Crossing the Country Really Fast

The subject of Cannonball has been incredibly popular in the last few weeks. Prior to that, it had been somewhat of a novel automotive hobby that was starting to gain popularity again thanks to Ed Bolian and VINwiki and the “fraternity of lunatics.”

Recently, the solo cannonball record fell, which, surprisingly enough, beat Ed’s record run that had lasted up until November 2019. Then during the pandemic, many attempts were made and the record just kept getting lower and lower. A point could be made that the pandemic made it easier to cross the country from the Red Ball parking garage in New York City to the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, California. Maybe there should be a separate record category for the pandemic runs? I was curious to know what Ed would think, since he seems to be the face of all of this. He described in a video that the situation is different than it was before the pandemic and there is some controversy among those in the activity, but this isn’t exactly an activity with defined rules.

With that said, back to the solo cannonball run. It was done in a rented Ford Mustang that was modified to hold 3 fuel tanks in the cabin of the car. The driver only had to stop for 8 minutes to get fuel. And this is what I started to ponder, could those 8 minutes be eliminated with on the move refueling?

BMW created a system to refuel a car while moving when they attempted the longest drift record. It looks similar to the way aircraft refuel in flight. If this system was applied to cannonball, where you could get a lighter, faster, (electronic speed limiter turned off), and covert car that gobbles up ground quickly, it would be a very serious record breaking run.

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Memorable Magazine Murcielago

Hot Wheels doesn’t make the Lamborghini Murcielago in Verde Draco and I don’t have a picture of one in real life. I am settling for a picture of a Lamborghini I do have that was an interesting story in itself to acquire that I might tell in another blog.

Thinking back to high school in one of my previous blogs reminded me of one of the most memorable cars from a magazine I have ever seen. My first memory of this car came while sitting in the waiting room of a chiropractor. I picked up the March 2007 Automobile magazine laying on the table and flipped it open to reveal this gorgeous, aggressive, and very new, 2007 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 in Verde Draco green.

The author, Chris Harris, was given the keys to a brand new machine and his goal was to leave England, traveling in the car, to find a road somewhere in Europe where he could test the top speed and then write all about the adventure. He loaded the car onto the train that goes under the English Channel, made his way through France, and somewhere in Belgium, the V12 beast happily hits 216 mph. Reading about a trip like that in a car so remarkable was fueling my desire to be an automotive writer.

Almost 9 years after graduating college, I am going to try to put my skills and passion to use. It is fun to see that other automotive icons close to my age have similar fond memories of particular cars that I do. In this case, Ed Bolian of VinWiki shares the same passion for a Verde Draco Murcielago, and he made his dreams come true by owning one.

You can read the Automobile article from 2007 here.

See Ed’s Lamborghini in a few videos here, here, and here.