"Galileo was the first person to measure speed as distance over time." "I wonder what Galileo would have thought of this?" "One-twenty, one-thirty, one-forty, one-fifty." "It's not just about going fast." "It's about the experience of getting there." "Just when we thought we couldn't go any faster..." "We find ways to break the speed limit." "It's in the nature of humans to go faster." "I have the need for speed." "Clearly." "You were going fast." "I'm still on an adrenaline high." "All right." "We're gonna be looking at the most insane speed freaks and finding out who's the fastest and why." "Straight out the gate, I'm going down the rabbit hole because I have a jet that was designed in the late '50s and is still the highest speed today." "I've got the fastest human alive." "And he may just be the fastest that will ever live." "Well, Tory and I are going head to head in a race between two gravity-powered humans." "And I am gonna be looking at the fastest electric cars from the past and present." "So, let's go over our criteria for ranking these." "We have top speed, acceleration, and then, proximity to speed limit." "In other words, have they reached the peak of their performance?" "Then we'll take each of these contenders, apply our three criteria, and see which speed freak comes out on top." "Check this out." "For my first contender, I'm gonna bring a classic story from the history of speed back to life." "I love going fast." "And my favorite form of speed is in a car." "So, I wanted to pick a speedster that was very unique." "That looks so cool." "Look at that." "So, I started going through automotive history, and then I came across this." "This is the Baker Torpedo." "Built back in 1902." "It was low to the ground, aerodynamic and, most importantly, it was an electric car." "Some people believe it was the fastest car on Earth." "But disaster struck on the cusp of a new land speed record." "I'm convinced he was going faster than the world record." "It's time to build an electric car from scratch." "And take on that 1902 world record even if it kills me." "Holy shit." "Back in 1902, most cars looked like this, were powered by steam and maxed out below 20 miles per hour." "Enter pioneer, designer, and speed freak, Walter Baker." "Baker swapped steam for electricity, revolutionized the car's shape..." "And set out to break the land speed record." "Hey, Tim." "How are you?" "Hey." "I spoke to auto historian Tim George to find out more." "How cool is this photo?" "Yeah, this photograph is so stunning when you see that Baker is in a low, aerodynamic car lined up against other cars that look like wagons with engines." "Baker made several versions of the Torpedo." "The 1902 model drew huge crowds to Staten Island for the land speed race." "Thomas Edison was there." "Henry Ford was there and up rolls this totally alien vehicle." "Some people were afraid of it." "They even called it the devil's car." "How fast did Baker go?" "Because it's not in the record books." "He was on course to set the land speed record when he crashed into the crowd and killed two spectators." "The record was 75 miles an hour." "My sense is he was going 82 miles an hour at the time of the crash." "Unfortunately, the crash is what kept him out of the record books forever." "That sounds like a challenge." "It's time to start building." "I'm gonna rebuild that Torpedo to the original specs to see if I can succeed where Bad Luck Baker failed." "To help out, I've got a pit crew and a big name in electric custom cars." "Gadget." "Thanks for coming out, man." "Hey." "We're shooting for the same weight, power and design." "Axle to axle is nine foot nine." "To get started, we mark up the dimensions." "So, I'm gonna be sitting right here." "Just like that." "And at 18-feet long..." "Wow, this thing is a monster." "Remember there was also an engineer, so there was a guy sitting behind you running the brakes and switches." "That makes more sense." "Driving the original Torpedo was a two-man job, but I doubt anyone's gonna wanna take this ride with me." "So I'm going solo." "What I'm gonna do is build a foam mock up first." "That way I can find my shape." "This is what they did in 1902, they whittled." "Once we have the shape we like, we're gonna build it out of steel." "I mean, this thing's massive." "I'm gonna use that foam core as templates." "I'll bend the steel according to the foam core..." "That's the ticket." "I'll weld it together and I'll have the frame for my body." "It's time for some metal." "This is gonna be so sick." "I'm getting excited because the Torpedo car is starting to take shape." "And that low-slung look is so modern." "I mean, over 100 years later and it still looks cool." "When you consider that most of the people went to this race on horses and buggies and up pulls this guy at the starting line with a mid-engine car, fully aerodynamic, it's really amazing." "And the fact that it was an electric car." "Like, I had no idea electric cars existed that long ago." "Yeah, starting in the late 1800s, electric cars were the fastest cars on Earth." "The first three land speed records were held by electric cars." "Those cars were all European." "Baker was out to bring the record to America." "And that meant completely rethinking just what a car could be." "Now, it's time to move on to the steering, suspension and braking system." "This front axle started life on a vintage Nash automobile." "Kind of like we're building a Mad Max car." "It looks so macho." "It does look pretty badass." "The rear axle is custom made to fit the frame." "There we go." "Some hubs and then the brake." "Singular." " All this vehicle has is one brake." " Right." "If I get it up to 100 miles an hour," "I'm gonna feather it." "I don't want this thing to lock up." "No, you don't." "That's what happened in the Torpedo's fateful 1902 crash when the brakeman tried to slow the car." "I have to take care of braking and steering all by myself." "Yikes." "Next up, powering the Torpedo to the specs of the original." "Watch your fingers." "It's a beast of an electric motor, it's an 11-inch diameter motor." "We'll set it up so it gives us the same power." "Baker used a bank of innovative nickel iron batteries direct from Thomas Edison's lab." "Our cell setup is a modern match." "Yeah, that looks great." "To accelerate, Baker manipulated a rheostat, the electric equivalent of a gas pedal." "And just like the original, our rear axle is chain driven." "All right, we've got chain clearance." "Our axle is spinning." "Oh-ho-ho." "We have power." "Now, we don't know exactly how Baker made his wheels." "What we do know is they were made mostly of wood, like a wagon wheel." "In an aerodynamic first, Baker covered the spokes to reduce drag." "I'm getting a local bike shop to hook us up with some 30-inch aluminum rims to replicate those wind-resistant originals." "All right." "Good, good, good." "Hey, I got the wheels." " Nice." " Look at these things." "These things are monsters." "Let's get the car off the table and onto jacks so we can mount the wheels." "It's like it just got real." "It's like before it was, like, "Yeah, it's gonna be a car,"" "and now it's like, "Oh, it's gonna be a car."" "Holy crap." "The car looks insane, and we basically built this from a photograph." "The last thing we need to do is skin it." "But before we do that," "I wanna take it for a test drive, make sure everything is working properly." "All right, here we go." "The electric car." "Let's see how it runs." "Oh!" "Little scrape." "Oh." "Here we go in three, two, one." "Oh, yeah!" "Wow." "This is cool." "All right, let's skin it and then see if we can break that record." "Yeah." "For my first contender, I'm going back to basics." "I wanna see how fast humans can go under their own power." "There are seven billion people in the world today... and Usain Bolt is the fastest one of them all." "He ran the 100-meter dash in a record-setting 9.58 seconds." "That's a top speed of almost 28 miles per hour, and an acceleration off the blocks of 31 feet per second per second." "That's a higher acceleration than a Porsche 911." "So, that's criteria one and two taken care of but what I'm really interested in is how close are we to the limit of human speed?" "Can we go faster?" "And, if so, how much?" "I took a look at the record books." "Since the 1896 Olympics, when Thomas Burke clocked a track time of 12 seconds, there's been a steady increase in performance all the way up until Bolt's record-setting run in Berlin, in 2009." "For the past 100 years, at least, humans have steadily been getting faster." "But is that it?" "Has the human race plateaued?" "Eh, maybe." "Bolt thinks that 9.4 seconds is the fastest anyone will ever run." "And some people think that the fastest person there ever will be has already been born." "Which is an opinion that's supported by mathematician Reza Noubary." "He concluded that not only are we already at the limit, but that Bolt has marginally exceeded what statistics predict is humanly possible." "He's saying that Bolt really is that extraordinary." "But other scientists are adamant that human beings will breach that 28-mile-per-hour ceiling." "Here's Dr. Peter Weyand." "At some point somebody will run faster than that." "What differentiates fast and slow people is fast people can hit the ground harder in relation to their bodyweight." "So, somebody like Usain Bolt will hit with a peak force of five times body weight but continuing to go faster than he goes will require him to hit even harder than that." "But a question like, "what's the ultimate speed a human can run?"" "is extremely hard to answer." "So, where does this leave us?" "Usain Bolt is the fastest man alive." "His speed and acceleration are almost superhuman." "But what I'm really interested in is criteria number three." "How close are we to the limit of human speed?" "It's a tough one to call." "Dr. Weyand cites 40 miles per hour as the hypothetical maximum." "But the math says we are already at the limit." "Either way, I'm backing Bolt to give Kari and Tory's speed freaks a run for their money." "There's another way for humans to go very fast." "Add gravity." "Accomplished skiers average about 40 miles per hour." "Here's me doing 12." "Conventional skydivers hit terminal velocity at 120 miles per hour." "But we're looking for serious speed freaks." "To find the fastest non-motorized human on the planet, we're taking the two sports with a claim to that title and putting them head-to-head." "All right, Joss, so tell me about speed skiing." "This is an actual sport?" "It's an actual sport." "Basically, it's all about going as fast as you can on skis with no motor." "In the international sport of speed skiing, the track is around one kilometer long, and a 100-meter timing zone is marked out on the fastest part of the course." "Everything about the sport is geared for speed." "The key is to reduce friction with body position and state-of-the-art materials." "I would say that speed skiers are known for their equipment, not by what they do." "Airtight latex reduces wind resistance." "We've got crazy long skis." "They're eight-feet long." "The larger the ski's surface area, the more efficiently the weight is distributed, which, in turn, reduces friction." "We've got these things behind our legs called fairings." "The aerodynamic profile decreases drag." "And finally, to pierce the air like a jet fighter nose cone:" "The helmet is a fiberglass shell, just purely for aerodynamics, that fits over our normal ski helmet." "It's a crazy setup, but..." "What if we were to leave the land and take to the sky?" "Welcome to the wild and dangerous world of speed skydiving." "Now, how fast can you go speed skydiving?" "I know terminal velocity is like 120 miles an hour." "What can you guys do?" "Normal speed for a skydiver in a belly orientation is about 120 miles an hour." "But when you go head down and really start to tighten it up, you can get some really high speeds." "A lot of people flying head down fly in the 180, 200 mile an hour range, but if you really punch it out and wear something like I'm wearing today, then I've gotten up to 285 miles an hour." "Two hundred and eighty-five miles an hour?" "What does that do to a body, going that fast?" "It's an interesting experience." "Everything starts to shake like it's about to fall apart." "This is kind of a dangerous sport." "I would say that it's not for beginners." "Speed skydiving has a lot in common with speed skiing." "Gravity is the engine, wind resistance, the enemy." "Specialized equipment and an aerodynamic body position reduce drag." "Like speed skiing, there are rules." "This track is one kilometer long, but the starting line is 4,000 meters up." "The clock starts when Kyle hits 2,700 meters." "Right now, it's go time." "Both tech teams have fitted the athletes with accelerometers..." "It'll be about two minutes." "Is that okay?" "and are ready to record their top speeds and peak acceleration." "The racers are ready for a rush of raw adrenaline." "So, they start the jump zone at 13,000 feet." "Yeah, they're gonna jump around 13." "Okay." "Cue the data." "They're coming down." "Whoo!" "Joss crosses the timing line at 106 miles an hour." "Now, he just needs to stop before hitting our cameraman." "Meanwhile, Kyle has just hit the danger zone, 250 miles per hour and counting." "Wow." "Pull the chute now and he's dead." "He hits the air brakes." "When he slows to 120 miles per hour, he pops the chute." "You are a beast." "That was fun." "You could probably go faster." "What are the limiters?" "Is it track, is it equipment?" "The biggest limiter would be track size." "There's not a lot of speed skiing tracks in the world and they're hard to build." "Our biggest limitation at this point is finding the perfect track." "Do you think we've hit the limit as far as how fast a non-motorized human can go?" "Oh, no, of course not." "Human beings are always searching for ways to go faster." "There's a lot of things that we have to do still in order to improve the equipment." "There's things we can do to decrease drag on the helmet, on the risers, just to help keep little things from slowing us down." "You guys, that was crazy." "The look on the skydiver's face as he jumped out of the plane." "Iceman." "So, what speeds did you finally get?" "So, Joss hit a 106 miles per hour." "My guy got up to 260 miles an hour and he was actually disappointed because under the optimum conditions, like, the world record is 346 miles an hour." "Well, the current record for speed skiing is 158 miles an hour." "Okay, well, let's use those for our top speed criteria." "And we've already seen their scores for criteria two, acceleration." "How about the third criteria?" "How close to the envelope, the peak of performance, are these guys?" "Joss was saying their biggest limiter is the course itself." "They have to stick to a 1000 meters." "That's not gonna change." "But as far as the aerodynamics go, they pretty much made their suits and equipment as efficient as possible." "They're pretty much as close to as fast as they are gonna ever go." "I mean, the only way to go faster with speed skydiving is to lower the drag co-efficient." "Now, being such a young sport, Kyle is actually really optimistic that with a little R  D and training and equipment, they might be able to go a lot faster." "Over 100 years ago," "Walter Baker built a futuristic, low-slung, electric speed machine." "He designed the first modern land speed record car." "In 1902, it crashed while going for a new world land speed record." "My mission is to make the Torpedo live again, and give Bad Luck Baker another chance." "First, the finishing touches." "Now, when Baker skinned his car, he used wood and canvas." "We're gonna use the same materials." "What we're gonna do is take quarter-inch plywood, cut three-inch wide strips, and basically bend that over the frame, and then we're gonna stagger those, overlapping and nailing as we go." "Once we have our basic shape, then what we're gonna do is spray it with expanding foam just to smooth it out." "After sanding, we'll cover it with canvas and treat it with oil." "Once the oil is dry, we'll give it a paint job." "When this thing's done, it's gonna look so badass." "Now to add some ballast so it weighs the same as the original car." "Once I put the body on and I climb in, we'll be at 3000 pounds." "Now, as far as the power of the vehicle goes, we have used the same type of batteries that Baker used, and we have taken a motor and dialed it back to a motor rated at seven horsepower." "Now, for the final element, we're gonna add the body." "All right, this is it, the last piece to the puzzle." "And it looks sick." "I mean, it looks just like Baker's Torpedo Car." "Now it's time to turn this thing around and go for a run." "I can't wait." "Hope I don't crash like Baker did." "This is it." "Can our tribute to the Torpedo break the 1902 world record?" "We're about to roll out." "This is for you, Baker." "We're trying to hit 75 miles an hour." "Here we go in three, two, one." "Thirty miles per hour." "The acceleration is insane." "Fifty." "Sixty." "And..." "Seventy-six!" "Yes!" "We've done it." "Holy shit, the brakes don't work!" "Battery-powered speed comes in all sizes." "Welcome to the world of remote control drag racing." "This is Tim Smith." "Bona fide speed freak with a personal best of 179 miles per hour." "His mission, smash the current world record of 202 miles per hour." "And it all starts here... in his garage." "Let's cut." "How can you go wrong, right?" "Where we're gonna try to squeeze a few more miles per hour out of his car." "Starting with the aerodynamics." "All right, I'm gonna coat down the body so the cloth will stick to it a little bit better." "Today we're gonna make a brand-new carbon fiber body because at this level of performance, it's not giant leap after giant leap." "It's a series of small, incremental improvements." "Okay, that seems like it's probably enough resin for the body, so let's wrap it." "With the carbon fiber molded, he pulls a vacuum to make sure he has a uniform shell and a super-slick, lightweight surface." "It's gonna be as smooth as what we see right now." "What we see is what we're gonna end up with." "Okay, so..." "While the carbon fiber cures," "Tim gives me a tour of the hardware under the hood." "I see a brushless motor." "Right." "If I ran this motor on one volt, I'd have 2400 rpm out of this motor." "We're gonna run it on 33 volts." "So, we're gonna get about 70,000 out of this motor." "Wow." "That's fast." "To put that in context, the latest model Teslas redline at around 16,000 to 18,000 RPM." "All right, let's talk about the source of your power." "Okay, these are four-cells packs, and this is 14.8 volts each battery." "Tim's got the parts, the ambition and his homemade carbon fiber body." "There it is." "Oh, God." "That's great." "But to give him a better shot at the title," "I've got a friend who owes me a favor." "This is San Diego State University, and Tim is about to step up to the big leagues." "Hey, Len." "Hey, Grant." "How's it going?" "Good." "Hey, Tim." "Hi." "Wind tunnel testing is a crucial component of high-performance aerodynamic design." "Red alert, set course bearing 125, shields at maximum." "First, we need a baseline." "So, we measure the drag produced by an off-the-shelf model." "You hear that?" "That's the sound of science." "And then we compare it to Tim's carbon fiber shell." "What that provided was about a 1.4% improvement in drag." "It's a start, but Tim needs to reduce his drag significantly to beat the world record." "So, this is gonna give us a nice view of what's happening to the flow at very localized areas." "Oh, yeah." "There you go." "Where the strings are stable, the aerodynamic flow is efficient." "But when they flap around chaotically..." "Behind the front wheel, it's pretty ugly." "that indicates velocity-reducing drag." "But don't worry, the doc has a solution." "Well, we've got these little critters called vortex generators and they will cause the flow to stir and mix and reduce your pressure drag." "So, what this does is it makes the transition a little smoother." "Smoother, less of a low-pressure area." "Less pressure drag, faster speed." "Test two." "And right away, the airflow looks a lot smoother." "Now, in comparison, we reduced the drag by 9%." " Wow." " That's awesome." "It's a big step up from test one." "Okay, so let's say we wanna eke out as much performance as we possibly can." "Do you have any final suggestions?" "One would be to fair this area in here so they're covered." "The other is probably to extend the cowling, and just see if you can cover up some of the rear wheels here." "Okay, Tim, we've still got a couple days before the world record attempt." "Do you think you're gonna be ready?" "I think I can." "Especially with all this news." "I can make these changes, and it should make this car better." "All right, thanks a lot." "Great day, guys." "While Grant's chasing speed at ground level," "I'm aiming higher, and my next contender could be on top when it comes to our final rankings." "If you're looking for speed, you wanna take to the skies." "I've chosen a jet." "But if you wanna find the fastest plane of all, you have to go all the way back to 1958 and the height of the Cold War." "The world is on the brink of nuclear apocalypse." "The CIA wants a futuristic new spy plane that can fly faster than any plane ever has done before." "Twenty-two hundred miles per hour." "Three times the speed of sound." "But what they're proposing is a plane that not just flies at Mach 3, but cruises at Mach 3." "At an altitude of 85,000 feet." "The only place that would even dream of an aircraft like this is Lockheed Martin's R  D workshop, Skunk Works." "They're the guys who invented the legendary spy plane, the U2." "Heading up this engineering A-team is aviation genius Clarence "Kelly" Johnson." "The project is classified black, above top secret." "The plane is christened the SR-71." "Building the SR-71 is the greatest engineering challenge in aviation history." "The 500-degree heat generated at cruising speed means the cockpit windshield will melt lead." "Tests show that, at Mach 3, the plane expands several inches as it heats up under extreme temperatures." "Everything must be built from scratch." "They build the windshield from quartz, hydraulic lines from stainless steel, the ejector flaps from an alloy used in watch springs," "and gold-plate the plumbing lines." "Due to its high melting point, they craft the body out of titanium, which, at the time, was mostly mined in Russia." "So, the CIA used front companies to buy all the supplies from the enemy." "But the biggest challenge is the propulsion system." "The most powerful jet engines in the world only produce speeds of Mach 2." "So, how do you get a plane to cruise at Mach 3?" "The answer, engineering genius in the shape of air throttles, movable cones that control the airflow into the engines." "The cones produce an amazing 70% of the plane's total thrust, allowing the SR-71 to fly at two-thirds of a mile per second." "April 1962." "It's time to test this speed machine, nicknamed Blackbird." "The plane accelerates with the roar of a tornado." "Peaking at 19.4 feet per second squared... it can accelerate for longer than any other vehicle at maximum power." "Twenty minutes after takeoff, it hits Mach 3.2." "The SR-71 flies coast to coast across America in one hour and seven minutes." "It can go from day to night in a split second and outfly the rotation of the Earth." "It conducts 3,500 missions over hostile territory, evading 1,000 missiles just by hitting the throttle." "In 1990, the SR-71 Blackbird was retired after 65 million miles of flying, and it's the only military aircraft to never have been shot down or ever lose a crew member to enemy fire." "It shattered every aviation record as the first supersonic stealth aircraft, and to this day, it's still the fastest plane ever created." "Wow." "That's impressive." "Criteria number one, how fast did it go?" "Well, the SR-71 had a top speed of Mach 3.2," "and that is a 50-year-old plane." "Wow." "That's amazing." "Yeah, for top speed, this is an extraordinary aircraft but as for acceleration, it takes off relatively slow at 20 feet per second squared, compared to Usain Bolt who accelerates at 30." "All right, criteria number three, how close to the speed limit is it in its category?" "This is as fast as it gets because the military really shifted focus to stealth technology." "They stopped making planes to outrun missiles and started making planes that were invisible to radar." "So, speed became irrelevant?" "I feel like the SR-71 is pretty close to the limit." "Maybe like almost 100% in its class." "We've come here today to try and break the RC car world speed record." "We're here on the taxiway at the St. George Municipal Airport." "When you're trying to break world records, you want ideal conditions." "And that's what we have here." "First of all, the taxiway." "It's over a 9,000 feet of incredibly flat, incredibly straight road." "Secondly, the altitude." "Nearly 3,000 feet above sea level means less air resistance, which means faster runs with less energy." "Today's the day." "I think we're ready." "We've got a new car." "He's checked off all the drag doctor's suggestions, but he's added a radical last-minute idea of his own." "I've actually eliminated one of the wheels and created a center steering type car where this wheel sits right in the middle of the car." "Reinventing the wheel is a risky call on a big day." "With a judge from Guinness World Records here to adjudicate," "I've got my fingers crossed." "We also have a third-party witness in the form of a local police officer here from St. George, Utah." "And our measurement system consists of a dual-beam laser timing unit that precisely measures the time interval between breaking one beam to breaking the second beam." "Started." "Stop." "Two hundred?" "3.39 miles an hour." "Yes." "New personal best." "Tim is grooming the track, trying to remove any debris he might find." "Because when your tires are only this big, even hitting a tiny rock like this would be like a rock like this hitting a regular-sized tire." "His car would go careening out of control." "And to add the finishing touch, his high-tech proprietary super-sticky solution, which I'm pretty sure is sugar water." "Tim claims it provides better traction." "We'll see about that." "So, we're ready to go." "Tim has put in hundreds of hours redesigning his steering system to reduce drag." "Cameras are ready and standing by." "For him to break the record, a hundred things have to go right all at once." "Track is clear." "Here we go." "For him to fail, only one of them has to go wrong." "Let's go." "It blew a tire." "  Copy that." " All right, take two." "Looking good, looking good." "132.26." "Like they always say, world records are 99% perseverance." "It looks like the wheels blew apart again." " It shredded them." " 1% glory." "It's only about 200 under." "They weren't kidding about the perseverance part." "I think we blew the bearings apart again." "Oh, shit, no, no, don't." "Apparently, records aren't that easy to break." "Ow!" "Ow." "Uh..." "All right." "But speed freaks never say die." "Like the heroic pioneers who blazed their way into the history books on the Bonneville Salt Flats..." "He's out of control." "giving up just isn't a part of Tim's vocabulary." "Which means before long, I find myself back on yet another runway, with yet another official from Guinness World Records, and yet another wheel design." "It's a plastic rim." "It's a little different than the tire you saw before." "It's actually a full ounce and a half lighter." "I feel great." "The car seems to be working well, it goes straight, it has a lot of power." "Let's see if we can do it." "All right, let's do it." "All right, people, world record attempt here." "This is it." "It better be." "Bring it back in bring it back in." "Yes." "World record glory?" "Or just another failed attempt?" "We have 82.39 miles per hour." "That's 120 miles an hour short of the world record, and it gets worse... before it gets marginally better." "Oh!" "170.67." "We're a little short." "But, unfortunately, that's as good as it gets." "Despite taking Tim to the top wind tunnel guys in the country, tweaking and tinkering for weeks on end, and annoying the Guinness World Records guys, we didn't match Tim's previous best." "So, how are we scoring this one?" "Top Speed?" "The current world record is 202 miles per hour." "Acceleration?" "We topped out at 18 feet per second per second." "And proximity to speed limit?" "As battery technology improves, these things will go significantly faster, so 7 out of 10." "Tim, a tough day out here today." "It has been a difficult day, to say the least." "So many things have to go perfectly right for that to happen and we had a couple of little things that seemed to fight us all day long." "We came here to break a record." "We did." "We're gonna break a record." "I have a way to accelerate this car faster than any RC vehicle in history." "In three, two, one." "Yep, use a little explosive and the car, or parts of it anyway, hit 1200 miles per hour." "It never gets old." "It really doesn't." "In pursuit of the 1902 land speed record," "I've just broken the 75-mile an hour barrier that eluded Bad Luck Baker." "Seventy-six." "Yes." "We've done it." "Now, it looks like his bad luck's rubbed off on me." "Holy shit, the brakes don't work." "That was scary." "  Are you okay there, Tory?" " Yeah, brakes failed." "I think the good news is, one, we broke the record, two, I didn't crash." "Baker crashed, and he didn't break the record, so we're two for two here." "Let's jump forward to today's custom electric car." "To see how far Baker's dream has come." "Meet the Zombie." "Silent and unrivaled." "Normally, when I look at a Mustang, I think about the roaring engine, and when you drove in here, it was silent." "When we started looking for customers early on, to go do this for other people, that was the number one objection that came up, was, "I'm gonna miss the sound of my V8 in my muscle car."" "And what we found real quick was we just had to give them a ride." "Yeah!" "Once they got in the car, and we took them for a ride, it all changed." "That is some serious torque." "That was 140." "140 miles an hour." "Because the silence actually makes the whole thing more exhilarating." "It's like instant torque." "Instant power." "Ready?" "Yeah." "It makes it feel surreal, like you're in a rocket." "When I take it and I throw the hammer down... and unleash almost 4,000 amps through each of these motors at 222 volts..." "What did you think of that?" "It's like..." "That was insane." "There is nothing dead about the Zombie." "All right so this is the fastest custom electric street-legal car out there today?" "Quickest and fastest." "What's the top speed you've done in it?" "177.8 miles an hour in one mile." "How about off the line, what's the acceleration?" "Zero to 60 in 1.79 seconds." "That is insane." "All right, so a hundred years ago, the Torpedo car was the fastest car around." "And now, a hundred years later, this is the fastest car." "What are we gonna see 100 years from now?" "There is nothing that says if battery technology goes through a major revolution, that there isn't anything the electric should not be able to do that's being done today by cars." "So, 300 miles an hour in one mile." "It's gonna happen." "All that has to do is get the batteries there." "Yes." "I can't wait for that day." "Let's enjoy what we've got right now." "Yeah, let's do it." "Uh, can I drive?" "Dude, that was so crazy." "How was it driving the Torpedo?" "It was a little sketchy because it is a prototype." "That's not the top speed I am gonna go with." "I am gonna use the speed from the Zombie, which is the current record holder for custom street-legal electric cars." "178 miles per hour." "Let's see where that ranks with the rest of our contenders." "We've looked at a diverse range of speed freaks, from skydivers and skiers to RC cars." "Yes, we've done it." "Now, let's average up how they performed in our three criteria." "One, top speed." "Two, acceleration." "And three, proximity to speed limit." "Have they reached their peak?" "To find out which contender is the freakiest speedster of them all." "RC Car." "Came an impressive third in the pure speed rankings but lost points for slow acceleration." "Speed Skiing." "158 miles per hour without an airbag." "That's insane." "Fastest Human." "Low top speed was no surprise, but astonishingly Bolt came second in acceleration stakes." "At third overall, Custom Electric Car had top acceleration of all our contenders, but these machines are still a long way away from their top speed potential." "Speed Skydiving." "A high achiever in both top speed and acceleration." "Gravity rules." "And the number one Speed Freak is the SR-71." "An earsplitting Mach 3, and there's little chance any manned jet will ever go faster." "And that is how our six speed freaks stacked up." "I told you I had a jet." "Even though I knew Bolt wasn't gonna beat anybody for speed, still I think he gets some credit for having a higher acceleration than most of the guys on the list." "Yeah, but I have a jet." "Yes, we know." "We know."