Fastest piston-engined car

The fastest piston-engined car is Challenger 2 driven by Danny Thompson (USA), which achieved an average speed of 448.757 mph (722.204 km/h) over two flying-mile runs at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA, on 11–12 August 2018.

Impressively, the 12 August speed runs beat not only the naturally-aspirated ("unblown fuel" in SCTA terminology) record of 414.477 mph (667.036 km/h), which was set by Charles Nearburg's Spirit of Rhett in 2010, but also the 439.562 mph (707.406 km/h) supercharger-assisted ("blown fuel") record set by George Poteet in Speed Demon in 2012. It is only 10 mph (16 km/h) short of the overall wheel-driven land-speed record, which was set at 458.444 mph (737.794 km/h) by Don Vesco's gas-turbine-engined Turbinator in 2001.

Challenger 2 is an upgraded and modified version of a land-speed record car first run in 1968 by Danny Thompson's late father, the California hot-rod legend Mickey Thompson. Mickey had become the first American to break the 400 mph (643 km/h) barrier in 1960 with Challenger I but a string of bad summers on the Salt Flats forced him to abandon his plans to set an overall wheel-driven record with Challenger II. In 2010 Danny Thompson pulled the car from storage and refitted it with a modern drivetrain, finally breaking the record his father had set his sights on 40 years earlier.