Temples of Speed: The four main sites of velocity worship.
For automakers set on the glory that comes from breaking records, going fast has become a very serious business. Speed-obsessed manufacturers get bragging rights and the halo of technical supremacy, but first they have to prove it. There are only a few places in the world to safely and repeatedly test their claims, which is why purpose-built tracks designed for mad velocities have become the backdrop for so many production-car speed records.
It wasn’t always so. Back in the early ’60s, a British auto magazine broke the road-car speed record by taking a Jaguar E-type to 152 mph using nothing more than a quiet stretch of England’s recently opened M1 motorway. But as cars got quicker and roads more crowded, high-speed testing (mostly) moved off public roads, especially as the supercar boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s pushed the production-car number to the seemingly unbeatable 240.1 mph posted by the McLaren F1 in 1998 at Ehra-Lessien in Germany. Of course, that didn’t deter Volkswagen from spending the best part of $500 million on developing the Bugatti Veyron just to take the crown.
Not all record setting relies on a European test-o-plex or carmakers’ money: Bonneville and Black Rock are still the places to go for ultimate, totally nutso speed in cars shaped like suppositories. Herewith, the four venues where drivers break the vast majority of records.
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