There's a little bit of supersonic car in all of us.
Immortality is what they want, and they can see it out there, flickering in a salt-flat mirage.
It's the kind of immortality accorded to men who have walked on the Moon - the rare few who have undone mythology by undoing the distance from here to there. It is the kind of immortality that comes fixed to a machine. Craig Breedlove saw it shining on the desert in October 1996 as his Spirit of America jet car flipped on its side at 675 mph - a speed no other human has ever experienced on land. But Breedlove saw it change into a more fearsome unknown, his own mortality, as the mud lake surface of Nevada's Black Rock Desert scraped by just inches from his head. The World Unlimited Land Speed Record is the last great act of hot rod culture - and perhaps the American Dream.