Explore Posterous

by Dave Eyvazzadeh - October 12, 2009

This is Infidel, a streamliner powered by a twin-turbo 529-cubic-inch Cadillac engine with 1,900 horsepower and 1200 foot-pounds of torque. It just did 330.7 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats. That makes it the world’s fastest gasoline-powered vehicle. And the guy behind it vows to keep going until it hits 400 mph.

Infidel is the latest ride in the stable at hot-rod performance accessory manufacturer Spectre Performance and the brainchild of Spectre founder Amir Rosenbaum, who’s been bitten by the land speed racing bug. It hit the salt Friday afternoon, hitting 237 mph during a shakedown run at Bonneville Salt Flats before a fire extinguisher went off, making it difficult for veteran driver Kenny Hoover to see. Hoover, now with 40 speed records to his name, managed to deploy the chutes and bring the car to a stop. The record setting runs –you have to do two to make it count– happened Saturday and Sunday with flying-mile averages of 328 and 330.7 mph at an overall top speed of 340 mph. That’s one hell of a feat considering the record setting runs were number one and two after the problematic shake-down.

So why call the car Infidel? Rosenbaum found it only fitting after his attempts at a land speed record in a Ferrari F40 dubbed the Heretic. He also said he wants to give “the middle finger to the fanatics” of the world more focused on ending life rather than living it.

Spectre Performance appeared on the radar in 1983 with a single product, Nyla-braid, that allowed Rosenbaum to make ends meet and buy parts for his 1967 Camaro convertible. Ironically, he sold the Camaro, the inspiration for the business, to keep the company afloat during rough times. Today Spectre is a one-stop hot-rod accessory shop and custom vehicle shop.

Rosenbaum, 49, has the racing bug for sure. In 2002 he set the record at the Virginia City Hill Climb in 2002 with Heretic, his 1992 Ferrari F40. From there he went to the salt in attempts to set a land speed record and came up short by a few with 221 mph. Just 13 hours later he was in Monterey, California for the high-falutin’ Concorso Italiano, his car still caked in salt. Rosenbaum is not shy of going against the grain.

How do you push a bad-ass streamliner? With a bad-ass custom tandem dually, of course

Crew chief Steve Schmalz of Performance Auto built the streamliner. It arrived on his doorstep after Rosenbaum bought it from a private builder after his failed attempt at a record in Heretic. What remains of the original streamliner?

“Only a few feet,” Schmalz, 49, told us.

The structure, the motor, the shell — all of it was redesigned. The engine came from a 1970’s-era Cadillac. CAD Performance punched it out to 529 cubic inches and gave it two turbochargers. The nosecone came from the fuel tank from a Voodoo Canadian fighter jet. Getting everything to fit inside what is little more than a needle with wheels was the toughest part of the job.

“Building a differential that narrow, packaging the turbos and all the water and oil tanks to go along with it…,” Schmalz said. “I’ve never had to package something this confining.”

Schmalz built the streamliner by feel. They have yet to use computational fluid dynamics or wind tunnel testing. That’s next. Right now they want to run it on the salt and get the data they need to move forward. And who is to say they are wrong? Rosenbaum tells us of the countless bits of conflicting advice he gets while on the salt. “Nobody here knows! You can’t practice, you just have to get out here and run,” he said.

The Inifidel Racing crew

Will they break the record? “Not today, not tomorrow or this year” he said. But Rosenbaum said the worst thing you can tell him is “You can’t do that.” A store clerk learned that lesson one day when he told Rosenbaum two six-foot long packages wouldn’t fit in his Ferrari Testarossa. Rosenbaum proved him wrong. Point taken. Rosenbaum is dead-set on 400 mph. Don’t bet against him hitting it.

The Infidel Racing crew is Right now they are on the salt for the test runs and to collect some data with veteran LSR racer Kenny Hoover behind the wheel until Rosenbaum can earn his licenses. And we can’t wait to see what the Infidel can do. To speed things up a bit, shall we tell him he can’t do it?