IT’S NOT EVERY YEAR THAT SPECIALISED STREAMLINERS TRAVEL HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD WITH AMBITIONS OF NOT ONLY EXCEEDING WORLD LAND SPEED RECORDS BUT SMASHING THEM

THE crowd for Speed Week was a record in 2018, as was the number of entrants, the number of runs and the outright speeds achieved. The volunteer-run Dry Lakes Racers Australia has much to be proud of. It’s not every year that specialised streamliners travel halfway around the world with genuine ambitions of not only exceeding world land speed records but smashing them. I wasn’t the only one to make the trek to isolated Lake Gairdner, deep in the South Australian outback, to see them do just that or die trying.

The world land speed record for a piston-powered wheel-driven streamliner is a two-way average of 439mph achieved by George Poteet in his Chev-powered Speed Demon at Bonneville in 2012, with a best one-way run of 451mph. For metric folk, that’s 706km/h and 725km/h respectively. Turbine and jet-powered cars have gone faster, but then so have aeroplanes – real cars have V8s.

Target 550 is a 13m-long, 1m-wide low-flying missile purpose-built to beat George’s record and then some, with widely publicised aspirations of being the first car to exceed 500mph and eventually 550mph. Powered by twin Whipple-blown 510ci V8 Hemis, each good for around 2500hp on alcohol, it’s not short of poke, which is just as well. Lake Gairdner is just 120m above sea level, whereas the Bonneville salt flats are 1300m above sea level. The air is much thicker here, much harder to punch through, but it’s not like Us-based Target 550 partners Marlo Treit and Les Davenport have much choice. Bonneville is stuffed for now, at least for the fast guys. There’s not enough salt for them to get up to speed and slow down again. Whereas the salt at Lake Gairdner is 160km long. It’s worth a punt.

We can only imagine the logistics, red tape and expense involved in shipping a streamliner to Australia, let alone Lake Gairdner out in the middle of nowhere. And the risk. Speed Week has been washed out six times in its 28-year history, and there are no rain dates. Yet here they are. The salt is dry and hard, the sky is blue, but the breeze is up. Like a lot of the fast guys, Treit and Davenport sit out the first day waiting for the wind to ease off.

After 60,000 man-hours and 11,000 miles, Target 550 finally makes its way to the Track 1 startline late on Tuesday morning, suspended from a cradle that they’ll also use to retrieve it after the run. A big crowd assembles as the cradle lowers the streamliner onto the salt for the first time and the crew undertakes final pre-flight inspections. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for… when the starters announce the track will be closed for an hour while they break for lunch. How very

01: The Carroll-warren bellytank looked and sounded the biz, but caught fire mid-track to bring their week to a sudden smoking halt

02: Russell Diffey raced an Aussie-built replica of the 996cc Anzani, which set a new world land speed record of 108mph in 1923. Modern engine internals saw Russell go as fast as 155mph from 10 runs

03: Jeff Jones made the 450km return trip to Port Augusta on Monday for parts to fix the noisy diff in his 1981 KE55 Corolla, only to find most of the town closed for a SA public holiday. He succeeded in the end to run 167mph with turbo V6 Commodore power

04: Having come all the way from the US, Marlo Treit and Les Davenport weren’t messing about, running 345.125mph in their Target 550 streamliner – 40mph faster than any car has ever run at Lake Gairdner

05: The legendary ‘Moe Boys’ XA Falcon returned after an eight-year absence, this time with David Nicholson aiming to beat his father Brian’s best of 198mph. With a fresh 900hp Clevo-style engine by Brian Cassar, David did just that, but missed out on the big prize with a frustrating 199.457mph