With an average speed of 160 kph and a max of 310. That’s three hundred and ten kilometres per hour. Many, many traffic laws were broken.

Google Maps will tell you that driving from the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan to the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach should take about 42 hours. Want to stop and see the sights along your 4500 km journey? Travel sites recommend taking 3 to 4 weeks. Not these guys though. Their blast across the entire continental US took just 27 hours and 25 minutes.

Cannonball 101

The unofficial, unsanctioned, and underground race in question is the Cannonball, or the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash to give its full name. The short history is that Erwin ‘Cannonball’ Baker was an early 1900s legend of endurance driving and motorcycle riding. He set his own record for the journey in 1933 but it wasn’t until May of 1971 that racing driver/auto journalist Brock Yates would set out with some friends in ‘Moon Trash II’ (a nondescript Dodge van) to best the old master.

The Cannonball was first run as a multi-vehicle race in November 1971 with its motley assortment of entrants featuring Yates and Dan Gurney in a Ferrari Daytona up against a big ol’ Cadillac, a motorhome, and a couple of vans hauling hundreds of gallons of gas in barrels in the back. Yates and Gurney narrowly won with a time of 35 hours and 54 minutes. 

The race became the stuff of legend and hundreds of people have attempted it since. Most of them fail thanks to the difficulty of evading the police, traffic, roadworks, and weather but a hallowed few have pushed the record further. Worthy of special mention here are Alex Roy (BMW M5, 31 hours, 4 minutes) who tried three times before succeeding and Ed Bolian (Mercedes CL55 AMG, 28 hours, 50 minutes) who broke the record in 2013. The Cannonball world was sure that Ed’s record was unbeatable but guess what? It wasn’t! Enter Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt, and a very special E-Class Mercedes.

Power

Needing something comfortable that would happily cruise at two to three times the speed limit for hours on end, Toman and Tabbutt wisely chose a German super-sedan. Their E63 AMG was given a hearty tune to go with a slew of upgrades to its twin-turbo system with the resulting 700 horsepower meeting roads across America through the Benz’s (completely stock and bulletproof) all-wheel drive system. Ensuring those horses had plenty to drink they installed a long-range fuel cell in the trunk which enabled them to spend just 22 and a half minutes stationary during the trip.

Stealth

With power sorted it was time to turn attention to evading old Smokey. The AMG’s go-fast carbon trim pieces were covered with silver vinyl to help it blend in with the everyday traffic along its righteous route and the desperadoes even went as far as covering part of each tail light to make the big Merc look like an older, infinitely slower Honda Accord from the rear. Genius.

Electronic Counter Surveillance

This is where the custom stuff veers into a nerd’s dream world. For starters the tail lights are equipped with a kill-switch so that police ahead are none the wiser if its drivers have to drop the anchors approaching a speed trap. Then comes the real meat and potatoes of outfitting a car for doing illegal things for this long. In no particular order:

• • 3 GPS units

• • A police scanner

• • A CB radio

• • 2 radar detectors

• • A laser jammer

• • An aircraft collision warning system to look for highway patrol planes

• • A roof-mounted thermal scope used to spot cop cars hiding at the side of the road at night

• Waze running on an iPad and iPhone

On top of all that the guys had their friend Berkeley Chadwick come along to man a pair of gyro-stabilized binoculars to provide another set of eyes on the road ahead.

The Human Element

What really set this run apart from all the others was the crew of spotters that the guys roped in to scout the roads ahead and provide the kind of local know-how that no amount of Googling can give. This support network played a huge role in making the record attempt a success.

So there we have it. A new record, but for how long? Yes, averaging 160 kph on a cross-country public road blast is very reckless. Ditto hitting a top speed of 310. All the planning in the world can’t account for someone in a CR-V (it’s always a CR-V) pulling out in front of you for no reason. Then you’ve very likely injured an innocent motorist to say nothing of your ruined record attempt. It’s not a socially responsible thing to do, but it is deeply impressive (to me at least). The people that make this run are outlaws in modern luxo-rocket ships bristling with technology. I can’t help but love that. Can you?