Red Ball Garage, New York to Portofino Hotel in Los Angeles, coast to coast, around 2,800 miles (4,500 km) to be covered as fast as possible - this is the Cannonball Run challenge. Something people have been tackling for over a century now, and with the continuous development of technology, the record keeps being broken year after year.
While the challenge was popularized in the '80s thanks to The Cannonball Run movie, featuring Burt Reynolds and Jackie Chan among others, the story of this ultimately illegal race starts around the beginning of the 20th century, as Erwin "Cannon Ball" Baker took on the challenge of crossing America on wheels, in a Stutz Bearcat. It was 1915 and he managed to complete the run in 271 hours and 15 minutes!
By 1933 he would manage to drastically improve his record, going cross country in just 53 hours and 30 minutes, in a Graham-Paige model 57 Blue Streak 8. Fast forward to the 21st century, 2020 has already seen the record being broken three times. An Audi A8 first did it in 26 hours and 38 minutes, then a Ford Mustang did it in 43 fewer minutes, with the current record belonging to an Audi S6, at 25 hours and 39 minutes.
Sure, for all of those records to be possible, the challengers have had to do extensive preparations, like adding extra fuel cells, radar reflective paint, using spotters, not getting any sleep, and so on so forth. But with the coming of a new era, the era of electric cars, someone was bound to try and set a record in an EV vehicle as well.
In December of 2017, a team set off for the challenge in an early-production Tesla Model 3 and finished the task in 50 hours and 16 minutes. Sure, that's considerably slower than an ICE vehicle, but with the charging network and EV development still in its infancy, it can certainly be considered progress.
In July of 2019, another team took on the challenge, needing only some 48 hours and 10 minutes to get from coast to coast. Later on that year, also driving a Tesla Model 3 with some modifications done to it, the same team bettered that result with 45 hours and 16 minutes of total time.
As it turns out, a Tesla vehicle is no longer the electric King of the Cannonball run, as the team from Out of Spec Motoring jumped in a Porsche Taycan 4S and further upped the ante. They managed to travel from one side of the country to the other in just 44 hours and just under 26 minutes. While a more documented version of their trip is yet to come, they did release a time lapse video of their adventure.
The things Dragos enjoys the most in life are, in no particular order: cars, motorcycles, diecast cars, and drifting. He's seen (and driven) many vehicles since he started his writing career back in 2009, but his garage currently houses a 1991 Mazda RX-7 FC3S Turbo II and a 1999 Suzuki SV650-S. Full profile
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