The Cannonball Run is an illegal coast-to-coast road race, starting in New York City and ending in Los Angeles. If you map out the route on Google Maps — generally considered to be from the Red Ball parking garage in Manhattan to the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach — a nonstop trip would take you 42 hours. But last month, three maniacs set a new record by completing the drive in 27 hours and 25 minutes.
According to the team of Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt and Berkeley Chadwick, the overall average speed of the trip was 103 MPH. The top speed was 193 MPH. As Road & Track cites, the speed limit was “never higher than 80 on the roads they were traveling.” So you might be wondering, how exactly did they do it — especially without getting pulled over by the police?
Toman gives all the details in a new video from VINwiki. And when we say all the details, we mean it — he shares everything from his police radar detector to the laser gun jammer.
Here’s a breakdown of Toman’s setup:
- Car: Toman says his number one tip is “having a car that’s not super flashy and something that stands out.” For this record breaking run, the team used a 2015 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG disguised to look like a Honda Accord.
- Radar detector: Escort Max 360
- Laser gun jammer system: AL Priority or TMG
- Thermal rifle scope: This was used for detecting deer, as Road & Track notes, but because it defeats the purpose of the Honda Accord disguise it was removed during daylight hours.
- Plane crash avoidance system: Used to detect police airplanes monitoring speed.
- Navigation: A full-size iPad hooked up to Waze, a phone using Google Maps and “a couple Garmins in for good measure.”
- Documentation: Garmin GPS devices
- Registration: Toman switched the car’s registration a few days before the attempt so he could have legal documentation of two license plates in case he needed to swap one.
- Binoculars: Image-stabilized, if possible.
Watch the video above for more tools and tips of the trade, including why CB radios are mostly useless these days.
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