The Spirit of Sunshine Belly Tanker Is a Real Australian Beast: Listen to the Sweet Holden V6’s Howl!


The Spirit of Sunshine Belly Tanker Is a Real Australian Beast: Listen to the Sweet Holden V6’s Howl!

In case you’d been living under a rock, or perhaps a sun-baked clump of Utah salt, Brian Lohnes has covered every nook and cranny of Bonneville Speed Week this year. It’s awesome and you need to go see all of it if you haven’t. However, Bonneville isn’t the only temple of speed in the world; Australia, too, has its own land-speed shrine, the salt flats near Lake Gairdner in South Australia. The Down Under version of the Big White Dyno is also vast, running a nine-mile course on the big salt flats. While the Dry Lakes Racers Australia record book isn’t as filled-out as that from Bonneville, there is still some great stuff at Lake Gairdner Speed Week, including the Spirit of Sunshine belly tanker.

Powered by a Holden V6, the Spirit of Sunshine sounds about as good as any other V6 we’ve ever heard and that healthy, if relatively lightly modded, six-cylinder plant has propelled the former Canberra wing tank to more than 200 mph. Sure, it went considerably faster attached to a Canberra a few miles above the earth, but this lakester runs just an inch or two above the salt. There’s not much else to add from me, but the car’s owner(s) give really detailed accounts of their weekends at Lake Gairdner on the car’s blog that are well worth your time to read.

 


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