Dude's tire's were an off-brand I'd never seen before. They'd been shaved and wore a custom tread block design, something that appeared to be hand-cut with a soldering iron. The rear tires (slightly wider than the front) had a different home-cut tread.
The cabin looked like something from Back to the Future. A dozen gauges, assorted knobs and handles faced the driver. A Simpson five-point harness hung from a length of gray pipe and a note pad was stuck to the center of the steering wheel. A laptop displayed all sorts of data, exotic stuff typically reserved for rocket ships.
I asked Dude about his car, asked him how he got up here so fast.
"I come up here all the time," he said. "I'm playing with aerodynamics right now. I can get another four mph on the bottom section with these bits. I keep breaking them, though, especially in town. I make them from wood so they're cheap to replace."
To shed weight, Dude converted his wiring harness to 24-volt. Apparently, it allows the use of much thinner, lighter wire. He was also running on two different types of fuel, custom blends he made himself. One for high-performance driving, the other for highway cruising.
He was running adjustable anti-roll bars fashioned from beryllium and other exotic metals because of their elastic properties. He could modify their geometry from inside the car. The tires were cut specifically for maximum grip and treated with an activator to modify the compound. The differential was his own design (like a Quaife, but different) and wrought from materials I'd never heard of. He'd whipped up the brake pads and the gearbox too.
The thing was, Dude didn't want to talk about his car. Describing its systems seemed to annoy him. He'd drift off, rambling about pulse jets and plasma streams. Perhaps genius and madness really are close relations. Dude seemed to have equal parts of both. He left with that weird smell in the air-the scent of creativity, I guess. I tried to get a taste; maybe there was some still floating about. Now I have this idea for an underwater jet engine. It's gonna be huge. Remember: I thought of it first.
Les Bidrawn
Editor
europeancar@sourceinterlink.com