A car packing 12,000 horsepower and 6,500 pounds of thrust hopes to steal the show at the Great State of Maine Air Show over Labor Day weekend in Brunswick.
The so-called “Smoke-N-Thunder” car, created by retired Air Force pilot Bill Braach, is 26 feet long, weighs about 2,300 pounds and houses a jet engine.
“It’s going to accelerate me from a standing start to almost 400 miles per hour in about 9 seconds,” Braach told Manchester, N.H., television station WMUR.
He’s been driving the jet-car for 10 years, but this weekend he actually will race an airplane.
“It’s similar to what an F-18 pilot launches off the end of a carrier,” he told WMUR. “It continuously accelerates faster and faster and faster, and I need all of that speed to catch the airplane that I’ll be racing this weekend.”
Braach plans to use a few tricks to give himself a fighting chance.
“I’ll accelerate for about 1,800 feet, shoot underneath him at about 380 mph. So it’ll make it look like he’s hardly moving,” he told the TV station.
