Image: Toyota
Prior to this cars and truck getting to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2004, no hybrid had actually ever performed at America’s natural race course. This is it, this was the very first one. This is a piece of racing history that should have to be kept for future generations to appreciate. Toyota got here to the salt with a mostly-stock Prius understanding that it would win a record for the history books, due to the fact that the hybrid class was created simply for this automobile.
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Twenty years ago this Prius got here and set a brand-new record of 130.794 miles per hour. It might not remain in the record books any longer, however it’ll constantly remain in the history books. According to Japanese Nostalgic Carthis Prius was identified in the great deal of a recycling backyard in Dallas, Texas along with a 1978 Cressida, both previous citizens of the Toyota USA Museum when the business was headquartered in Torrance, California prior to it relocating to Texas.
A stock second-generation Toyota Prius can a leading speed of 106 miles per hour. Lorry engineer Dr. Shigeyuki Hori and his skunkworks group got dealing with an effort to show the cars and truck’s speed abilities and called in a bit more, uh, speed. The basic fuel engine wasn’t touched, however the hybrid synergy drive system was overclocked somewhat to spin at greater RPMs with the inverter voltage upped from 500 to 550.
The cars and truck’s transmission was fitted with a 3.2-to-1 last drive equipment versus the 4.32:1 in the automobile as requirement. An ice box was put in location of the guest seat to assist cool the electrical motor at high output, and you can see that the cars and truck was decreased substantially and fitted with so-called moon discs on each wheel for aerodynamic effectiveness. Aside from security equipment, this was a primarily stock Prius, which currently had a quite low drag coefficient of 0.26.
Image: Toyota
Hybrid innovation has actually come a long method considering that 2004, and 130 miles per hour would not have actually been excellent even simply a couple of years later on. The Prius, even by existing Prius requirements, was quite damn sluggish. It was in part due to programs like this that Toyota and its engineers found out how to make the Prius much better. The existing Prius owes a lot to this odd race cars and truck. It needed to be a sort of bad cars and truck in order to find out to be a quite darn great one.
I have actually connected to Toyota for remark concerning the fate of these intriguing vehicles. As quickly as I hear back from Toyota, I will upgrade this post to consist of the business’s declaration.
A variation of this short article initially appeared on Jalopnik
Image: Toyota
Image: Toyota
