| The World of 300+km/h by Daijiro Inada | TOP > COLUMN > Daijiro Inada > CASE 4 |
 CASE 1 The Yatabe High Speed Test Course CASE 2 The Speed Week in Bonneville CASE 3 The Autobahn in New Zealand CASE 4 The Silverstate Classic Challenge Dai is the founder of Option, the Tokyo Auto Salon, and the D1 Grand Prix. Half of his life was spent accepting high speed challenges. Let's listen to what he has to say about the world of 300+km/h and its history. |
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| CASE 4 Silver State Classic Challenge | |
| Highway 318 stretches across the Nevada desert in the United States. The straight road points to the endless horizon under the beautiful cobalt skies this day. For a 100 miles on this road the throttle will remain wide open. This is a dream come true for the speed junkies. On September every year, this one shot deal comes by. This was the world's fastest speed challenge on a public road, the "Silver State Classic Challenge". After racing Yatabe, Bonneville and the German Autobahn, I was looking for a new stage to race on. Then I remembered seeing on television a long time ago, a high speed race that was held on a public road. After inquiring about this to my American connection, I learned that this was the Silver State Challenge. If I transported the Blitz R348 to the United States after racing the German Autobahn, I knew that I could make it into this race. In September, 1999, we shipped the OPTION&BLITZ R348 (BNR34) to Los Angeles. I drove the machine from Las Vegas to a town called Ery, which was the starting point of the race on highway 418. I was very excited to be able to drive on such a magnificent road. About 150 cars gathered at Ery such as small European cars, sportscars, muscle cars, etc. This Silver State Classic race was no ordinary race. The classes were split up according to the vehicle's potential average speed from 110 to 180 mph. And then there was the unlimited speed class. These classes were created for a margin of safety. This race provided the people to fulfill their dream of running their car to the max on a public street. For example, if your car has 150mph top speed, the 110 mph class will be ideal. The objective is to try to maintain the speed of the class you are in for the whole race. That rule however, did not apply to the unlimited class. It was whoever finished first for that class. The record average speed so far was 207.78 mph, or 333 km/h. This means that if I slowed down at the hills to 200 km/h, then I have to drive at least 360 km/h at the straight section to make up for it. It's like driving from Tokyo to Shizuoka in 25 minutes at that rate. This kind of unimaginable speed gets me really excited. I had to take this challenge. The first challenge with the Option&Blitz R348 had engine problems and was only able to produce about 280 km/h (174 mph). I noticed that this calm road turned into a monster once at high speed. Even at 100 km/h, the small bumps on the road felt like a huge impact, and couldn't imagine what t hat would feel like at 300 km/h. The race ended quietly after running out of gas at the 70th mile mark. Even so, I felt as though this was an amazing race. The challenge was taken more seriously in 2003 with collaboration between Option and Jun Auto. The Stream Z was born. Here, a tire explosion caused a big crash. And in 2004, we had engine trouble. 2005 was our next opportunity. I have no clue where I'll be when this article gets published. The September 25, 2005 Silver State Challenge may be my last race for all I know! On the contrary, if I do set a new record here, it will be a historical day in the Japanese tuning car industry. |
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The highway across the desert
The Silver State Classic Challenge is the world's fastest race held on a public road. A 144 km (90 mile) highway is closed down for this race in Nevada. |
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Retirement after fuel starvation in 1999
After a 343.35 km/h blast in the German Autobahn, the Option& Blitz R348 was immediately shipped out to the United States. The vehicle had an average speed of 260 km/h at the Silver State Challenge but ran out of gas. |
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Big crash due to a tire blowout!!
Dai challenged the race again with the Z33, produced by JUN Auto as the Stream Z project for OPTION magazine. The left rear tire burst at 330km/h (205mph) sending the car into a flip. V The Stream Z rolled 10 times and a half. Fortunately, Dai did not have any major injuries. Of course, he is invincible. |
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Resurrection!
The new wide body was equipped with a 1000 horsepowered VQ35 Engine. This was the third challenge with the Stream Z version 2. The result was 32min 11sec finish with an average speed of 269km/h (167mph). Although they finished the race unharmed, the engine wasn't in sync with the driver. Stream Z Version 2 |
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