https://gasmonkeygarage.com/johnny-bohmer-inches-toward-300mph-badd-gt/
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The 2018 Dodge Demon’s top speed is, we have been told, 168 mph. But Johnny Bohmer, who likes the cars to go extremely fast, told Jalopnik that he recently got one to go 203 mph, with only a few minor modifications. And he’s got video to prove it.
Dodge emphasized quarter-mile times for the new Demon over top-speed potential, leaving it violently fast but still apparently slower than a Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk on the track. The reasons? The tires and an electronic limiter. But Bohmer says that the electronic limiter is hogwash. And, with a different set of tires—Pirelli P Zeros over a set of Nitto drag radials—the Demon is more than capable of going well past 168.
This all happened on February 10 in Florida. The Demon, in fact, went over 168 mph that day on the Nittos, though Johnny says that handling beyond speeds of 170 mph became an issue. Here’s video of it going 180 mph on the Nittos:
What’s interesting to me about this is that Hennessey just put the Demon through its paces and only got it up to 164 mph; Johnny says that part of the reason no one’s gone faster is that few people have the proper place to test. The Demon he tested has the crate options installed, which includes a conical air filter and a powertrain control module that’s designed to unleash all of the Demon’s 840 horsepower.
I am afraid of the Dodge Demon, crate or not.
Update, 2:08 p.m.: A Dodge spokesman got back to me with a bit more context. This is from a Demon owner’s manual supplement:
The Demon Crate Powertrain Module (PCM) is not equipped with a speed limiter. This will allow the vehicle to exceed the tire’s speed rating of 168 mph (270 km/h). This could adversely affect the handling and safety of the vehicle. It’s the customer’s responsibility to equip the vehicle with the correct speed rated tires for their use above the speed rating of 168 mph (270 km/h).
“There is talk and there are results. We have the results to prove that electric cars can push the boundaries of performance and speed,” said Andrew Saul, CEO of Genovation Cars, Inc. “We made the GXE the fastest, proven street legal electric super car in the world by using state of the art technology and performance.”
The Genovation GXE has broken the world speed record for fastest street-legal electric super car three times in the past twelve months. Prior to this latest February test, the previous record was 205.6 mph. All records have been independently certified by the International Mile Racing Association (IMRA). “This is the edge of performance, and it is incredible to drive,” said Saul. “With the GXE, we are just at the start of what’s possible with electric vehicle performance.”
The GXE is a highly modified Corvette that has been re-imagined by Genovation to be a performance driven all-electric vehicle. The GXE includes a state-of-the-art battery management system, inverters, batteries and electric motors that exceed 700-hp and 600 lb-ft of torque. Through improvements in development, the range has been extended to 150 miles during normal driving operation. The GXE is designed for superior handling, with a near 50/50 weight distribution and optimized for a low center of gravity. It is available with either a 7-speed manual transmission or a paddle shifting 8-speed automatic. The GXE is truly a performance vehicle that is meant to excite drivers with its speed, responsiveness and efficiency while being gentle on the environment.
“I have been driving the GXE since the first record was set, and I am amazed at the continuing improvement on all aspects of the car,” said Johnny Bohmer, a world-record setting car driver for over 10 years. “The GXE is incredibly fast, with massive amounts of torque. A truly exhilarating thing to drive. The GXE is one of the finest, fastest, and most well-prepared cars I have ever driven.”
Genovation is currently in the testing and development phase for its GXE and has begun accepting preorders for 75 production vehicles.
Battery-powered ‘Genovation’ Vette hits a world-beating 205mph. Driver bares teeth
Categories
WORLDS FASTEST Ride Along “BADDGT”
MERRITT ISLAND, FL. (Late Dec., 2015) – Johnny Bohmer Racing (JBR) arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility (Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds) to make several test passes to prepare for “The Quest for 300 MPH” record run in 2016. Bohmer was planning to achieve speeds in the 290 MPH range, but due to heavy cross winds (25 MPH Gusts) he was unable to achieve that goal. However while in car testing, Bohmer realized no one has ever gone over 250 MPH in a street legal car with a passenger. “I believe this is surely a first for the automotive community, and a new world record,” Bohmer Said.
So you’re a true adrenaline junkie, right? You’ve tested every major roller coaster, jumped out of airplanes, surfed Jaws on the north Shore of Maui, maybe even ran with the bulls in Spain; but you have NEVER sat shotgun in the “Guinness World Record’s Fastest Street Car” and gone 250 MPH+.
A pioneer, a scientist, and a professional daredevil, Johnny Bohmer is yet the only person on earth who dares drive the “BADDGT” at speeds faster than 1/3 the speed of sound.
After breaking the Official Guinness World Record for the Fastest Street Car in the Standing Mile at the Shuttle Landing Facility (Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds) in 2012, Johnny Bohmer and his team are working relentlessly to set a NEW World Record by breaking the unimaginable 300 MPH barrier in 2016. By breaking the 300 MPH barrier they will once again create a historical moment in the automotive community. Keep in mind that this is the same Tarmac where most of the Shuttle missions and courageous Astronauts have returned home safely, after traveling millions of miles in unpredictable conditions in outer space.
WEST PALM BEACH, FL – MAY 08, 2014
Johnny Bohmer owner of Performance Power Racing and his team are preparing for the next unimaginable speed record. While they currently hold the official Guinness World Record for the Fastest Street Legal Car in the Standing Mile, Johnny Bohmer, Matt Lundy, and the PPR team are not satisfied. The BADD GT is the first street legal car to break numerous barriers in the world of Mile Racing. In 2010 the BADD GT was the first car to break 250 mph in the Standing Mile. Since that time, the car has continued to shatter barriers that have taken others years to reach. The BADD GT is also the first car to break 275 mph and currently holds the Guinness Book of World Record at 283 mph in the standing mile.
The Standing Mile is a race where a car starts from a dead stop and propels forward as fast as possible. The speed is clocked at the 1 mile mark, basically a 1 Mile drag race. The BADD GT starting from a standstill, propelled to an incredible 283.232 miles per hour in approximately 22 seconds on October 16th 2012. This record was achieved while doing aerodynamic and engine component testing at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility utilizing PPR’s Space Act Agreement with NASA. The record was verified by the Guinness Book of World Records Official on site. Mr. Bohmer and his team have now decided that it is time to take the BADD GT to a new, absolutely insane, 300 plus miles per hour in the Standing Mile. All the while, the car is in complete street trim with current tag, insurance, stereo, and ice cold air conditioning.
Performance Power LLC in conjunction with Performance Power Materials, Inc will be conducting developmental testing using PANDALLOY TM engine components. Mr. Bohmer says, “We have taken the BADD GT to another level in many aspects of the cars design. Utilizing this ground breaking Pandalloy Aluminum Alloy, we have explored performance improvements in engine design, turbo system design, and weight reduction techniques.”
Driver Johnny Bohmer and Crew Chief Matt Lundy feel that the new PANDALLOY designs implemented in the BADD GT and sponsorship support from Schumacher Automotive, Precision Turbo, Big Stuff 3, and MPR Racing Engines will easily propel the world famous record holding BADD GT to a speed in excess of 300 mph in The Standing Mile. The engine component testing session that should result in a world record mph is slated to be achieved in late 2014. Johnny Bohmer fully intends to drive the BADD GT back to West Palm Beach after the record run and continue to use the car to take the kids to school and enjoy in beautiful South Florida.
The BADD GT will go down in the history books as the world’s fastest street legal car and will be forever memorialized as the first street legal car to go 250mph in the standing mile, first street legal car to go 275 mph in the standing mile, and the first street legal car to go 300 mph in the standing mile. Keep your eyes peeled as this grass roots team attempts another incredible and mind blowing engineering feet.
Categories
Kennedy Runway Shows Adaptability
By Steven Siceloff,
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
March 11 may prove to be the day when the plans to make Kennedy Space Center a shared spaceport showed the first practical success, according to some of the people who coordinated five unique operations at the Shuttle Landing Facility that day.
The SLF hosted NASA’s Morpheus lander free-flight test that day, along with a NASCAR team conducting aerodynamic testing, the Starfighters company running its modified jet fighters through afterburner evaluations, and medical evacuation helicopters conducting safety checks and procedure tests – all while the facility itself underwent its own construction work.
“I think it was a glimpse into the future of Kennedy Space Center,” said David Cox, Partnerships Development manager at Kennedy. “To me it shows that we are really turning the corner from being a government-only focused space center to really being a commercially shared space center. It really is a huge shift in the culture.”
Performance Power LLC of West Palm Beach coordinated closely with the NASCAR and Morpheus teams, along with Starfighters to craft a precise plan that met everyone’s needs said Performance Power owner Johnny Bohmer. They also met in-person with the construction and helicopter safety test crews.
“We all had the same goal: let’s work together,” Bohmer said. “I feel like we’ve gone to another level and we’ve proven that we were able to pull off something we thought we could do. Precise coordination created a ‘win-win’ for everyone during the three-day testing session.”
The successful formula is expected to be the basis for policies and procedures that can be repeated as the SLF takes on increasingly diverse users under Space Florida, which is in negotiations to operate and maintain the unique national asset.
“The beauty of it was that everybody was willing to give a little so no one had to give a lot,” Cox said. “That willingness made it so everyone could accomplish all of their objectives. I think the first thing that we did was establish a cooperative spirit, and we had extremely effective communications and that allowed us to do so much with just a short period of time.”
Typically, the runway hosts a single user each day with the occasional dual mission, such as an aircraft arriving. It will allow aircraft testing one day, car runs another and experimental rockets or unmanned aerial vehicles on another. Even that is a shift from just two years ago.
“Its primary purpose was to bring back and land orbiters and now that we’re not doing that, you can find some more uses and some unique uses that you couldn’t find before because you had to be available at any time for a shuttle to come back,” said John Graves, who coordinates operations at the SLF for NASA’s Flight Operations department.
The team of people involved in the process credited an intense focus on communications and flexibility with getting all the work done.
“They basically let us all work within our own structures instead of saying this is how it’s going to be,” said Rick Svetkoff, owner of Starfighters.
The users employed creative means to allow each other the room they needed. For example, the Morpheus project, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, is in the middle of an intense and successful test flight campaign that calls for increasingly ambitious free flights by the unmanned lander in an area north of the runway. Fueled by methane and oxygen, the Morpheus lifts off like a rocket, then goes into its automated landing profile for descent to its landing pad. The safety requirements prohibit anyone from being within about a mile of the craft when it reaches flight pressure and makes its flight.
Accommodating the safety needs, which remain paramount to all the operations at the SLF, meant drawing down the time the NASCAR team had for its runs. An adjustment of lunch time by the auto team along with an adjustment of flight time by Morpheus meant no time lost or missed objectives for either.
“In the end we got everybody happy with the idea,” said Greg Gaddis of NASA’s Morpheus team.
“We all had the will, so we found the way,” Cox said.
The number of companies anticipating using the runway grows seemingly by the day with several mentioning it as a possibility for launching flights into space straight off the runway and gliding back to it, or using the runway’s vast width and 3.2-mile length to host a gigantic carrier aircraft lifting a booster to altitude for a space launch.
“We typically host three or four people wanting to take a look at the SLF for one use or another, so there’s a lot of interest in coming out here,” Graves said. “Hopefully what we did becomes a common occurrence and not that big of a deal.”
The lessons also may be incorporated into the adaptation of Kennedy’s other research and development facilities as they undergo their own unique adjustments to host more commercial uses.
“No matter what facility you’re in, it goes back to knowing the needs and working with the customers to get them what they want and make everybody happy,” Graves said. “These lessons are applicable to any facility that has multiple customers.”
The uses could be just as diverse, as well, as evidenced by the variety of companies that have signed agreements or contacted Kennedy to use its research and development resources.
“I think the SLF is probably one of the most conducive to these kinds of sharing activities,” Cox said. “Another facility is going to be the Vehicle Assembly Building one day. I’m sure the Space Station Processing Facility could end up with a similar day-in-the-life, if you will, because it has a very open configuration that can be tailored to different customer requirements.”
By Steven Siceloff,
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
A major name in automotive development brought one of his exotic vehicles to the 3.5-mile-long runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently to evaluate its aerodynamics and to see how the car would handle throughout its performance range.
“You can have the smartest engineers and designers, but until you get the car going out there on a runway, you don’t know what the car’s going to do,” said John Hennessey, founder of Hennessey Performance and maker of the Hennessey Venom GT, a high-performance production sports car.
For taxpayers and consumers of exotic vehicles or everyday cars, testing in actual conditions pays off in numerous ways. Technology developed in all aspects of auto making routinely find their way into everyday cars, whether it be increased fuel efficiency or safety gear.
“Almost everything in cars has started in racing,” said Johnny Bohmer, owner of Performance Power Racing in West Palm Beach. Performance Power Racing negotiated a Space Act Agreement with Kennedy in 2011 to perform aerodynamic and other research evaluations at the Kennedy runway. He collaborates with companies like Hennessey to accomplish the testing, too. “It trickles down and all that stuff is information passed on to other people and everything trickles down into passenger cars. You’ve got to push boundaries to get results.”
The Shuttle Landing Facility is one of only about half-a-dozen places in the world that has the kind of room and infrastructure to make test runs safely.
NASCAR and Le Mans teams have also tested their vehicles at the SLF recently. Built for the demands of the space shuttle, the runway is one of the longest in the world and extremely wide. It’s also concrete, so there’s no salt or sand to kick up into the cars as there is at other locations that are often ancient lakebeds or other natural surfaces.
“From a safety perspective, you have a lot more room to negotiate if there’s a problem,” Hennessey said. “You feel like this is really the safest place for what we’ve got to do.”
The rules for the runway’s use require legitimate and measurable engineering data collection that can be used for research and development, said David Cox, Kennedy’s Partnership Development manager. There needs to be a strong research and development aspect to the test runs in order to justify the use of a unique, taxpayer-funded facility, he said.
“When Performance Power asked if they could do some testing with the Hennessey Venom GT, they said they needed to confirm some of the aerodynamic and suspension performance throughout the entire operating range of this production car and that really helps show that there’s no safety concerns which could lead to a potential recall which can be very expensive to the manufacturers,” Cox said. “So that’s really what we approved for the testing activities.”
Like all cars that are tested at Kennedy, the Venom was outfitted with numerous sensors and a raft of electronics to evaluate the machine and conditions in ways that space shuttle engineers would recognize instantly. From GPS antennas to accurately calculate and cross-reference speed and acceleration to sensors in the shocks that gauged the down force on the car as the air moved over it, the Hennessey team put tremendous effort into finding out everything they could about their vehicle.
“The aerodynamics is huge,” Hennessey said. “There’s this balance between down force and stability. We’re trying to balance keeping the car stable and still achieving a speed.”
For Hennessey, the testing also is crucial to validating the safety of the car throughout its performance range.
“Now if somebody goes out in the car and wants to push the car, Hennessey knows the car will be safe,” Bohmer said.
Adjustments tend to be minute and based on feedback from the sensors that show things the driver and team can’t see on their own.
“The data logging that he’s doing, a human can’t pick up,” Bohmer said. “He has to do this because it’s pretty much mandatory if you’re a manufacturer that you know all the parameters. You can’t sell something and not know what it can do.”
