The Texas Mile

Imagine a mile of open pavement in front of you, and no fear of a speeding ticket or jail time. Seems like a dream, but it’s a reality for drivers at The Texas Mile. Listen in as Scott and Kurt describe why the Texas Mile is such a unique test of speed.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hi,
and Welcome to Car Stuff. I'm your host Scott Benjamin
and I am Kurt garn Well. We've got one today
that I think is going to pique your interest and
hopefully the interest of a lot of our listeners as well.
We're going to talk about a very specific event, a
very um it's kind of I think it's one of
a kind. I don't I've never heard of an event

(00:21):
like this any other place in the world. Really, it's
different than a drag race, but it's called the Texas Smile,
and it has a lot of similarities to a drag race,
but this is a unique competition of speed and uh,
and it's worthwhile for us to dig into this. And
I do want to tell you, Kurt um, just so
that you're not not taking off guard by this. But um,

(00:42):
we we have done a previous episode of this. You know,
this archive goes back all the way to two thousand
and eight, and back in August of two thousand twelve,
we did a an episode that really was kind of
the ins and outs of the Texas Smile and kind
of what it's all about and where it was and
everything and the record holders that were you know, the
current record holders, and how some strategies I guess to

(01:03):
to get the best time, and you know whatever. We
just had a whole bunch of topics that were we
covered in there. Of course, all of that's changed now
since since two thousand twelve, and I mean it's seven
years later. You can imagine that not only is technology
growing and leaps and bounds, you know, since then, Uh,
you know, the guys building the cars are learning a
lot more, and they're and they're they're going faster and
faster every year. There's been some notable events that are

(01:27):
things I guess events, you can call it events. I
guess that happened. And uh, there's even been a change
of venue since then. I mean, it's just just real quick,
and I want, I'll be honest with you. We're gonna
jump into the topic a little bit later. There's a
little bit of other stuff that I want to talk
to you about before we start here. But I want
to talk to you just just a second about what
you what's your gut feeling about the Texas smile. I mean,

(01:49):
just just like a general when you first heard about
this initially, I compared it to a drag race. Um,
But as I looked into it a little bit more,
I drew vast differences between this particular type of racing
and a drag race. First of all, it's a time
trial type set up. It's not two cars aren't competing
against each other. It's more like a qualifying event, and

(02:10):
a drag race would be more than a head to
head race. But but what I mean getting we'll get
to the specifics I think, but but getting to like specifically,
what you thought when you first saw like maybe a
car going I'm gonna say I'm above two hundred miles
per hour. That's not the record, by the way. We'll
tell you what the record is later in the show.
But let's see the first time you saw a car

(02:32):
achieve two hundred miles per hour in one mile? You know,
from standing still? I mean, it's it's it's crazy, isn't Yeah,
it is crazy. I'm used to seeing drag races in
a quarter mile, very different types of cars. Yeah, it's not.
It's not over in a few seconds. So there's a
lot of factors that come into play. Um, cooling is
one of them. Yeah. Um, we saw some interest in
cooling tactics, didn't we Yeah, normally they would cool the

(02:55):
car with air flowing through holes in the car. That's
not the way to go fast. Do you want to
make the car as slick as possible. So there's other
techniques that they use, the cool engines down. That's a
good way to put it. I like how you said that,
because like you can't have a ton of openings and
vents and I guess full face of a vehicle that
you normally would have. You're trying to minimize that because
these are modified cars we'll talk about, and there's there

(03:17):
are different tactics that these racers employ to go and
do what they do on these Uh. Well, it's two
weekends a year. And again, all of this we're gonna
get too, I promise, because the Texas Smile Is is
definitely an interesting and unique event in a lot of ways.
And you can see my notes are crazy again today.
I have a pile of notes in front of me

(03:37):
and and for new listeners or listeners that aren't familiar
with with my note system, I I'm very analog. Before
we begin, I've got a kind of a banged up
front bumper on my car and it's got a crack
in it right now. So I'm looking to do something
that's called this. This is the term I've seen used
for it, called the drifters I think it's called the
drifters stitch. Is that with zip tized. Okay, I've seen

(03:59):
that before. Okay, Yeah, and you know what, It's surprisingly
easy to do and surprisingly holds well really well. Um,
I've done it already on this repair, just in a
minor way, but I did it in a very not
haphazard I mean it looks good. You can't even see
them hardly that that's there. It makes the makes the
crack and the bumper disappear really and holds everything together.

(04:21):
It's it's just you drill a couple of holes on
each side of the crack and then run a zip
tie through and you do that a couple of times.
It looks like like stitches that you would put in
somebody's you know body, you know, head arms, wherever you
get to cut. Um. It's it's a lot like that. Umm,
I've always cracked it. It's kind of funny, yeah, like
anybody would go and get stitches at the doctor. It's
it's very similar for your bumper and it's it's a

(04:41):
low cost, easy way to do repair. I mean, you know,
I guess it depends on the color of the vehicle.
I've got a dark, dark blue vehicle, so I'm using
black zip ties, and uh, you know, the wound in
the in the bumper pretty much disappears. It's it's really nice.
And I think I need um maybe at the most,
like two more stitches to make this whole thing work out.
You're in there at the moment right now, I've got three,

(05:02):
um three, and I mean I need two more. I've
I've just discovered that, you know, the the supporting structure
behind it was jostle just enough that it's not quite
holding up in the corner, so I need to add
some to the corners. I know this is all very
uh specific to to me and my my car, but
I wonder if anybody else out there has has either
done you know this this drifter stitch, or has heard

(05:23):
of it or anything like that. If you haven't look
at it online, you look at some photos online and
you'll see some good versions of it, some bad versions
of it, and it looks kind of neat. It looks
like like a Frankenstein kind of repair made to a car,
but um, it works in a pinch, and it definitely
is not going to cost you a whole lot of money.
Makes it makes a huge improvement in the way the
car looks after you know, a minor a minor incident.

(05:46):
I've had a minor incident my car, and they employed
this technique a lot up north, I believe. Is that right? Yeah?
What what do you mean? Well, that's where I've seen it, Okay, Well,
like where Boston it snows a lot there, so maybe
there's they you hit things a little more often. The
one I saw last was I didn't count, but it
looked about like forties stitches in the corner of a bumper. Yeah, no, dint.

(06:10):
It was just a straight crack. It's weird. It's about
forties sometimes holding it it almost looks like a decal
that somebody's put in the car. Doesn't close to appreciate
it completely. Yeah, it's interesting, and that's a great theory
behind behind why maybe you would see this more in
the north. I guess that's true. I just got a
new bumper. Every time you know a little something happened, Scott,

(06:31):
what happened? Tell you the story or is it too painful?
I will tell you. You You know what, Yeah, I had
a little incident here in the office area in the
parking structure. Bumped the wall, just put it. Was it
one of the columns, And now you're gonna make me
tell the whole story. I'm not going to know. It
wasn't It wasn't a column. Now it was on one
of the ramps. But um, anyways, there's so much damage

(06:54):
on those columns down there, and I'm wondering who's doing it.
All that was that was a first for me and
hopefully hopefully now it's been the last. But Okay, to me,
this is like, this is really personally upsetting because I
try to keep them looking almost new inside and outside
as long as I can, and I've been pretty successful
with it my whole life. This little minor incident with

(07:15):
the front end is really really upsetting to me. And
you know, I know, you can take it to the
body shop and just be done with it, but it's expensive.
And I don't know, maybe it's too much inside baseball
about my own vehicle, but but I think a lot
of people find themselves in the same position and look
into that. Um, you know that the drifters stitch if
you want to for a for a simple answer, an

(07:37):
inexpensive answer, it's uh, maybe try it yourself. Yeah, it's
an option. It's an option. Maybe you could even practice on,
you know, a Junkyard bumper or something if you wanted to.
But it's very easy to do, very very simple to do,
and uh and a lot less money than taking it
to a body shop a lot less sure. Yeah. Okay, well, listen,
I I probably have wasted more than enough time. I

(07:58):
think maybe it would be a good time to take
a rake and we can come back and then finally
begin our talk about the Texas Smile. And we're back
in your host, Scott Benjamin, and across from me is

(08:18):
Kurt Garen. How you're doing, Kurt, I'm doing well, Scott,
still hanging in there, huh okay, okay. I'm gonna keep
checking in with you until finally, you know, one day
I'm gonna say, you know, I'm your host, Scott Benjamin,
and one day you're gonna I'm just gonna jump right,
You're gonna be like, and I'm kurk Garen and today's
a beautiful day or whatever I do or now something
like that. It's a real beautiful out there. Actually is
it's a really nice day, you know. And you know what,

(08:41):
now that we're talking about beautiful days, I guess we
probably should mention that it will probably be a beautiful
day in late October in Texas, just guessing when they
are running the next edition of the Texas Smile. This
is an event that runs twice a year. They're running
in March, which is no problem for them. There's gonna
be no snow. Of course, you might might have issues.
I don't know if they ever have or not. And

(09:02):
then there's another one in October. So it's a it's
run twice a year every year, and this year they
are running it at a new place actually they have
for a couple of years now called the Victoria Regional
Airport in Victoria, Texas. And they've completed this race since.
And I keep calling a race, I don't mean to
do that. It's we should just say event maybe and
just call it an event or speed event. Yeah, and

(09:23):
it's weird they call it. And here's the funny thing
is they put it in the in the genre of
auto show, and it's not an auto show by any means.
I don't I don't know why they did that. But
I see it more as like a contest or even
a test of your vehicle, or an exhibition, an exhibition
of speed maybe um approving ground. Yeah, I think a
lot of people do look at it as a test event. Yeah, sure,

(09:44):
I think that's how they view it. I mean it's
a chance for them to go out and just show
what they can do, show it they can put together.
It's not a show in the traditional sense where you
walk around the car and peek in and look at
the interior, but you can see it run down the track,
which is nice. Yeah, I mean, it's it's nice to
be able to do that because a lot of times
you don't see cars in motion. You go to a
car show and you see all these fantastic vehicles, but
they're all parked. You know, you might get to hear

(10:06):
them start off or watch them pull onto a trailer
or something like that, but this is one where you
get to go and see them actually run. It's it's
like you know, going to the drag races, like where
it's amateur and pro and you know, it's kind of
a big mix. And yeah, I guess any day at
the track really, but you don't get quite as up
close and personal when you're at the typical racetrack unless
you spring for the optional pit pass and you know,
get to go and walk around the vehicles and get

(10:26):
a little more hands on or not not hands on,
but just you know, closer to them and talk to people.
Let's just kind of go through some real simple basics
of this whole thing, and then we'll move on to
some specifics, because there's some interesting specifics. I guess. The
most notable change, I guess is the change in venue.
I mean, this is its third home since two thousand three.
It's been run since two thousand three. It began in

(10:47):
a place called Goldiead, Texas Goliad and I look at
how to pronounce Goldiead. That's that's correct. Uh, go ahead.
It was ran there until about I think March of
two thousand eleven, so it ran there for a good
long time, around eight years. The funny thing about this
is that it started with only about thirty five people.
It was began by a couple out of the Houston,

(11:07):
Texas area, a guy named Jay Maddis and his wife
Sharon Madis, and they had a company I think that
they called J and S. Maddis Motorsports Incorporated. And I'm
sure that that's still around. I think I think it
is in some way, of course, A couple still still
around there. They're still running this thing. It started again,
thirty five participants and almost no spectators because no one

(11:28):
really knew about the event. It wasn't, you know, heavily promoted.
I guess the people that participated probably told friends maybe
and that was about it, but very few people showed
up to that. It's a lot different today, isn't it.
I Mean, we've they've changed venues three times. The second
move after they went from Goliad, they went to up
the town's name is Beville, Texas, and the forum or

(11:48):
the actual venue's Chase Field Industrial Complex. Then they finally
relocated just in seen to the new place that they're running,
which is the Victoria Regional Airport, which is in Victoria, Texas.
Now these are all kind of around the Houston area,
which makes sense, you know, from where the couple began,
and they don't want to move it too far, I
guess because it's you know, it's a it's a regional

(12:10):
specialty event. But the number of spectators has gone up immensely,
from this, the number of participants has gone up incredibly
from from the first days. Just it's become a huge,
huge thing. It's one of the only places you can
go and enter your car and test it out in
an event like this. Of course, there's regional drag strips
that you can go to every Thursday night or whatever

(12:31):
and see what you can do. But to get on
a mile in a straight line, have professional timing equipment
and medical staff and just everything there for you to
do this. It's it's rare that you find out. Don't
how much is it to to sign? You know, I
was looking at number I might have an average person
can't do it? Do it anymore? Well, I don't know.
I mean I wouldn't be so sure for an event

(12:51):
like this because it was like they try to keep
it somewhat open. Let me just I'm just gonna just
let it out here. Why not? I why hold back
on this? But here's here's a just an idea of
what you're paying for these. You know, it's not it's
not a high dollar event like you would think. I'm
looking right now. It's information that came from the Texas
Mile website, which is um Texas Mile dot net. So

(13:13):
if you want to go there and look up all
this information, you can, but just see you get an
idea of how low dollar this whole thing is tickets
for it's a three day event, it's a whole weekend.
If you're a just a spectator, twenty five dollars per
person for all three days. You just get a risk
band for twenty five dollars. It gets in for three
days of activities. And now that you can even if

(13:35):
you if you wanted to, you could stay on site.
You can camp there, I guess on the on the
on the property, which is really cool for a very
low price. I mean, I know it sounds well. Just
compare this to to renting a hotel room. But one
night is only sixty bucks. If you want to want
to stay two nights is undred and twenty three nights
is a hundred and sixty dollars. And that's if you
want to set up you know, a motor home or
a camper on site and stay there. I don't know

(13:57):
if they allow tents. Uh, you know, the information wasn't
pacific about that. You can contact them and find out.
And I'm not trying to sell tickets for them or
anything like that, I promise, but it says they do
not sell out of tickets, but I guess they never
run out. But the number of spectators here and you know, oh,
I should say this, kids under twelve are free, so
that's a bonus too. I think that there, yeah, so

(14:19):
or free is really the price point for something like this.
I don't know what the registration is for the drivers.
It can't be a whole lot of money. There's they're
shaded seating, there's bleachers, but they say you probably should
bring a folding chair if you want to just kind
of hang out and you know, one of the grassy
areas and watch and catch everything because it is a
long day. I mean they start in the morning early,
goes all the way until dusk. I would guess, you know,

(14:41):
it's not sunset but dusk. So it's um. It seems
like a good mix of cars to uh, mix of
shops that are really into the speed and then just
average folks with nice cars. I'm just want to go
out there and run the mile. There's a healthy mix
of both amateur and I would call him professional. There's
these people that do the speed runs are professional race shops,

(15:02):
professional engineers, absolutely. Yeah, they're they're in shops building cars
to specifically run in this event, and we're going to
talk about one car and specific that's what was built,
the record Holder. Of course, we'll get to that later
in the podcast, I promise. Gosh, I'm all over the place.
I apologize Kurt and and listeners because, um, I'm just
skipping all over the place. But I feel like there's
just that there actually is a lot of new information.

(15:23):
You know that the spectators and the number of entrance
is something we should talk about, because I just kind
of breezed over that a moment ago, and I said,
you know, back in two thousand three in Goliad, they
had thirty five participants and almost no spectators, So there
are very few people there outside of the timing individuals
and you know, the staff that operates it and the participants.
There were very few people there outside of that. Well, now,

(15:46):
as of two thousand eighteen, or at the two thousand
eighteen event, I think it was the March event, they
had something like twenty hundred spectators at this thing, so
it's really grown in popularity. I can only assume that
it will go up, you know, with social media, you know,
reach and all that, you know that they're kind of
able to garner more attention from this community and from
you know, people that are interested in this sort of thing,

(16:08):
and not just from the United States, but everywhere. People
come from, you know, from Mexico, from Canada, from Saudi Arabia,
from France. They're from all over the world now participating
in this thing, which is really cool. And the number
of participants they went from thirty five again in two
thousand three, is climbed steadily now they allow something like
two hundred and fifty or more participants. And one thing

(16:31):
about this particular event, when you throw it back to
the beginning of spectator type racing, which I guess goes
back to the beginning of the car um the fact
that you can watch these cars do this thing and
maybe it's something that you can go and watch with
that hope of maybe one day you can get your
car out there and do it. Unlike going to a
professional sports car racer indiecr NASCAR, you can't really dream

(16:54):
of doing that if you're just the spectator, the fan. Yeah. Well,
like you you said earlier that this is a nice
health the mix of people that have built a car
in their garage and want to bring it out and
try it. It could be a really like kind of
a hot street car that they have just never been
able to really push to the maximum, to the limit.
And it also could be like these shops that specifically

(17:14):
build cars for this event with the one mile run
in mind, and that's the main goal, and that's all
they do. They just do that with that one car.
And you know, they might have a customer that comes
in and says, I want to be in this, here's
my budget, here's the car I want to start with,
here's you know whatever. You know, they have lots of
sponsors and all that is. It's a lot like professional
racing would be for some people. But you don't what

(17:35):
you don't see is you don't see like a Formula
one team pull up with their F one car and
run this mile. You don't see and and honestly, they
would probably be beaten by some of the guys that
build cars in their own garage, which is unbelievable to me.
I'm and it's it's such a strange contest and maybe
maybe we should talk about just like I hope them

(17:56):
saying this right way, the right way, but some of
the uniqueness of this event because there's so many things
about it that are different. So, first of all, it's
a full mile run. It's not a quarter mile like
you would find in a dragstrip. It's not a long
distance run either. It's it's a full I guess a
mile is a long distance. But you start a standing start,
standing start, not a rolling start as a speed record

(18:18):
would be, for example, the land speed record. Generally they
want to get up to a certain speed before they
start the Yeah, so okay, so when we start talking
about times and they're not times rather because that's another
thing I want to talk about. But when we started
talking about start talking about like top speeds in this
one mile, you gotta remember it's a car that's going
zero miles per hour. The clock starts as it crosses
that one mile mark. That's the all their measuring is

(18:41):
just the speed, not the time. And that's unique in
that if you're going for a top speed run typically
like if you're out in Utah and the Salt Flats
or you know, any desert run or anything like that.
You know, we've talked about the thrust SSC, and you know,
the land speed record attempts and we'll probably talk many
more times about stuff like that. But they have the
advantage of having this kind of a ramp up. I

(19:03):
guess a long long run it could be miles long
to ramp up the speed. Then there's like a timed mile,
and then they have a long way to to shut down. Well,
this one is just that mile. So you don't get
to start at a hundred and eighty miles an hour
and then try to get to you know, two fifty
miles an hour. You have to start at zero and
try to get to two fifty miles an hour in
that short amount of space. The speeds are measured um

(19:25):
along the way and displayed to the spectators. So there's
great big boards that have led readouts that you know,
show the speeds at I believe it's a quarter mile,
and then another at a half a mile, and then
they give them the final mile speed. I don't think
they bother with three quarter mile speed. If they do,
I haven't seen it in any of these videos. Um.

(19:45):
But one of the things that strikes me is like
even the quarter mile speeds are about what you would
expect from a dragster like you watch. You watch like
the you know, the private teams at at drag strips,
and you get about what you would think out of that.
The half mile speed goes up considerably. I mean they're
going really really fast, a lot of them are at
this point. Then you have the mile speed. And what's

(20:08):
what's shocking to me a lot of times is the
difference in speed. As you you said this to me
off air, the difference in speed. You would not expect
it to jump up so much between the half mile
and the full mile, but it does well even between
the quarter mile and the half mile. I look at
it as the first quarter mile they try to get

(20:28):
the car to hook up as as opposed to drag
race you wanted to to hook up right away. So
the first quarter miles kind of getting everything stable because
they're gonna start going much faster, and in cars that
aren't necessarily designed to go that fast, or at least
from the factory. So I guess one the point I'm

(20:49):
getting at is from the half mile to the end,
that's when they're really applying the power and trying to
keep everything stable. And just interesting how how how much
you could trying to hook up all that power to
the pavement in a half a mile is interesting to
watch that increase in so I agree, And and what
we're accustomed to seeing from the production car speeds when

(21:11):
we watch these record attempts from whether it be Bugatti
or Lamborghini or whoever is running the Ferrari or any
of those that running with these top end speed records
or Kona Seg or any of those. Once you get
to a certain point at in those cars, they relatively
slowly increased speed after about I think it's like after
right around two hundred miles an hour. Um, you know
that's when things starting to get get a little dicey.

(21:34):
I think, yeah, well, especially between between like two fifty
and three hundred, I mean, super incredible. Again, watching one
of the one of the production cars do it attempted
in a very professionally made YouTube video you know that
is done in Germany. And again I'm gonna get to it,
but we kind of have already talked about it. The
guy says, and this is the way he put it
out paraphrase. He says, you know, a lot of people

(21:56):
or most people will at some point be able to
achieve a h fifty miles per hour in their life
in a car. And I don't know about most, but
a lot. And again, this is the guy from he's
a German race car driver, so he probably has a
skewed view of what people can do. And let's say
a few people are gonna go a hundred fifty. But
then he says, you push it a little bit more
and you go a hundred and eighty miles an hour,

(22:17):
And that's a lot different than going a hundred and
fifty miles an hour. There's a big difference. You wouldn't
expect it. He said, if you go from a hundred
and eighty to two hundred miles an hour, that's like
a whole different world, they said, Like it's it's something
that you only can get through experience, Like you don't
know what that feels like until you've done it. And
then he said, once you go from two hundred miles
an hour to three hundred miles an hour, it becomes

(22:39):
like this ridiculous just I don't know, just a mess,
Like it really messes with your head, is what I mean.
Like it's it's not things that aren't aren't happening when
you would normally perceive them to happen. It's it's it's
much much faster, and it just doesn't make sense to
your brain. You can't even comprehend to what's happening because
you know everything is line passed you. It's such a

(23:00):
great rate of speed. And you know, we're not talking
about being in a desert area where these runs are made,
these production car runs are made. They're made on a
track in Germany that has trees near it and guard
rails and you know, cameras and everything all over the place.
It's and lines on the road. It's a lot different.
You get that real sensation of speed getting back to
the Texas Mile. It's not just cars, because we're just
talking about cars right now. It's uh, it's cars, sports cars,

(23:24):
it's motorcycles, it's truck's, purpose built race cars that come
out and do it. And electric cars. Electric cars. Yeah,
there's all kinds of category. They have this electric car
that is the fastest. I need to make sure I
phrase this right because I'm sure there's nuances. Don't worry
on the world's fastest accelerating modified road car zero to
sixty miles per hour and one point seven nine one

(23:47):
point seven nine seconds. It kind of makes sense for
electric I guess, to be the fastest because it has
instant torque, like every bit of the torque is available
the second you push that accelerator. However, I'm surprised that
they're measuring zero to six you speed it. That must
be just kind of their own thing probably, But the
top I think I know which one you're talking about.
The this is a this is an older car that
they've retrofitted with Mustang sixty eight Mustang fast Back, and

(24:14):
they call it the Zombie too. And I wonder, you know, okay,
because they've called to two. I wonder if that's their goal,
if that's what they're shooting for. That one actually has
the electric vehicle speed record in the in the Texas
mile add a hundred and seventy eight miles per hour,
and I did that back in March off and it
hasn't been beaten since. UM. Hundred and seventy eight miles
per hour is pretty darn impressive for as six. Think

(24:36):
about the aerodynamics of a sixty eight must Stang Fastback.
Imagine pushing that up to a hundred and seventy eight
in just one mile. I mean, that's that's impressive. That's
that's the impressive part. If you had ten miles. Maybe
you could get it up to that speed. Maybe you
know you have to have a safe area to do it,
and all the testing and everything you know to go
along with it. But I think the one mile thing
is probably the most important or the most I don't

(24:59):
know that the most be the most important number in
this whole thing. I ever run the Texas kilometer. I
don't think they know not in Texas. I think you
get shot if you even if you even mentioned the
kilometer in Texas. But you know what we should you
know we should say this though. And I know we've
been just doing miles per hour here because we're a
US based show. But I guess for anyone who's interested,

(25:21):
the top speed if you if you're talking about going
three miles per hour three per hour or something like
four hundred and eighty three kilometers per hour, and the
distance we're talking about here would be if you're doing
four and you're you're getting in a vehicle to four
hund a eight three kilometers per hour in just one
point six kilometers of roadway, if you want to look
at it that way. So it's those are the types

(25:43):
of distances and speeds we're talking about. If if you've
been confused by the mile per hour thing, or you know,
having to go to your your conversion chart and rapidly,
you know, punching numbers. Before we take a break, I
want to say one more thing, and I only want
to do this because I don't like to end on
a sad note, and I think we should talk about
something a little bit sad. Well, it was sad, but
it's not breaking news sad. I guess it didn't happen

(26:04):
just now, something a lot of people probably already know about.
And we'll come back with some happy news in just
a moment. But one of the guys that we talked
about in the previous podcast, in the Car Stuff episode
in two thousand twelve, we were talking about him just
breaking the record, you know, he had he had just
achieved a record of something like two and seventy eight
point six miles per hour at the at the Texas

(26:24):
Mile and he was the current record holder. He's he
was on a motorcycle. His name was Bill Warner. Of
course we were talking about him in the present tense.
He was still around doing what he was doing. But
unfortunately Bill Warner died not much later the very next year,
in a motorcycle accident. Um doing of course, doing what
he does or what he did, which is a you know,
achieving land speed records. So he broke the record again.

(26:47):
He broke the three in a mile per hour barrier
in two thousand eleven at a different event, I believe.
And then that is when actually you know what, that's
when we had our podcast right after the three eleven,
so we were you know, an mind about the you know,
getting past three eleven miles per hour on a motorcycle
on pavement at that time, and against some specifics I

(27:08):
can go into in just a second. But just after
that in July when when he died. Um again not
breaking news by any means, but I think that we
need to mention it because of, you know, the the
focus that we had on him in the first podcast
that we did. This bike at the time that he
was riding at something like six and fifty horse power
on a motorcycle. It's a high busa and they call

(27:29):
it a conventional motorcycle, you know, where the rider's exposed,
it's a traditional motorcycle. I supposed. However, when you look
at it, I mean it's modified because it did have
a turbo did have panels put on it. UM, So
it's kind of like I guess the street modified Hyabusa
with with a turbo Streamliner record is a lot faster.
It's like another seventy eight miles an hour faster than this.

(27:50):
So you know, once you enclose, the rider becomes much
more aerodynamic. But this he was in an open bike
and again he passed away. UM. I believe it was
in July. I have two thirteen and it was well
he was trying to break, um, break a record in
I think he was in Maine, only forty four years old.
But we've heard of land speed record people. That's how

(28:11):
they die. Um. They kind of know the the risks
and the dangers involved in that and they accept that.
And I'm sorry to hear that. You know he passed,
but I figured we should just mention it. Um. You
know that that that's somebody who we've lost along the way.
I want to get into some happier news, so let's
let's let's finish up by talking about the current record
holder at the Texas Smile in just a minute. After
we take a break, and we're back and I'm your host,

(28:42):
Scott Benjamin and I am Kurt Garin, Oh you got
a Kurt great. Yeah, you called me off guard just
a little up there. I had to run over to
the mic from the from the computer, y'all out there,
couldn't see that. Fantastic. Well, and you're quick, quick on
your feet. Good work, good work, And I didn't mean
to catch you off guard in this for GT we're
about to talk about yeah maybe right alright, So so

(29:06):
here's the deal. All right, the current record was just
broken recently. This now, this is um. We're doing this
podcast in twenty nineteen. We are in between events in
twenty nineteen. So there's already been the March of nineteen event,
and there's going to be the October nine event. We're
doing this in September, so right before this, and it's
always the last weekend in March and the last weekend

(29:28):
in October. Yes, if you want to plan for it
and you're in your schedules or you want to look up,
you know, maybe a time when you can travel down
to the Houston area and maybe catch this thing live.
Definitely do that. I mean, it's it's a worthwhile thing
and you can go to you know, I'll give you
the website so you can go and look at it.
What was it Texas Texas. Yeah, Texas Smile dot net
was the site, So check that out if you want to. Again,

(29:48):
we're not selling tickets or anything, so it's just an
awesome event. Go see it if you're in Texas, if
you want to. I don't care anyway. I don't carry
the way if you go. Yeah, I mean, I don't
mean to be flipping about it, but I don't. I
don't care. Yeah, you'd like to go, I'd like to go.
I personally would love to be there and witness one
of these because I think it's just it's just awesome.
I would love to have been there last March. Yes, okay,

(30:09):
so last March something incredible happened, right right, okay, So
what happened? Um? Well, I four GT broke the three
mark and the Texas Smile three hundred miles per hour.
Now it's three I think the actual record. I mean
just it's just barely above it. It's three hundred point
four three point four. And I know that's nitpicky, but

(30:31):
when you get to those speeds, that's going to be
important because someone might go three hundred point five next
year and and that will matter. Nine. It is not
three hundred. That's how it is. This is a current
record that's held at the Texas Texas Smile and it's
by a company that built this car specifically for a

(30:53):
customer that that wanted to do this or for themselves.
I don't know if the cells are customer, not sure,
but they get Yeah, the focus has always been on
the company anyways. The company's name is M two K
Motorsports and the car itself is a is a first generator,
I should say first. It's a version of the the
g T, the four GT that was put out back
in the mid two thousands. So it's a two thousand

(31:15):
six four GT, not the current one, not the not
the you know four dollar ones. It had a Gulf
livery which I think is really cool. You know, the
blue and orange. The number on the car is significant,
you know the number in the car, just by the
number on the car that they ran this year is
to was their previous record that they had made back
in I want to say it was two thousand seventeen.

(31:38):
So the two thousand seventeen is when they ran two
miles per hour and they were thinking like, we are
so close to this, we're really really close to this.
And I saw an interview that was done by the
owner of this company on a local channel. It was
it was done on KPRC. The interview the owner of
the shop, and he said, you know, back when we

(31:59):
started this whole object, the goal was something like two
hundred and thirty five miles an hour. That was like
the record, and that's what they wanted to beat. They
wanted to go two three five, he said. Three hundred
miles per hour is it was never even a dream
at that point. But as the years progressed, they decided
that we've got to keep up with you know, exactly
what's going on, and and keep up the speed with
the current records, and and if we tune this and

(32:21):
tweak that, and you know, re engineered this part and
make this a little bit more, are dynamic underneath the
car or you know whatever. They did a lot of
work on the vehicle, and I'm I know, I'm just
paraphrasing this in in a horrible way, simplifying what they
did exactly. But they brought the car back just two
years later, and they ended up topping three hundred miles
per hour, and they did it in a series of

(32:41):
several runs, and I kind of see it as as
I think the Texas Mile people that have confirmed, Uh,
these were kind of like shakedown runs for them. They
knew that they could get close to three hundred or
three hundred. They were hoping for it. Of course, big
celebration when they did hit it, but the early runs
were nowhere near that speed. The earlier runs were relatively
low speed, and and of course they weren't sand bagging,

(33:03):
because there's nothing, nothing to be gained from that. But
over the course of a three day weekend, you know,
they ran and I think I want to say it
was four runs. The first run was something like a
hundred and seventy five miles per hour somewhere near there.
The second run they really they amped it up at
this point two hundred and forty miles per hour in
the next run. And that puts them already in an
elite group, I guess, because the two hundred mile per

(33:26):
hour club is a big deal at the Texas Mile.
If you can get your car to go two hundred
miles per hour, that's that's pretty impressive by any standard. Really,
I mean, I think that's cool. So they're already in
that and they had been before with their two ninety
three or whatever. Um the next run they say the
third and final run, but I think there was a
fourth run. I think there was another one stuffed in
there somewhere that, you know, maybe didn't go so well

(33:48):
that they didn't even report. The third and final run,
which they're claiming as the third and final run was
the one that they read. They finally reached the three
point four mile per hour mark. And I'll tell you this.
I I learned this along the way, and this is
so impressive to me. You know, we talked about the
difference between quarter mile, half mile, and full mile. At
the half mile mark on the per hour run, they

(34:09):
were already going two forty miles per hour and a
half mile, so that's incredibly fast. Already they're already topping
you know, what a lot of cars do in the
full mile at the half mile. And then not only that,
they gained sixty miles per hour in between the half
mile and the full mile. And to gain that, I'll
tell you in just a minute why that is so

(34:30):
impressive to me. But to gain sixty miles per hour
in that in that relatively short amount of space, and
I know that time doesn't come into this, but we're
only talking about a run that can you know, from
beginning to end is like maybe twenty two seconds, one
seconds somewhere around there. That's the full length of time
it takes them to go one full mile. So really
really impressive. I mean, it's just unbelievable that they were

(34:53):
able to do that. But but again, it took them
two years of engineering and refining and you know, changing
things are round to be able to get that extra
seven miles per hour out of this vehicle. And you know,
they were just working at it all the time, you know,
trying to really amp this thing up to get it
to uh, you know, that three hour mark. Because that's
a huge milestone for them. They're always going to be

(35:13):
in their record books as breaking that and doing that.
So that's kind of infamy for them, I suppose. And uh,
one interesting thing to me is that it isn't necessary
I mean, it's a race car, but it's not necessarily
a purpose built dragster type car. No, it's a say
standard two thousand six four GT if you can call
it standard, right, But what I mean, what you're saying

(35:36):
is is a car's body itself is not engineered like
a dragster would know. It's example, it's a road going car,
and and so therefore it has these built in limitations
that overcome, such as holes for the production car would
have for cooling and things like that. I would even
imagine tire width. I don't know if they messed with

(35:57):
anything like that. I think that they had to the
I wanted to just a little bit more about the
car itself, you know, about the about the engine, and
just a tiny bit more because I don't know a
whole lot about it. Just a little bit. And then
I want to like make this comparison between the production
vehicles that are trying to achieve three and miles per
hour and then what this company has done. To remember,
the car that's hitting the air is basically the four GT.

(36:22):
It's not designed from the ground up to go fasts.
It was built upon an already existing car. Engine block
is I think a stock engine block as well. All
that stuff, to me is cool because it's not completely
customed exactly, not completely custom. It's modified. It's modified. I
think it's in a tasteful way. I guess I'm not
trying to get it, you know, it's the car is

(36:43):
a classic. Yeah, oh yeah, sure, it's cool to see
this classic cargo three miles an hour. Yeah, yeah, it is.
I mean, it's it's you've said a mouthful here. I
don't even know where to begin. It's fascinating to me
that they can take that design and push it to
that extreme. We're talking about the Bugatti, the just the
production car that three miles an hour, and it was

(37:04):
designed with this in mind. Yeah, the body reshapes itself
at certain speeds. Doesn't happen on this car. Yeah no.
And there's so many little nuances to what we're talking
about here, And I know we're not going to do
a justice by having this discuss. Maybe we can have
a different discussion. I think we should someday about these
modified versus production car requirements standards, you know, whatever the

(37:28):
arguments against and four and all that. I think that
there's a lot there that we can talk about. A
ton and I know we've already mentioned a few, but yeah,
when you start talking about like tires that have to
go three hundred miles per hour, you're not going to
go down to the general tire store and pick those up. Now.
It is a and it is extremely sleek looking car.
You know, you look at the two thousand six four
g T and it's it has the appearance of a

(37:49):
race car. It really does. But it's not a custom
built dragster. It's not a car that was built to
go three hundred miles per hour. I don't know what
I mean. I'm gonna spit ball here. I'm not gonna
even begin to know the actual number. But let's say
that the car was designed to go a d ninety
miles per hour. That was the top speed and that's
what they thought would be maximum on this They didn't
test the aerodynamics beyond that for this thing to take

(38:12):
off in the air at a certain speed, because that's
what happens. You know, when when you mess around with
the aerodynamics of a vehicle, you know, it becomes a
wing and be you know, you become airborne at a
certain point. I mean small airplanes and well large airplanes
can fly at these speeds and do fly at these speeds.
So keeping the car on the ground is a huge issue.
There's so much that goes into these cars and the

(38:33):
modifications that they have to make in order to do this.
But a couple of things that m K two more
Sports did to the four g T to keep it stuck,
if you want to put it that way. And I
I'm laughing when I say this, because when I read
this next paragraph, I'm reading from an article that came
from a site called The Drive, and it was written
just after the record was broken on March two, nineteen.

(38:55):
If you want to go and look at this article,
you can do that. It's on the Drive. It's all
about the three point for mile for our run. And
it says, and I'll just read this one paragraph directly here,
but it says, well, the M two K Motorsports prepped
for GT retains the stock five point four leader V
eight from the previous generation for g T. So you're right.
It is a stock block and it's stock stock engine size.

(39:16):
I guess it's been well, they say, seriously amped up
to deliver stratospheric horsepower that not even a dine O
can handle. The guests on this car is twenty hundred
horse power. Five hundred horse power in that car that
originally I don't know what it had. Probably I'm gonna again,
I'm gonna guess, I don't know if the stats in
front of me, maybe five hundred six hundred horse power

(39:38):
at the most. There's somewhere around their ballpark to put
you know, put dred in there. And this is only
a guess, by the way, because when they said on
a Dino, it's hard to strap a car down in
a way in such a manner that you can test
it beyond somewhere roughly around two thousand horse power. So
it does exceed two thousand. They think it goes up
to about hundred, but it's nearly impossible to keep it

(40:02):
on the Dino at that point. I mean with chains
and everything. I mean it's chain straps. We've all seen,
you know, those Dino videos of cars breaking the straps
or breaking the chains, and you know, just cataclosed, big
failures that happen, horrifically expensive accidents that happened, you know,
in shops. And you know, you don't want to be
those those people, you know that that either own the
car or hook the car off. You don't want to

(40:23):
be either one of those on on either side of that.
But horsepower is an estimate, and of course, you know,
reaching three hundred, and we've talked about kind of the
you know that it's quite an achievement. Tight. You know,
I think we can all agree, right. The question that
was posed by the author of this article is a
good one, and he says that typically these types of
records that are set by private companies or privateers, I

(40:44):
think is what they call them. Typically the manufacturers don't
get too rattled by these. They don't say, like, well, chiefs,
we've were building five thousand dollar supercar, you know, why
can't we get ours to go three? They don't say
that to themselves. It's like a different sphere that they're
operating in because they know they're not going to create
power car. You know that it is specifically built for
one event in order to break that one record, and

(41:06):
then that's it. And a car company, a big company,
just think about the money that they would have to
unload on a project like that, and the teams and
the testing, and it becomes a logistical nightmare for them
to do that. Bugatti has done that in a sense.
The question here at the end of this article is
kind of funny because they're saying it's it's an impressive
feat to reach three miles per hour anyway, and to

(41:26):
do it in one mile is even more impressive. And
then just that it's a private company that was able
to do it out of some and I'm gonna say
a little shop, but it was a motor sports shop.
Will they take any notice of this? Will Bugatti take
notice of it? Will Kona Seg take notice of it?
Will they? Will they be kind of ruffled by this one?
And again this is written in March. Will in August

(41:48):
and August two, that's when Bugatti made through three mile
per hour run. And I know they were working on
it long before that. It doesn't just happen in a
couple of months like that. It doesn't work that way.
And it was a production car well and wasn't in
a mile yeah and yeah, okay. The tires, so their
tires are really specific and that remember they were X
rayed before they even put them on the car in

(42:10):
order to make sure they are free of imperfections, and
they're not. I don't think that they're doing that with these,
you know, these tires on this this four G T
I just don't think that it's happening that way. I
know that they're they're extreme quality, and everything's well balanced
and and you know, broken in and perfect. It's absolutely perfect.
But they didn't go as far as to X ray
the tires before they made their runs. Well, these are tires,

(42:31):
they have to glue onto the rims. Apparently tires don't
hold up very well at these speeds for very long.
So we're talking you only have a short amount of
time on a set of tires at these speeds until
they just become obliterated. Yeah, And that's just one element
of this, right, I mean, I mean there's so many
things that we mentioned. You know, they are dynamics, and
we mentioned that how the shape of the body of

(42:53):
the Bugatti changed, you know, as it went faster and
faster it was on a track. Here's the other thing. Okay,
so Cash, I feel like I'm I'm going crazy or something.
I got so much to get out and out turning out.
I am, I really am. I I feel like, you
know what, here's what's gonna happen. Here's's gonna happen as
soon as we're done. And I say, you know, thanks
for listening and all that to our listeners, and you know,
I send them on their way and they're out, you know,

(43:15):
doing their own research and digging up all this stuff
and looking at the Texas Mile and buying tickets and
all that. I'm gonna remember about ten things I didn't
say in this podcast, even though I've been going a
mile a minute, just a mile a minute. It's funny
that would be really slow at this at this comfortation,
that'd be sixty miles an hour. That's not good at all.
Um all right, anyway, So I was thinking back, and

(43:39):
I was thinking, Okay, what's so, is this a response
to the Texas mile record. I don't. I don't think
it is. I think the timing is a little strange.
I think it's a little suspicious that, you know, they decided,
all right, now is the time we're just gonna go
do it. I just feel like the three d mile
per hour mark for a car, it's that number nowadays,
well nowadays it's like a two hundred mile an hour number.

(44:00):
Was I don't know when sixties. I was gonna say
years ago maybe or more. Yeah, it's just it's just
the nice round number that takes a lot of fine
tuning to get there. And we should talk about someday
soon is four coming? But I don't know. I'm not sure.
I well, technology, the whole talk about tires, that's a
limiting factor. And um in all of this, and as

(44:23):
technology gets better, I'm sure that we'll be looking at
four you know, I mean, right now, you mentioned the
electric car, the Mustang. It's interesting they chose a Mustang
from the sixties to do it because the combustion Mustang
in the sixties. It would be interesting to know how
fast they could run the Texas Smile. Yeah. So it's
almost like now electric cars there where combustion engines were

(44:44):
in the sixties. Where are they going to be sixty
seventy years from now? Where the combustion engine is going
to be? Where where rubber compounds going to be? And
I'll tell you this, you know, boy again I'm skipping
all over the place. But going back to the Mustang
that you just mentioned, you know, the the sixty must
the the electric version that did this Texas Smile run
the record run. They give it an equivalent horsepower rating,

(45:07):
you know how they can kind of extrapolate what it
would be in horse power eight hundred horse power, So
that's far far above what the sixty eight Mustang fastback had.
Of course, um so it would be interesting to see
what the you know, internal combustion engine version of the
sixty Mustang could could muster in the one mile run
and maybe maybe it's been run there. I mean, you know,

(45:28):
out of all the cars out of two twice a
year for sixteen years, I would guess that somebody has
run at Mustang you know, fast back at some point
maybe maybe alright, so back finally maybe maybe we're gonna
steer back exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking
about this, this Bugatti thing and how they ran. They

(45:49):
did a three four mile per hour run in August
of two thousand nineteen, so not long after the Texas Smile. Uh,
you know, it was achieved at three hundred point four.
I was watching these and trying to draw comparisons and
you know, contrasts, and you don't figure out what's happening here.
But now, remember I said the GT had horse power,
and that's an estimate. It might be more, might be

(46:10):
a little less. The Buggatti, of course, had Sharon had
so many modify, had lots of modifications to it, and
of course I'm sure that the GT does as well.
But the big difference here is that this is a
road going production car technically, I mean, it can be
sold to the public, it can be driven on the
roads and that's one thing that Buggatti has to deal with.

(46:31):
The builders at M two K Motorsport don't have to
deal with They don't have to worry about mass production
of this not mass, but limited production of this one vehicle.
It's a one of a kind, it always will be.
But they're dealing with just that one event, that one record,
and it's kind of like we run it, we're done
with it, and then maybe improve it for next time.
But that's it. The other thing that about this is
that Buggatti had a quad turbo W sixteen that was

(46:55):
tuned up to like sixteen hundred horse power, so it
had almost a thou wasn't like nine hundred less horsepower
to get up to the speed. But one thing that
is most the most striking about this to me, and
the most maybe the most impressive about the Texas Mile
and the four gt s attempt or that the four
GTS record run, is that it did it from a
standing start and it only went you know those when

(47:17):
it's a mile five thousand two feet. I think it
went that distance and achieved three hundred point four miles
per hour and that short amount of time that I mean,
just imagine the force on the human body and the
vehicle at that at that time, when you look at
the Bugatti run and again all the specifics the altered
body and the tires and the engineers and the teams
and everybody involved, find maybe maybe there's some of that

(47:40):
going on with the GT. But here's the other thing.
That they did it at the special track. You know,
under very controlled, such very controlled conditions that they were
able to enter the track at one hundred and eighty
miles per hour. That's where they start at when they
enter the straight. Then it takes them the entire five
miles straight to get to three hundred and four miles
per hour. When you watch the way the speed grows,

(48:01):
and I'll be specific here because remember the half mile
speed for the four G T it was two miles
and then it got up to three hundred. If you
watch the speed grow on the dials, the readings or
whatever they give you on the YouTube videos for the
Bugatti run, once they get to you know, if they
let's say that you could even started at two forty
the way that the miles per hour count up is

(48:21):
like it's like this, it's like two forty one two
three to the four G t didn't have that luxury.
It was like going leaps and bounds up to three
hundred miles per hour. It was accelerating so fast after
the two forty mark that it's just unreal to think about,
I mean, considering when you look at the Bugatti and
what it's intended purposes. You know, it's intended to go fast.

(48:44):
That's what it was built for, go fast, and to
break this three in a mile per hour run. This,
this particular model, the run was built for this, this test,
and it will be sold, of course, but the way
that it grows from two forty to three hundred and
four is much much slower, still impressive. These are all impressive,
still impressive, but much much slower than for GT. This

(49:07):
is a completely different race or test. The Texas Smile
seems like a strict power test. It's a brutal test.
It's a brutal, brutal test, isn't it? I mean, And
the footage from it is incredible to be able to
see it now. You don't get a lot of um,
a lot of shots of like the car at the
finish line going by a three. You don't see that
because it's already in the distance. It's gone in the

(49:29):
spectator area where all the filming and everything's happening. I
wish they had more cameras on the track watching the
cars go buy at that speed, but you kind of
reliant on, you know, the GoPro cameras that are in
the vehicle, you know, by the drivers themselves, and you know,
of course that gets into weight and aerodynamics and all that.
Then you're also dealing with the spectator views people that
are there with them on the team to film the event.
You don't get a whole lot of like sensation of

(49:51):
the cars passing you at the top speed. And I
don't know why that is. Maybe it's because they don't
want anything on the track that could damage or harm
the driver or you know, if there's something went terribly wrong,
which sometimes does you know, anytime you're talking about these speeds,
you don't want any obstructions in the way. You want
to be able to have plenty of room. They've got
a half mile slowdown area that they know run off
area with sand at the end and everything. Um but

(50:12):
I just I find this whole thing fascinating. But there
are other mile events, the Arkansas Mile, the Arkansas Mile,
I didn't know that. That's another one, you know what,
I'm going to immediately look up the Arkansas Mile as
soon as we get out here, I really am. The
Colorado Mile is another One's color Arkansas Mile. The Colorado Mile. Alright,
So I'm finding out new things every moment here. But

(50:33):
if you don't know anything about the Texas Mile or
you know a little bit about it, now, you don't
know everything, of course, because we we're just kind of
scraping the surface on this thing. And it's fascinating to watch.
Really if you're into that type of racing, it's it's
really really cool. If you just like speed, there's a
lot of a lot of nuances that you can kind
of dig into and and find out about, and you
know specific drivers and types of vehicles that are run there,

(50:54):
and you know current records and all that. And like
I said, I probably neglected to, uh, you know, give
you all of the information. So if you want to
dig into the Texas Smile and find out what it's
all about again, um, please do so. But I do
want to tell you that we are on all forms
of social media that you can think of everything under
the sun. Really Okay, Well, there's maybe three. Al right,

(51:15):
So we're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find
us there. You can always, uh, you know, kind of
give us a little bit of feedback there if you want.
We are car Stuff hsw at all three of those
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of material that you can find on iHeart dot com
if you get your podcast there, or you can go
to Apple Podcasts and leave some feedback at either one
of those places. You can find our extensive archive on

(51:38):
iHeart dot com. If you want to go to Apple
podcast I think you're limited to the most recent three hundred.
Of course, tell your friends because we're always trying to
grow the audience and and get more people involved. So
we really do appreciate it, and we will catch you
next time. That's right, see you later. Car Stuff is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts or

(51:59):
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