"Cannonball" record broken!

December 3, 2019 *Road & Track*

Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt drove from New York to Los Angeles in just 27 hours and 25 minutes last month, setting a new record in what is known among car enthusiasts as the “Cannonball” run. (VINwiki/YouTube)

Vin Diesel would be proud.

Two men drove from New York to Los Angeles in just 27 hours and 25 minutes last month, setting a new record in what is known among car enthusiasts as the Cannonball Run and beating the previous New York-to-LA land speed record by more than an hour.

Before they took the plunge and set off at 12:57 a.m. on Nov. 10 from Red Ball Garage on East 31st St. in New York, Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt were just two car guys who loved illegally fast cross-country drives. But when they arrived at The Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, Calif., 27 hours and 25 minutes later, they became Cannonball legends.

“Don’t just meet your heroes, beat your heroes,” Tabbutt said in a mini-documentary that followed their record-breaking run on the car-focused YouTube channel VINwiki.

The record Toman and Tabbutt were racing for was set back in 2013, when Ed Bolian and Dave Black averaged a speed of 98 mph in their 28-hour, 50-minute Cannonball Run. In the VINwiki documentary, Toman described that mark as “pretty much unbeatable.”

They took it down with plenty of time to spare, but a lot more goes into a Cannonball Run than just hopping in a 2015 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG sedan and flooring it, though there was plenty of that. Toman and Tabbutt averaged 103 miles per hour, including the time spent on their four gas/bathroom/food breaks. Their max speed: 193 mph.

They enlisted Berkeley Chadwick as their third wheel and cop watcher, since driving 193 mph is illegal, even in the Midwest.

“Someone did get pulled over for 130 miles per hour,” Tabbutt said in the documentary, “but it wasn’t us. It was one of our spotters.” Their friend had been doing 130 in a Ferrari near Tabbutt’s hometown, not even spotting at the time but on his way to a meetup point, and talked his way out of the ticket.

As the designated Smokey spotter, Chadwick was armed with a pair of binoculars, two different radar detectors, a laser jamming system, a thermal camera on the roof, a police scanner and a CB radio, both with antennas mounted to the trunk, and an aircraft collision avoidance system, Road & Track reported. They also had emergency kill switches for the brake and tail lights.

Of course some of that stuff didn’t help anyways. The thermal camera was twisted in the wrong direction by the wind and the CB radio, a classic Cannonball gadget that Tabbutt insisted on, was basically useless. The anti-air collision system, generally used by airplanes to avoid crashes but used by Toman and Tabbutt to detect highway patrol aircraft, went unused to do the general lack of any highway patrol aircraft on the trip.

And Chadwick wasn’t even the only lookout, as the group had recruited 18 others to drive ahead of them at various points on the trip and alert them to any police presence. They also used Waze, the GPS app that alerts drivers to police on the road.

But that wasn’t enough for Toman. He chose the 2015 E63 AMG not for its horsepower, which the group actually altered down to 700 horses “for safety’s sake,” but for its nondescript look. Toman covered all the carbon-fiber with boring silver vinyl and while the interior of the Benz was brimming with tech, the exterior looked more like a 2000s Honda Accord or, as Toman put it in the doc, “every other silver vehicle on the road.” They also took all the emblems off for good measure.

This particular trick came in handy in Iowa when they heard an officer call in a “silver...passenger car westbound at high rate of speed” over the radio and the group chuckled at their successful deception.

The largely cop-free trip still had some sketchy moments. Toman and Tabbutt blew by a cop in Ohio at triple digits, but his lack of reaction led them to assume he was looking the other way. They came in hot behind a state trooper in the Midwest, but only lost 20 minutes after they slowed down to his speed, even after he got off and on the highway to follow them.

A cop traveling eastbound hit them with instant radar when they were going 120 in the Midwest. They waited for him to come through the median and pull them over, but said he just never did it.

Plenty of effort went into avoiding the cops, but law enforcement trying to keep the crew from doubling the speed limit wasn’t the only issue. At one point in Colorado, the Benz was losing power and the team pulled off the highway. Tabbutt, who’d broken down twice previously on Cannonball attempts, called his family to let them know another one had bit the dust. And then Toman restarted the car and everything was fine.

Now, I call that FUN!

Kmeleon

One driver a few years ago had his car painted like a foreign police car with hidden colored lights. That way he could blue light blocking left lane drivers to get them out of the way. They had a custom made extra gas tank. Three people, driver, spotter, radio man. One time they ramped off and hid at a parking lot from a Leo. Sounds like fun for sure.

My banker asked me the other day, "you wanta' try it?" He races Porsche. I mentioned dude, (I know him well) they had 18 decoys in this mix, other expensive sports cars, boat loads of money, did all this under cover only to reveal it later after the fact. We can't afford what they did! He got it, but we're both still thinking. That's the fun, frightening part, thinking.

Kmeleon

One needs to look like an ambulance or fire responder with red lights flashing. Blue lights would be tricky with jail time. Tag changes at every state line. Moving fuel refills (could be gas cans passed from other moving vehicle).

That's too much attention drawn. I liked their nondescript silver, looks like just another silver car stealth approach. But you raised a great point.. How to keep the cows corralled to the right lane when averaging 103 mph? That is tricky, challenging, and potentially dangerous driving to be sure.

Kmeleon