What's the fastest you have ever driven?

on a seriously access-limited interstate in NW Minnesota. Car was a 1988 Pontiac Trans Am GT I bought after grad school. Had the then current Corvette engine in it, around 240 hp.

A guy on a superbike (IIRC it was a Kawasaki or a Suzuki and it looked like a racing bike) decided to draft me for a few miles and we played a little gentle cat-and-mouse for a few miles. Then he pulled up next to me, shot me a thumbs-up, cracked his throttle and blew down the road like I was standing still and I was going about 125. Those are some BAD motorcycles.

I don't know how fast I was going, but my guess is a buck 40. There was still pedal room before the metal. I blew by a cop on the side of the road and figured at that speed I would hit my exit 2 miles away in 30 seconds. I never saw any lights. The owners manual says not to go more than 70mph in 1st gear, but I've crossed that line a few times. My 70 Maverick hit just over 117 before I got nervous and backed off. I had this sudden imagery of it pulling a Blues Mobile at that speed and me scooting down the highway on my ass with a steering wheel in my hands. Then there was the Walrus (72 Centurian 455 4bbl) that pretty much idled at 100 or so.

I don't drive that fast anymore.

On Edit: My last high-speed adventure was in my 00 Pontiac Montana minivan. No problem holding down 95 and I probably could have gotten it up higher but there was a regular speed trap up ahead.

Got to look for those exits, dontcha??? I've done that myself a time or two when I saw blue lights in the (distant) rearview mirror!!

I do love me some speed!



Bake

The sedans were cop cars and they made a SHITLOAD of those. The rear window on my girl is huge!

My grandfather bought her knew and I've got her in storage now for safe keeping. She needs a little work I can't afford right now, but I'll get her up to show quality eventually.

They were killer interceptors, but I've got the 390, not the 428 cop package. Mine's also a fastback. I can't see the cops using one of those. They like sedans. Mine's still fast as hell and a neck-snapper.

I did 120 and change in my uncle's modified Porsche 914 before I felt as if the road would tear the vehicle apart and I chickened out.

In the Olds, I was traveling on a straight and deserted section of Wisconsin interstate and I used the cruise control stalk to increase my speed by 1mph. I didn't realize it, but the cruise slide got stuck just then and I very slowly started accelerating in 1mph increments. I guess I was kind of hypnotized by the road and telephone lines as I had no idea that I was doing triple digits until I had a frame of reference by seeing a parked car off in the distance approach me very quickly. I looked at my speedo, saw 140+ and immediately slammed on my brakes. As opposed to the Porsche, the Olds felt extremely composed at triple digits. It handled like crap, but it had an extremely smooth ride. I thank god I never got stopped during those few minutes traveling more than twice the posted speed limit. I might still be in jail now.

Not exactly driving, but my airplane will cruise at 155 mph airspeed. My fastest recorded groundspeed (in that plane) is 215 mph. I've flown faster airplanes, but never paid attention to my fastest groundspeed.

210 in a Mercedes? That counts!



Bake

The problem is that even with the best sports car, when you get it going 55 mph and pull back on the steering wheel, nothing interesting happens.

I'm not one, but I know a few! As for cars, you don't want them to leave the ground!



Bake

Just to keep all numbers in the same units of measure.

in a friend's Dodge Challenger. 138 mph based on the tach reading as the speedo was buried at that point.

According to the ticket I got, 83.

Without being ticketed (on a back road in Colorado), 95.


rocktivity

...buried the needle in my '72 LTD. That car was huge. It had separate ashtrays for the driver and front seat passenger, because if one ashtray had been located in the middle of the dash, neither the driver nor passenger could reach it. Great car.

Same color as this web pic:

120-140 MPH. It was a Mercedes on some country roads in Nebraska. I don't think I would have driven that fast in any other kind of car but the Mercedes was so solid, smooth and quiet that it didn't feel like you were going that fast.

But the one thing I never did at those speeds was take my eye off the road even for a second to read the speedometer.

I think that's a primary reason why I am still here to speak of it.

After letting off the gas I have seen the indicator dropping through the 140-130 range, and I've tickled the rev limiter on a few Porsches, some of which at that time topped out in that same zone.

Honestly, I now hate going that fast, never did it with another human or animal in the car with me, or with anything but the lightest traffic on the highway. I don't think I've gone over 105 mph in twenty years. But the temptation in those days was irresistible and I did it at every opportunity, well enough to survive and not hurt anyone, but who knows how close to the edge I really came.

I liked Porsches the best at those speeds. They conveyed the danger effectively through cabin noise and road feel, were correctable and capable of making sophisticated evasive maneuvers at those speeds, and gave the driver a solid feel of total control over what the car was doing. At any point above 120 the driver has at least three viable options to get out of most situations: acceleration, maneuver, and braking. Many other cars, I learned, don't have any options at those speeds.

Mercedes-Benzes were boring at those speeds. You could easily sneak one up to 120 without the passenger noticing. The 300E in particular had a rock-solid sedan feel that every other luxury 4-door maker tried and failed to emulate.

Audis were more fun, but also less stable than Benzes. When they showed up with intercooled, turbocharged 5-cylinders, they suddenly became scary. They had station wagons that would do 145 (in theory--again, I never looked).

BMWs were twitchy, especially the 12-cylinder ones. I hated the 8-series 12s because they would tear ass in the direction you were looking, especially at high speeds. Those cars were built for good drivers, and I don't think I was one of those.

The Acura NSX frightened me the most because it was so easy to forget that I wasn't flogging my parents' Accord, and then BOOM!, all of a sudden you're going so fast there's no time to do anything but figure out how to slow down. Many of you Honda lovers have done a really good job of replicating the performance feel of the NSX in tricked out Civics. No need for you folks to trade up, if you ask me. NSXs were also a pain in the ass to maintain; they'd drain a new battery in a week of sitting still.

Maseratis, Alfas, and other low-volume high-line makes generally sucked at anything above 120, although I will say that the Maserati Biturbo felt a lot like driving a battleship at those speeds. Perhaps that's not fair--they generally seemed to echo a different standard of performance from a bygone era, where drum brakes faded in seconds and the driver had to muscle the protesting car through turns. As long as there was an unobstructed straight line, they were fun. Maneuvering in any way was like trying to steer a brick.

I'm not sure I ever took a Ferrari above the speed limit. I just wasn't comfortable tossing around a car that cost ten years' pay, and I never got to know one well enough to test its limits like the others I got to know.

The one thing that all of those cars had at those speeds was some sort of unpredictable "oh, shit!" behavior that could and almost certainly did kill the unprepared. It took me a long time to figure that out, and wisely begin avoiding those situations. I became a good driver when I stopped being that sort of fool. I became a much better driver when I quit driving altogether!

I'm very lucky that I didn't harm myself or anyone else. It is so easy to do. So easy. So those of you reading this now, PLEASE do not go out and discover exactly how fast you can go. You'll only know for sure when you are dead.

My current girlfriend can reach mach 4 in about the same time.

But I'm 60.

Approaching Grassmere, New Zealand on a loaded touring bike down a long, long hill with a tailwind.

My boss and I were hauling some stuff down to the Salton Sea. We were out in the middle of the desert in Southern California. It was dark and he'd fallen asleep.

I was tooling along and I looked down and went "Oh shit!"

I didn't tell him about it, and the next day he was like "Thanks for driving last night. The old beast doesn't like to get much above 60 when she's loaded like this."

But I hit it. An 1980's Chrysler minivan. A long stretch of straight road. A bored me with the cruise control set at 60. Cars zipping by me like I wasn't even moving. So I stepped on it for about an hour.

It pegged out at 85, as I recall. I hit that, stayed at it for while. Cars were still passing me. So I pushed a little harder till I wasn't really getting passed. If I had to guess, I hit at least 110.

Yeah, go me

but we drove 250 miles in 2 hours and 10 minutes. On I70 between Dayton & Pittsburgh. I wasn't driving, a friend was & there were 4 of us in the car.

kilometers, that is!!! I'm not suicidal.

That was enough for me. There were plenty of cars passing me, too.

Long straight stretch through the Green Swamp where even the truckers put the pedal to the metal.

At the point when that tire blew, I lost any desire to go over a hundred for the rest of my life - which seemed to be real soon right then. But that was a lot of years and miles ago .

Blowing a tire at 100+ can have unfortunate results. Like pilots say, any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing!



Bake

To stop shaking so I could change the tire. In a way I was helped be the way the road ran. Although it was almost completely straight and flat, right where the tire blew, the road jogged slightly to the right and rose a few inches to go over a bridge for the river that marked the county line. The direction of the road shift matched the direction the car jerked when the tire blew. Otherwise, I probably would have ended up in the river or the swamp.

This was before seat belts and air bags, of course, so any quick stop would have killed me.

I made the entire length of I-95 in South Carolina, going south from NC to GA, in a shade under 1 hour and 40 minutes. This includes the urban areas. I was too busy watching traffic, and looking out for cops to pay attention to the speedometer. Did this in 1979 in a 1978 Nissan 280-Z. That run is around 198 miles. So my average speed was a bit under 120. I must have been nuts.

In Germany in the early and mid 80s, well, I hit 150 on short stretches a few times on the Autobahn. All but once done in a Porsche 911, which were uneventful runs. Porsches are built for more speed than I am capable of handling. My reflexes were good then, but not world class. The other time was in a BMW 6 series, and that one scared hell out of me - the car got real jumpy above 140; I would speculate air turbulence under the forward bumper / engine area, making the front end very skittish at high speed.

I haven't driven above 80 in at least 10, maybe 15, years. And I no longer have any desire to do so.

In a Datsun 240 Z.

Man, I had a deathgrip on the wheel.

Niagara to Toronto in 26 minutes at 3 in the morning, in my (not even remotely stock) '81 Monte Carlo. Back in the day when the average-joe could build a cheap muscle car in his driveway, and not loose his license and car for squawking the tires.

Riding is a different story. I was a passenger in a tuned Viper GT3 that had an intercooled twin turbo. Put out something ridiculous like 700hp/650lbs torque. Did a roll on from 65 to 165 in something like 2.5 secs, and you could feel the back end wanting to get squirrly. It was like engaging hyper-drive.


peace,
Noodleboy

and I got over 100 mph, shit myself, and slowed it back down.

If we aren't talking about me driving, my boss took out in a new Porsche and had it up to 125 mph on a semi-busy 4-lane at lunch hour. He was an asshole, I was terrified.

In the rain.

I do believe I wanted to go out that night.

I-5 heading north out of Eugene, Or.

people were passing us but meh - if you aren't used to it, don't push it.

....needlein my 1973 Charger 400 Mag went up to 120. The needle passed that and buried itself.

I was coming home from a trip to Memphis when I got passed by a corvette. I decided to let him be my "scout" to pick up any cops and stepped on the gas. My old Cutlass (with the four-barrel 350 rocket engine) very smoothly kept up, even though the 'vette apparently sped up. When I looked down at the speedometer, I was quite surprised to see it pegged well past the top reading of 120. Did I mention this was at night? Yeah, I just let off the gas and coasted back down to around 80. That Cutlass had issues, but the motor was never one of them.

But it was on a 15 mph limit park road.......

And that was on a TZ-250 Yamaha, a 250cc water-cooled two-stroke roadracing specific machine.

But is was still only 250cc.

Scared the living heck outta me and my dad who said 'Lets see what this thing will do!'

I could have gone faster but I was starting to scare the EMTs. Cops and semis couldn't get out of my way fast enough. I will never forget it.

I guess I've gone faster but that was the most fun.

You WANT your ambulance to be able to haul ass!!! In one trip!!



Bake

my 1976 Corvette at the Florida Corvette Club Convention in 1978.

Corvette C5 on german autobahn: 174 mph

It was an old four-banger… If I had a six… WHOOO BOY!

I am in awe, and only can dream of doing that!!!



Bake

Garden State Parkway 1987

as fast as some others here.

Personally I've only driven 65 MPH.

However, I was a passenger in a car going 110 MPH.

Not a big fan of speed.

About 20 years ago I was in the middle of nowhere on I-15 in Utah on my way to Las Vegas in my '91 Toyota MR2 Turbo. As I slowly passed a pickup on my right (probably doing around 80 mph) the driver rolled down his window, and started gesturing and screaming obscenities at me. He was enraged. From what I could tell, he was upset that I was driving a foreign-made sports car.



I popped it down to 4th and floored it. Needless to say, his POS truck couldn't keep up. I didn't slow down until he'd disappeared from my rear view mirror.

That was a strange trip. Not long after that, a Mustang flew by me doing around 130, which was quickly followed by a state trooper chasing him. About 5 miles later, I caught up to him as he was being pulled over. I serenely continued, thinking how I would have had to do some quick explaining if I'd been pulled over myself when I was going so fast. Ten miles later, the same Mustang flies by me again.

Doing at least 130 mph...maybe more.

He was still being chased by the same trooper. Never did find out how that one ended...

Corvette ZR1
Bonneville Salt Flats