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400mph club: Danny Thompson breaks father’s speed record

1 September, 2016

We’re all familiar with the name Mickey Thompson, but we’re not so familiar with his son Danny. Ever since Mickey was murdered in 1988, Danny has endeavoured to follow in his father’s footsteps. Until just recently, Danny has been chasing his father’s 400mph-plus record in a vehicle designed by Mickey. Mickey’s ’60s-designed streamliner, named Challenger 2, is an aerodynamics masterpiece, designed in a time when CAD didn’t exist and engine technology was nowhere near as close to what it is now. During the August 13–19 Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, Danny broke his father’s record by a tenth of a second with a 656.23kph (407.767mph) run. 

If only it was as easy as running that speed once, then calling it a record. Unfortunately it’s much tougher than that as drivers have to prove over two runs that their vehicle can pull that speed. The times are then averaged out and used officially. 

If you thought the engines that propelled Challenger 2 back in the ’60s were still in place, you were wrong. Now Challenger 2 runs two 2500hp dry-block Hemis with an 80-per-cent nitro load. According to Danny, once the engines were installed, the rest of the drivetrain had to be designed around them to cope with the newfound power. 

“I can’t quit. We call it salt fever. You just want to come back to Bonneville. You just want to go faster,” Danny said in an interview with CNN. Danny is confident the Challenger will run in the 725–756kph (450–470mph) range in the future, potentially making it the fastest piston-powered vehicle in the world, with the current record being held by Speed Demon at 439.562mph. 

Chrysler’s classy cruiser

22 May, 2026

I first saw our feature car, a 1970 V8-powered Regal 770 hardtop, towing a trailer carrying the tidy Ford Anglia classic racing saloon in Broadspeed racing colours that has featured in these pages. The coupe is comparatively rare here, which means anyone contemplating purchasing one of these big two-doors is sure to see prices continue to climb. The latter Charger has claimed much of the Aussie Chrysler limelight, but the simpler and classier lines of this car, which appeared dated soon after its introduction, now have a more timeless appeal.
Former owner, Balclutha motor engineer, Mike Verdoner, remembers the car well. He believes it came from Dunedin originally.
“I’m not sure about the car’s history, but I bought it off its owner at Kaitangata. Unusually, it was advertised in the local newspaper, the Clutha Leader, which was a surprise as these usually go for a lot more money on the internet. I had it for quite a few years. It needed a little bit of work to tidy it up, so I had to decide whether to spend the money on it to do it up, which could have been twenty grand. Its value at the time was not like it is now, so I sold it to Ewan. It’s probably now worth three or four times what I sold it for.”

The Pininfarina 230 SL

14 May, 2026

It’s October 1964, and imagine you’re an automotive journalist covering that year’s Paris Auto Show (Mondial de l’Automobile). As you approach the Pininfarina booth, you come across a car that looks a bit like the Mercedes-Benz 230 SL introduced the previous year at the Geneva Auto Show, a car then arriving at Mercedes-Benz dealerships around the world.
But looking closely, its styling and proportions seem to be a bit different. And it has a fixed roof, unlike the Pagoda-style greenhouse of the removable hardtop seen on the production 230 SL. While today, the styling of the W113, under the supervision of Head of Styling Friedrich Geiger, with lead designers Paul Bracq and Bela Barenyi, is considered a mid-century modern masterpiece, acceptance in-period was not universal. Some critics called out the concave design of its removable roof, which ultimately gave the car its “Pagoda” nickname.