Nice. I was typing before from my iPhone, so one of my sentences somehow got clipped. I meant to write that I held 135-140 mph for almost a half hour. It was both a harrowing and exhilarating experience. The road I was on was flat and gentle, but it was the absolute limit of the car I was driving. Even the slightest curve required all of my concentration and my gentlest steering. I have never before or since experienced that sort of sensation or that level of concentration when driving.
Isn’t it crazy? Imagine going 60 mph faster than that and going around a track multiple times with 30 other cars going the the same speed as you and narrowly avoiding crashing the whole time. I don’t know how those racing drivers do it. That’s a lot of concentration energy to expend!
I drove a souped up Camaro from a dealer in Idaho to a dealer in WA back in the 70s. I have no idea what sort of engine was in that monster. It had oversized tires in back and was sitting at a raked angle when I first saw it. Now, I went through high school driving a Rambler. The only muscle car I ever drove (and only for about a block) was a 1965 GTO, which was impressive, but brief. My car at the time of this particular trip was a Plymouth station wagon.
So I was totally unprepared for this car, and had trouble even getting it out of the parking lot without laying rubber. Just touching the gas when the light turned green catapulted the car forward and me backward. After about a hundred miles, I got brave enough to ramp it up a bit on a long straight-away, but chickened out at about 90, as the car was just too hard to keep on the road. The suspension was very stiff, and the thing cornered like it wanted to hop across the road and into the ditch, even at lower speeds.
A very good friend of mine drove a heavily modified Suzuki Aerio for several years. He’s an excellent driver who has had some training and regularly takes whatever he’s driving at the time to the track for time trials. The times I rode with him when he decided to really open that Aerio up were definite white-knuckle moments for me, nonetheless. Even when it is a deliberate maneuver, I don’t like drifting.
What an odd choice of car for tuning!
There are, or were, enough people who were into it that he used to frequent a discussion board dedicated to the topic. The bard had enough members that were able to get runs of custom parts made. I had an Aerio all-wheel drive station wagon for a while that he nagged me into doing a few things to. We spent an afternoon installing a custom-made lightweight underdrive pulley in it, for example. We’ve both since moved on to other vehicles. He wanted something that would allow him to tinker with fuel/air profiles through the on-board computer, which can’t be done on an Aerio, and I wanted something larger and more comfortable.
Ha! This is funnier than you know. My dad’s 914 was somewhat legendary in the family. Before he met mom, he took it out racing a few times. Sports car racing, Texas, mid-70s. Everything with huge engines and this little yellow 914 cheerily staying the hell ahead of them all.
So this oil guy went home, and came back with three IndyCar racers. (F1 style cars) and the next race, they wound up 1 2 4. With the 914 sitting at 3.
Too fast, too fast. Well, no, not the Viper at Skip Barber. (Lime Rock) at about 140+, I wasn’t looking too close.
Had the Camry up to 135 on a un-highway once. (Saw Mill by Reader’s Digest Road, if anyone knows the area: Two lanes, no maintenance) racing a recent and hot-rodded Mustang. Was skidding an inch or two to the right at the turns, but under control. Three miles of that.
Had the Matrix up to about the same speed on a better section of three-lane Sprain Brook, dealing with a Evo MR. For ten miles. That was one of those things where I went ‘never again’ after. Tail was a little light, but controllable.
Had the 550 Spyder up to about 100… yeah. That was a little hinky. Especially considering the repair costs.
Had a Datsun 510 up to 85. That was terrifying. Especially since it was a homemade Targa conversion. Wasn’t sure it would hold together.
How in the world did you manage to have a Toyota Camry and a Toyota Matrix keep up with a hot-rodded, recent Mustang and a Mitsubishi Evo?
:dubious:
Mid-70s while in commuting daily to classes at Illinois State my freshman year.
For some unfathomable reason I still don’t understand to this day, while enroute home after finals one late evening, I managed to goose the family sedan, a rather well-assembled (thank Og) ordinary Buick Century to 130 mph (at least, that’s what the speedometer said) while northbound on Route 66 between Bloomington and Lexington, Il, a trip normally about twenty minutes or so long.
I think i made it in nine. And lived to tell the tale, since neither the car nor I were any worse for the experience. Og protects the young and stupid, I guess.
What I remember most is how light and ***loose ***the car seemed at that speed - as if it were no longer in proper contact with the road. Which was the case, I’m sure. Suffice it to say that standard, off-the-assembly-line, four-door cars really, probably shouldn’t be driven at that speed. :eek: 
Needless to say I never did such a foolishly-idiotic thing like that again. There were other foolishly-idiotic things ahead of me, but none that flat-out endangered me that badly.
A friend of mine back in my college days had a Tiger also. I would have killed for a car like that then. Fortunately, Mike was never able to afford to do all he wanted to do to it, or he would have probably killed himself in it. He still managed to scare me more than once when I rode with him.
I had a friend in a school in San Diego in about 1971. He drove a Hemi Charger and used to go home to Idaho for the weekends. Cops in Nevada didn’t bother much with speeders at that time. He would leave SD around 5pm and be in Twin Falls before midnight. He boasted of speeds of 165 through NV. I refused to ever ride with the guy.
The Matrix was a first-year Matrix XRS. (The modern one is tamer.) Lotus Elise engine, six speed transmission with an insanely high final drive ratio, compression ratio of 14 to 1, dual cam profiles. Between zero and sixty, it was horrible. Between 60 and 115, very little could catch it. Above 115, I don’t really have that much data. Also, I’m very good at reading traffic. In this specific case, there was almost no traffic. The Evo passed me once. Took two miles to catch it again.
The Camry?
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/07q1/the_quickest_cars_of_2007_20_000_to_25_000-feature/second_place_3a_2007_toyota_camry_v-6_page_5
It’s not slow, I shift it manually, and I’m a trained driver. (Skip Barber lessons.) But just as much, the road was bad enough that the Mustang couldn’t go much faster than I could. He accelerated faster, but I stayed at higher speed in the turns, so I didn’t have to accelerate as much.
In both cases, I was driving at about 95% of the car’s capability. Very few people can actually do that. Most people can’t really drive to the capability of the car they own. Me, I like driving Q-ships. Cars that look incredibly normal, but are considerably more than you really expect.
Edit: The funny thing is that I pulled off at my exit, the Mustang kept going, and then I saw it pass me and park about half an hour later as I was walking in town, at the fire department. I walked over, asked the guy if he was racing that on the Saw Mill. He was hesitant till I said I was the other guy. Refused to believe it was a Camry till I pointed to it.
The best part was when we both passed a turn off that there used to be a gas station (I think) at, and there was a black SOMETHING there and we both hit the brakes at the same time. It was not a cop car. It was, instead, a '58 Vette convertible. The one with the twin headlights. We both floored it again.
Much of how fast a vehicle is relies on the driver, like e-Sabbath said. I’ve been faster on course than other cars that had 70-125 hp on me.
And numbers don’t mean squat. My 89 vette is a “street sweeper”. It’s a convertible that’s been built for 0-70 mph. If the other car has street tires, it’ll be a good race. The best thing about it is: people ask “how much HP?”. Less than 300. They don’t think to ask about the strip Torque converter, gears, and the 500 ft-lbs of torque.
The absolute fastest “car” I’ve ever driven is an ICC shifter kart.
Picture a go-kart, with itty bitty plastic bumpers, an engine that looks perfectly normal, and a little dinky radiator to your left.
Now imagine it accelerating hard enough from a standing start to briefly hop the front wheels off the ground on the 1-2 shift. That thing would LAUNCH whenever you got on it in the powerband. I could come out of a corner pointed whatever direction I chose.
200 lbs, plus driver, versus 48 horsepower. Add sticky tires that allow it to corner at 3 g and a seven-turn track barely 1500 feet long, and you have the perfect recipe for “high pilot workload”. Laps took 23 seconds and included two flights per lap where you entered and exited the bowl turns.
They sell rib-vests for karting. These consist of a fairly substantial piece of corrugated fiberglass with some closed-cell foam behind it. You need one in a shifter. I used to finish the day with a single continuous bruise on each side from shoulder to hip.
The scary thing about my ‘67 Toronado was trying to stop it. 424 cu in, 385 hp, top speed in the mid-130s (the rolling drum speedo rolled back above 0 at top speed, indicating more than 140 mph, but the specs do not support this), but with brakes that overheated due to its 4,500 lbs. It was a bit unnerving the first time I found out how very long it took to slow down.
That sounds like my experience test driving a Dodge Challenger back around 1975.
I burned rubber backing out of the parking space.
I burned rubber leaving the car lot.
I burned rubber for about a quarter mile down the highway.
I gave myself major points for getting that beast back to the car lot in one piece.
It did make me appreciate my Dodge Dart with its puny 318 engine. At least it never tried to kill me.
Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale - got to drive it at speed. OMG but that was fun and scary. Of course, it is often scary when it isn’t your car. 
I’ve ridden in lots of cool cars and I find riding in them (around a race circuit, usually) to be scarier than driving them because you are not in control when you are a passenger so it is more difficult to prepare yourself for what is just over the hill or around the corner.
Plus, you don’t have a steering wheel to hold onto.
Just grab onto the driver’s balls. He’ll slow down when he senses that you are getting tense.
Then you won’t be invited back, what’s the fun in that?