With Bonneville rapidly approaching (only a month away!) land speed racing teams are making their final preparations, entering the final phases of their thrash, and sorting our cars of all shapes and sizes for battle on the salt. Danny Thompson is one of the guys that everyone will be paying attention to out there at Bonneville with the massive and massively powerful Challenger II streamliner. This car has a pair of 2,000hp injected nitro burning Brad Anderson hemi engines in it and the car is an icon that Danny Thompson has literally lived, slept, and breathed for a couple of years. His pursuit to get this thing done has been nothing short of Herculean and the world was robbed its first taste of seeing the (revamped and revived) Challenger II get after it in decades after ran washed away Speed Week in 2014.

This is a single engine test and the mill being run is the front engine. When Mickey Thompson originally built the Challenger II it had engines of differing power levels in it. The total output was about 1,800hp. One of these engines out does that on its own and there are TWO of them! You will hear it fire up and cackle for a while as the crew guys check for leaks and generally keep an eye on the gargantuan car. This certainly makes the Bonneville bells ring hard in our head and it also makes us leery of stuff like the rain storm that swept over the salt flats the other day, washing away the test and tune event that normally precedes the “big show” in August.

The camera angle is cool and the car sounds great when Danny hits the button, spins that Powermaster starter over and the engine thumps to life. There is not a lot of revving or anything like that but there is some beauty in listening to that hemi lope and angrily snarl out of the short headers. The noise seems even better because it is not happening on the salt but rather outside the door of Danny’s shop! The fact that the car is completely sans body is also one of our favorite things. Totally cool!

Our rooms are booked, our tickets are bought and we will be there to provide you with the best, most interesting, and deepest inside coverage of Speed Week 2015. Danny will be there too and those engines will be doing a lot more than idling, we can promise you that!

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE THE FIRE UP HAPPEN –