The Texas Mile/Houston Cobra Club Fall Run

[elmariachi]

A few of us Houston Cobra owners made the trek to the Texas Mile on Thursday. The national Ford GT club had the day reserved for their club, ahead of the Fri/Sat annual Texas Mile speed dash event. Fellow club member Larry Boatner decide to run his GT in the event.

The venue is an old 60's-era Navy flight training facility that consists of nothing more than two perpendicular 10,100' runways and a control tower. This place is 20 miles NW of Goliad, TX, in the middle of absolutely nowhere (though for you Texicans Goliad is very historically significant and has some beautiful Spanish missions worth seeing.)

The object of the game is to see how fast you can go from a dead standstill in one elapsed mile. Now at first blush that doesn't sound very interesting. But roll in 75 Ford GTs and the entourage that comes with them and it gets real interesting real quick. Leading the pack was a 1000HP supercharged Henessey twin turbo GT that opened the day with a 206 mph run. A couple of cars later and our friend Larry blew through at 177 mph, only to have the bolt holding the supercharger pulley in place break as he crossed the line. The ensuing pulley-turned hockey puck and mish-mash of belts made one hell of a mess. Preliminary diagnosis is the car should be relatively easy repairable with a little effort, costs TBD.

The Ford GT crowd is a unique bunch. Let's just say that when you have guys rolling up in privately-owned Kenworths with customer trailers, or 3 or 4 collectively arriving in a Reliable Transport, these guys mean business. Many had more than one GT and several brought Lambos and other exotics to run on Fri/Sat. What is unbelievable is how much bolt-on power these guys are getting from the stock 5.4L engine. The fastest speed I saw towards the end of the day was 216 mph, and that was with a 10-15 mph cross headwind and 85* temps. Here's a 195mph in-car run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFnu7H5hgOs

We also had our annual Houston Cobra fall run this weekend. It was absolutely the most beautiful weather we have had an Houston in months, and around 45 cars attended. Among the festivities we took a nice 200 mile run on some winding south Texas backroads Saturday, though the day was marred by an accident that badly injured a husband/wife when their Cobra t-boned some idiot who ran a red light. Others may choose to share names and details, but they were not wearing shoulder harnesses and both suffered significant injuries, likely as a result.