Land Speed Records

After being salvaged from the scrapheap of highly promising but highly ambitious vehicular endeavors, the record-seeking Bloodhound Supersonic Car has been moved into a new research center with efforts to bring it up to speed now continuing apace.

As you might expect, development of the Bloodhound supersonic car has proven costly and just last week it was announced that lack of funds had ended the project for good. But that was last week. Now a new backer has been found and the world land speed record attempt is on again.​

Since its founding in 2007, the company behind the Bloodhound Supersonic Car has made no secret of its plans to smash the world land speed record and cross the 1,000-mph (1,600-km/h) threshold. Today those plans have hit a significant speed bump, with the team revealing it has run out of cash.

Sean Mills, of Big CC Racing in Berkshire, UK, has a serious claim to the world's fastest street-legal motorcycle after rider Phil Hall used his variable boost, stroked-out turbo 'Busa to hit 271 mph (436 kmh) at the recent Straightliners event at Elvington Airstrip.

​Earlier today we reported that Neil "Soupy" Campbell secured a new European bicycle speed record of 149 mph (240 km/h). On Sunday, 45 year-old mother of three Denise Mueller-Korenek took to Bonneville Salt Flats and recorded a speed on 183.932 mph (296 km/h) to set the overall speed record.​

If you need any further convincing on the impact of wind drag on vehicle efficiency, try this for size: a British fellow just hopped on a pushbike and went 149 mph while slipstreaming a Porsche. Neil "Soupy" Campbell now holds the European bicycle speed record, but not the world one – yet.

​​For over a century the Bonneville Salt Flats has drawn motoring enthusiasts to its vast open plains for its annual Speed Week, and for more than half a century one father-son duo has eyed a history-making run at the event. That dream has now been realized with a new land speed record being set.

Sydney's Ben Felten will go for a motorcycle land speed record this weekend in South Australia, aboard a Kawasaki ZX-10R. Since he's completely blind, he'll be taking instructions from an ex-MotoGP rider over a radio. The target? Over 156 miles per hour, or 251 kmh.

Most land-speed record holders are adrenaline junkies, who spend years sweating through engineering challenges for the chance to get out on the salt and go fast. Eva Håkansson hates that part. We caught up with her at the Melbourne EV expo for a very entertaining chat.

​Following its first public runs back in October, the team behind the Bloodhound Supersonic Car has shifted its focus to the dry lake bed in South Africa, where it hopes to shatter the world's land speed record in 2020.

Last week, we spent a few days walking the halls of the 2017 SEMA Show and staring in awe at some of the craziest cars, trucks, motorcycles and ... others ... on the planet. Here are our favorite cars of the show.

​With the likes of Bugatti and Hennessey jostling for pole position, there is plenty happening at the high-end of the hypercar game. But it looks like there is a new top dog in town, at least in terms of two-way land speed records.