Shooting Bullitts and Mach Speed Performances

John Joachim and his friends drove straight through to New Jersey from Biloxi, Mississippi, which is some 24 or so hours away. They were tired but ready to have some fun. While they had visions of blasting off quick times in the cool Northeast fall weather, they spent their time switching computer chips. The car just did not run as it should have that day.

Despite the apparent troubles, Joachim was still able to run a best of 11.64 at 116.1 mph with a small shot of nitrous on top of the blower. It wasn't far off from his 11.51 best time and we were happy he made it to Englishtown to participate. The air/fuel ratio was off and the car blew the tires away on the starting line each time, too. Still, an 11.64 from a mostly stock engine combination is not too bad.

Remember when we said earlier in the story that a few competitors had to pull out of the competition for various reasons? Well, we can thank Thomas Blore for taking a day off from work on such short notice in order to fill in a vacant Bullitt spot. Blore competed with the same tires, Nitto 555s, that he drove in off the streets with, and they are not the drag radial-style 555s, either. The car was stock appearing and so mild sounding that you would never even know there was a 5.0L stroker engine under the hood.

Blore drove the car flawlessly on the street tires. The Nitto tires would let out a little screech on the launch and on each gearshift. He walked the car out with consistent 2-oh short times. His best 60-foot during the shootout was a 2.02. He tried hard to make it into the 12s on street tires and even removed 100 or so pounds of stereo equipment, but he never achieved his goal as we simply ran out of time. It was quite a valiant effort on his part to run in the 12s but that would have to come another day.