be happening. Rain? Really? Or, I guess, reality.
And then it stops raining, and we are about to flag our first car on the course when the paramedic van and fire truck pull out, sirens blaring and lights flashing. WTF? Turns out that if there is a highway emergency nearby, and they are the closest, they get the call. And of course reality dictates that a highway emergency will occur just when you are about to start. But we paid for them to be here! For us! Doesn’t matter, someone needs them more than we do, and so off they go. And we don’t go. Man, this reality is starting to suck.
After only 20 minutes or so the fire truck and paramedic van returned and we finally got going. By Saturday afternoon we had logged 204 runs. That is truly amazing and a testament to all the time, hard work and professionalism invested by our crew at Spectre Performance and the terrific organizers we hired; Jimi Day and Wally Olczac of FM3 Marketing.
In 2002, after 13 years of running the hill, I set an all time record of 3:10 in my not so highly modified Ferrari F40. Everyone thought it was highly modified. OK, we ran a cheater hose from the waste gates to fool them into thinking the car was at sea level, which increased the boost a little. That’s about it. The secret to running so fast? It’s all in the intangibles……..
So everyone is asking me what I think about the possibility of my record getting broken. And I respond with a pat answer, something like “yeah, well, you know, records are meant to be broken……..”
What a crock.
The truth is I had already started to put my F40 back together after running it on the Bonneville Salt Flats at over 220 MPH. I’ll be ready and running at the Second Annual Spectre 341 Challenge in 2011. You can count on it!
Records are be made to be broken my ass.
But this year, for the Inaugural Spectre 341 Challenge, we had a bunch of phenomenal drivers, awesome cars and some very very fast times. Here they are, from the top of the hill:
Mark Gillies, from Car & Driver magazine showed up in a 2010 Viper ACR. It is a “borrowed” car, on loan from Chrysler/Dodge/Fiat whatever they are called now.
I wonder, what did he tell them he was going to do with this car? A road test? Check the mileage? Well, yeah, this would be a test all right. The car shows up with 80 tread-wear tires, and for this, our first inaugural event, we had spec’d a 100 tread-wear minimum. We decide to let him run in an exhibition class, and what an exhibition it was! A 3:19. First time ever on this hill. What does this mean? It means that Mark Gillies is a very very competent race and street car driver, possessing intangible skills that cannot be honed on race tracks. This is a street racer’s street racer. Mark got 14 runs in, as well as the two fastest times. Until you come here and drive the course, you can’t really imagine how fast a 3:19 is for a first time driver. Or for any driver. Hopefully Mark will be back next year, with boost. If he does, he’ll be way faster. This guy is really good. The real deal. And, Mark gets inducted into the Spectre 3:41 Club, of course.
The official First Place, with a time of 3:21 goes to Lou Gigliotti in his super bad 2010 Corvette ZR1, bristling with all sorts of LG Motorsports parts and exhausting what smelled an awful lot like what you smell at the airport when jets take off. Lou got to run a total of 13 times, another first timer at the hill, but with a pair of 3:21’s and a pair of 3:22’s, he got it going on in a big way. No small thanks to hill veteran and ultra fast driver himself, Guy Cunningham, who would have competed more this year, except he and his lovely wife Soraja handled all of our catering. Guy gave Lou a ride in the Griggs Racing GR40 Mustang, and Lou, consummate professional and quick study that he is, promptly knocked 6 seconds off of his times, and cinched 1st place and membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club.
Second place for 2010, with a time of 3:22, goes to Steve Millen. Yes, that Steve Millen, of IMSA, LeMans and Pikes Peak fame and owner of the super parts company Stillen. Steve brought a race prepped looking Nissan GT-R, a crew, and enough pre-event smack talk to embarrass a politician leading in the polls, boasting on his website that not only were they going to beat the record, they were possibly going to go under 3 minutes. Then reality struck. It looks like the Kiwi gets to eat crow, right? No, not so fast [ hah, pun! ]. See, Steve and crew had to rush the car to the event, and also worry about having to prep it and stick it on a boat on the Tuesday morning after for an event in Steve’s homeland, New Zealand, which meant that the car showed up on its stock Bridgestone run flat tires that weigh probably 65 lbs. each and have the frictional grip of olive oil on a Teflon pan. Steve only took 9 runs, declaring the course “greasy” and stopping early.
If you don’t understand the value of tires, then you can’t possibly understand the heroics pulled off by Steve in running a 3:22. This is not the proverbial knife at a gunfight. This is bringing a note from your Mum to the gunfight. Steve says he’ll be back next year, with a second car for son Kyle too, and tires that do more than just hold air. I can’t wait. Steve gets a Spectre 3:41 Club membership as well.
Third place is probably the most impressive to me; local boy Jeremy Kappus in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo RS, with some modifications, sure, but at the end of the day it’s still a 4 cylinder car up against these monster engined machines. Jeremy ran a 3:25.5 on Saturday afternoon. He had already run a 3:25.8 on Friday. In fact, on Friday, at the end of the day, he had the fastest time of anyone. Most of his 14 runs were in the 3:27/3:26 range, so he is not only very fast, he is also very consistent. And like I already said, just outstanding! It is an honor to present Jeremy with membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club.
Next up: Guy Cunningham, a veteran of the hill, who ran 3:28 in the Grigg’s Racing 2007 GR40 Mustang. I am sure that were it not due to his catering commitment, for which we are all grateful, Guy would have run even faster yet. And even though Guy was already a 3:41 Club member since 1999, he did improve his time by 1 second.
Ezra Dyer, one of the funniest car journalists I know, showed up in another “loaner” car, a bone stock 2010 Porsche Turbo. With only 9 runs, due to having to leave early to catch a plane, Ezra beat the living daylights out of this showroom fresh [ not anymore ] car with a best time of 3:33 and membership into the Spectre 3:41 Club. That’s at an average speed of almost 88 MPH. That’s average. Many of the corners are marked at 25 MPH, so even if you triple that, it’s honking fast.
Our last 2010 entry into the 3:41 Club goes posthumously to Alexander Djordjevic with a time of 3:36, run on Friday, in a highly modified Porsche 996 Twin Turbo. In order to respect the families’ wishes, I will only say that this was a tragic and unfortunate incident that is all too real. Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family.
Besides the 3:41 Club inductees, there were several other drivers of note that helped make this event so special: J.P. Rademacher, in a Subaru WRX STi had the most number of runs with 20! I believe he had to go get gas twice in order to accomplish this feat.
Another local boy, Adam Auerbach brought out what is probably the most intensely engineered GMC Syclone on the planet. You have to see the pictures to believe it. Truly an epic exercise in performance engineering.
Gaetano Cosentino brought out a beautiful ‘69 Camaro and Jeff Smith brought his ageless ‘65 Chevelle and both guys ran under 4:00 minutes, with 3:59 times, which is incredible when you think that this is their first time on the hill, driving cars that are over 40 years old! Seriously, is there any worry about metal fatigue? Lack of technology? Who needs technology? Check out the photos as these are some of the best looking cars on the hill for sure, and they are very fast too.
But those cars are spring chickens compared to Dean Smith’s 1952 DeSoto. Hey, that car is 58 years old! And he ran at an average speed of almost 70 MPH.
Jody Takagi drove 15 hours straight from Seattle in her Boxster, after being nominated by her Forum group (6-speed Online), and then did them proud by running a very respectable 4:22 with an average speed of 71 MPH. This is an excellent result for a first timer at the hill, who brought her mom for moral support. Jody livened up the weekend with her enthusiasm and infectious smile. We want her back for sure! And mom too.
One other mention I need to highlight is Paul Feeny, who couldn’t bring the car he wanted to bring, so instead he bought a Miata on eBay for $202.50 and brought that, and ran a 4:14 at almost 74 MPH, and for sure got the best bang for the buck of anyone. That’s real too.
We will be announcing the dates and rules for the 2011 Second Annual Spectre 341 Challenge very soon. We’re planning for a bigger and better event next year where once again, we try to define the intangibles of what is the fastest street car on a real road, ever. In the mean time, keep it real.
Jeff Smith of Car Craft Magazine brought his road race prepped 1965 Chevelle road race car to the Spectre 341 Challenge hill climb. From Silver State to countless track events, Jeff and this car literally helped start the pro-touring movement, so it was fun watching the heavy Chevy scream up the mountain.
Ezra Dyer of Automobile Magazine showed up at the 341 Challenge with a brand new 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo, and after acclimating himself to the road, he promptly logged a series of blistering runs that secured his membership in the exclusive 3:41 Club.
