How fast can this Bugeye go? We’re going to find out!
We purchased this Sprite last week on Bring a Trailer for a client in the midwest who wants a class record! Over the next year, we’ll rebuild this beauty into the world’s fastest Bugeye!
(We hope.)
This is not going to be easy. Bonneville is humbling. The salt dries out to a sandy texture, and if it’s a wet year, there’s water drag too. It’s really hot there and 4600 feet high, so we will need ample power to overcome the environment, and ample power to overcome a lot of aerodynamic drag, especially if we try for a stock record with the full windscreen installed.
This may be our biggest challenge yet. And once we get to Bonneville, we have to be spot-on to pass tech inspection. Stay tuned! Our 287th Bugeye sold is going to be like no other!
We’ll start by building a mean 948 engine, cutting-out and welding-up the floors on this car, and putting in a regulation roll cage.
By the way, I am sure there are drag racers and resto-mods that have gone much faster than what we hope to attain in this car. I drove our electric car to 109 mph on the street and it would have gone faster. But to break a record with the stock platform at Bonneville is a different ball game with very specific parameters, and that’s the playing field on which we are about to step.
Above you can see Gregory Lloyd’s Corvair, top speed 146.5 MPH. I hope we can build something that looks equally impressive! Thanks to generous people like Greg, we’ll have good support as we go after a record!
Look for more details of this project here! And off we go on another exciting Sprite ride!
By the way, if you are curious about the Bring a Trailer buying experience, you’ll enjoy the video linked above. All online auctions are imperfect. As in the old days with EBAY, it’s easy to fall in love, and easy to think you missed the best car to ever grace the internet. And then reality sets-in when the car arrives. Modern online auctions have come a long way since early EBAY-only days, but crowd-sourced information has its limitations, as you can see in the video.
We knew this car would need a lot of work, and we knew we were gutting it anyway. But I worry about clients who think that what we sell and what they find on sites like Bring a Trailer are one and the same. Our specialty is sorting out these cars and representing them accurately. We’re not perfect, but buying a car from a specialist is a lot safer than taking your chances in an auction.
