AIRLOCKIssue 02 All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary 3 Cover story When Roger Schroer set a new world land speed record for an electric vehicle in the VBB3, Spacesuit founders Shiv Gohil and Ross Ringham were there as official photographers. As they A matter discovered, sixty seconds is all it takes to make history. of time Images: Shiv Gohil / Spacesuit Media It’s more than 500 miles from when it was very possible you’d never Sacremento, near San Francisco, to the return) and passionate about advancing Bonneville salt flats. I know because technology to improve life for future that was the route we took on the way generations. to see a new electric world land speed Shiv and I saw an opportunity to record being set. combine the trip to the VBB3’s campsite Spacesuit’s artistic director Shiv at Bonneville with a spot of sightseeing. Gohil had been commissioned by Cue four states in six days, spanning the Venturi to document the record attempt Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Las Vegas, and he, of course, needed company. Said the Grand Canyon and the Pacific Coast company comprised a giant pick-up Highway. That’s a story for another truck and me. We had hours of driving time. ahead, sunglasses at the ready and the For now, we pick up the tale perfect playlist loaded onto Shiv’s shiny after a day’s driving, singing Eagles new phone. songs at the scenery as we marvel “Gas” (to borrow the nomenclature at the stunning setting – a ribbon of our American cousins) was hovering of road winding through lakes and at $2.50 a gallon, somewhere near a trees – before heading out into the quarter of the price in the UK. The Nevada desert under wide blue skies: truck, with a 5.7 litre V8 lump and crew Bonneville-bound. cab and several bags of camera gear, averaged 18mpg over the trip out to the --- town of Wendover, where our hotel was located. That economy is considered We arrive in Wendover a little before good for the size of vehicle out here eight on Saturday evening. Night has but hardly counts towards careful fallen. The interstate has shrunk from use of a dwindling resource; it was a the eight-lane monster of earlier to stark contrast to the rationale behind a relatively narrow dual carriageway, Venturi’s pioneering of EV tech. winding through craggy, rust-coloured Venturi is a specialist maker rock walls. The darkness is almost of electric vehicles and associated absolute, punctured only by the technology. The company is a relatively occasional red of tail-lights in front small bunch of pioneers, engineers and of us and, separated from us by a thinkers, headquartered in Monaco. featureless black expanse, pinpricks of Company owner Gildo Pastor is an headlights on the other side of the road. explorer of the old fashioned type, in The night curtains are stark and austere love with the vast expanses of Africa (he either side of us. used to race the Paris-Dakar rally back Just as the signs point out that we’ve 5 Image: Lou Johnson / Spacesuit Media almost arrived, we spot the moon. It’s a surface of the salt flats does not. You huge, dim disc; it hangs heavy, orange feel that you can see all the way to the and foreboding in the skies just over the Those flats. seam where the sky and horizon are ragged silhouetted crests of the nearby stitched together. mountains, without appearing to cast The strip of weather-beaten highway any light over the landscape. It looks Before you see them, ends at a string of dayglow orange painted onto the sky. cones. A couple of local marshals Then, we round a bend and the cab you think the name stand outside a dilapidated caravan. is suddenly, shockingly ablaze with the They are the gate keepers, holders of glare of neon lights, signs so bright they describes all you need to insurance forms and yellow festival- sear the back of your eyeballs. Before know. It does not. Your style wristbands which show off your us is an oasis of casinos, seemingly authorised status. To the left of the suspended in the middle of nothing. We mind is not prepared tarmac, the salt is churned up, brown roll into the artificial dawn of blinking mud showing through tyre tracks. It’s arcade-style billboards. for the vast expanse of a visual warning that the ground is far Wendover is a town of two halves, whiteness shimmering from solid under the powdery white straddling the state line between crust. The further away you get from the Nevada and Utah like a cowboy on under the low sun. It’s smoothed strip used for record attempts, horseback. The casinos and neon signs the softer the ground becomes. are all on one side of the boundary; hard to get any sense of (How soft? Venturi boss Gildo Pastor on the other, the buildings are much perspective. took his six-wheel-drive Mercedes smaller, drab, and entirely without Sin AMG monster for a spin on the night City aspirations. we arrived. It got stuck. Up to its axles. Our hotel is called the Nugget and The next day, in daylight, the camera is on the Nevada patch. It’s old Vegas crew bogged down on the way up to the in miniature, with a casino, poker access road. Both had to be extricated by room, restaurants and a pole dancer access road for the salt flats. This really a tracked recovery vehicle.) all wrapped in one floral-wallpapered is a road to nowhere, washed out yellow A mile or so from the entry point, package. It’s a slow atmosphere, though. lines mounted on a strip of dishevelled, a few congregated marquee-type No tuxedos, supercars or Eiffel Tower cracked grey. It runs parallel to the structures and portaloos slide into view. knock-offs here. rearing rocks which thrust into the skies It’s a temporary paddock area, a sort We’ve covered 500 miles in a single some distance away to our left. To our of campsite, in the middle of the vast day. We do not stay up to party: soft, right, the salt flats. blanket of salt, next to the main course. warm, still beds call. Those flats. Before you see them, There are 10 groups sharing the salt you think the name describes all you flats today, including motorbikes. Guy --- need to know. It does not. Your mind Martin is next door with Triumph. is not prepared for the vast expanse The Venturi site has everything We’re out of the hotel with our small of whiteness shimmering under the a group of 25-or-so people needs for change intact at 7.30am the next low sun. It’s hard to get any sense of a week in the desert. There are three morning: Sunday. One junction’s jump perspective. It’s like looking out over main tents. The centre of the camp is on the interstate and we reach the the sea, except that the sea moves; the commandeered by a BBQ and kitchen 7 Cover story mounted on the back of a trailer. Stacks of tyres, hoists, tall tool chests, plastic tables and folding camping chairs sit on blue tarpaulin sheets which are held down by wooden battening screwed into the salt. A couple of coolboxes hold bottles of water and Powerade and Black and red bags of ice for the VBB3 cooling system. A shiny Airstream caravan is parked carbon-fibre body off to one side: the executive office. A panels sit off to one lorry trailer serves as the engineering centre. A cluster of pick-up trucks and a side, in the sun, jacked-up A-team style van – the “push truck” – are parked along the back of the while the canopy is engineering truck. open and tilted up The VBB3 itself takes up the longest tent, with assorted equipment dotted and forwards, like around the nude chassis. Black and red carbon-fibre body panels sit off to that of a jet fighter. one side, in the sun, while the canopy is open and tilted up and forwards, like that of a jet fighter. Shiv unpacks his camera gear on one of the plastic tables as we help ourselves to sausage sandwiches and cereal. Time to meet the crew; time to meet the machine. --- There are bleary eyes but bright smiles as we mill about. The crew was working until 5am this morning to get the car ready for its practice runs today. It’s now 8am. Painful. The car has a new clutch and shifting set-up which has yet to be properly tested. The team is therefore taking it slow and steady as they build up to their target of 350mph. The atmosphere at the camp feels very like that at a race track. There are a small number of engineers swarming around the VBB3. The sleek body has been removed, one panel at a time, to reveal the black tentacles of the tubular steel chassis. It looks even longer and narrower when you can see all the components packed into the frame. The car effectively has two powertrains, one at either end, with the cockpit mounted in the centre, sandwiched between them. Each powertrain has two electric motors mated to a common shaft, together producing 1196kW. That’s nearly 2400kW – or, in old money, more than 3,200bhp. Each powertrain drives a two-speed transmission, built by Hewland; first 9 Cover story gear is good for 275mph.