The Texas Mile

0:00Speaker 1: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 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, 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

1:01Speaker 1:current record holders, and how some strategies I guess to 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 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, just just like a general when you first heard about this initially, I compared it to a drag race. Um,

1:55Speaker 1: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 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.

2:29Speaker 1:But let's see the first time you saw a car 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 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 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

3:29Speaker 1: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 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 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.

4:21Speaker 1: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 low cost, easy way to do repair. I mean, you know, I guess it depends on the color of the vehicle.

4:47Speaker 1: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, 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 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.

5:40Speaker 1:Makes it makes a huge improvement in the way the car looks after you know, a minor a minor incident. 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.

6:10Speaker 1: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, what happened? Tell you the story or is it too painful?

6:33Speaker 1: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 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 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.

7:23Speaker 1: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 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 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 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,

8:31Speaker 1: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, 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.

9:00Speaker 1:I don't know if they ever have or not. And 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 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.

9:30Speaker 1: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, 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 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

10:19Speaker 1: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 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.

10:41Speaker 1:I mean, this is its third home since two thousand three. It's been run since two thousand three. It began in 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, 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 really knew about the event. It wasn't, you know, heavily promoted.

11:31Speaker 1: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 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.

12:01Speaker 1: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 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 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.

12:49Speaker 1:I mean I wouldn't be so sure for an event 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 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.

13:22Speaker 1: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 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 if they allow tents. Uh, you know, the information wasn't pacific about that. You can contact them and find out.

14:02Speaker 1: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 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, 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,

15:02Speaker 1: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.

15:24Speaker 1: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, 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, 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

16:20Speaker 1: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 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 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.

17:11Speaker 1:And it also could be like these shops that specifically 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 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.

17:49Speaker 1:I'm and it's it's such a strange contest and maybe maybe we should talk about just like I hope them 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 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 just the speed, not the time. And that's unique in that if you're going for a top speed run typically

18:47Speaker 1: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 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 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.

19:45Speaker 1: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 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 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 getting at is from the half mile to the end,

20:52Speaker 1: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 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.

21:34Speaker 1: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 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, 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

22:28Speaker 1: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 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 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.

23:13Speaker 1: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, 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 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.

24:05Speaker 1:The this is a this is an older car that they've retrofitted with Mustang sixty eight Mustang fast Back, and 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 about the aerodynamics of a sixty eight must Stang Fastback.

24:39Speaker 1: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 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, 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

25:38Speaker 1:point six kilometers of roadway, if you want to look at it that way. So it's those are the types 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 just now, something a lot of people probably already know about.

26:07Speaker 1: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 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.

26:31Speaker 1: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. 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 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 it a conventional motorcycle, you know, where the rider's exposed, it's a traditional motorcycle. I supposed. However, when you look

27:35Speaker 1: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. 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.

28:08Speaker 1:But we've heard of land speed record people. That's how 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, 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 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,

29:19Speaker 1: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 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.

29:41Speaker 1:What was it Texas Texas. Yeah, Texas Smile dot net was the site, So check that out if you want to. Again, 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.

30:06Speaker 1:I would love to have been there last March. Yes, okay, 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 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 customer that that wanted to do this or for themselves.

30:55Speaker 1: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 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.

31:38Speaker 1: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 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 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

32:36Speaker 1:years later, and they ended up topping three hundred miles per hour, and they did it in a series of 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, 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.

33:14Speaker 1: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 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 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.

33:57Speaker 1: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 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 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 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

35:01Speaker 1: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 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 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 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

36:04Speaker 1: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. 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 a classic. Yeah, oh yeah, sure, it's cool to see this classic cargo three miles an hour. Yeah, yeah, it is.

36:49Speaker 1: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 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 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.

37:42Speaker 1: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 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 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.

38:27Speaker 1:So keeping the car on the ground is a huge issue. There's so much that goes into these cars and the 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.

38:55Speaker 1: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. 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 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

39:58Speaker 1:to about hundred, but it's nearly impossible to keep it 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 be either one of those on on either side of that.

40:25Speaker 1: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 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 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.

41:18Speaker 1: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 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?

41:42Speaker 1:And again this is written in March. Will in August 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 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.

42:27Speaker 1:But they didn't go as far as to X ray the tires before they made their runs. Well, these are tires, 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 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.

43:03Speaker 1: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, 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.

43:34Speaker 1:Um all right, anyway, So I was thinking back, and 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.

44:00Speaker 1: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 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 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

45:04Speaker 1:the record run. They give it an equivalent horsepower rating, 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, 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 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.

45:59Speaker 1: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 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.

46:31Speaker 1: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 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 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

47:32Speaker 1: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 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, 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 like it's like this, it's like two forty one two three to the four G t didn't have that luxury.

48:28Speaker 1: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. 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 is a completely different race or test. The Texas Smile seems like a strict power test. It's a brutal test.

49:15Speaker 1: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 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.

49:44Speaker 1: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 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 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 if you don't know anything about the Texas Mile or you know a little bit about it, now, you don't

50:37Speaker 1: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, 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, 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.

51:21Speaker 1:We are car Stuff hsw at all three of those and um we do have, of course a big archive 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 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 my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.