The run-up to the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race is always a nail-biting enterprise for race teams. Naturally, techs are most concerned with assuring cars' ability to sustain the day-night race, which is the ultimate test for GT cars and sportscar prototypes that will wind through the Circuit of the Sarthe -- on a combination of racetrack and public roads -- in Le Mans, Sarthe, France. This year there's an added kink keeping teams up nights. It appears the gods of aerodynamics have been sending LeMans prototype-class racecars into the ether with a cosmic finger flick.

Back in 1946, Mechanix Illustrated writer "Uncle" Tom McCahill began measuring cars' performance by how quickly he could launch them from a standing start to 60 miles per hour. That measure, evocative in its simplicity, quickly became the standard for judging a passenger car's performance, and a perfect proxy for advertisers to capture the excitement of driving in a single phrase. Zero to 60 in a scorching 5.5 seconds!

Making Formula One racing "greener" may be as much a marketing decision as a policy of corporate responsibility. But according to F1 officials, there's another reason to do so. The series has been moving further out of sync with the technical direction of the passenger car industry, which increasingly has fuel economy on the brain. F1 was always intended to be a bellwether, not a rogue element. That's one reason why, beginning in 2009 Formula One racing will introduce a hybrid-drive system into the series. If you want a sneak preview of how a hybrid setup might work in a racing application, keep an eye on how well one oddly named race car performs in next month's 24 Hours of Nürburgring endurance challenge in Germany next month.

A racing team led by 66-year-old Ed Shadle is gunning for the world land speed record of 763 miles per hour—their goal is to break the 800 mark. Shadle has spent a decade and $150,000 getting ready, and transforming an old jet into his potentially record-smashing ride, the North American Eagle. The car boasts 42,000 horsepower, and will supposedly do 0 to 800 in just 20 seconds. And it's entirely green, running on solar . . . no, just kidding.

The big news, though, is that Shadle is looking for drivers.

For a closer look at the wildest repurposed rigs, launch the photo gallery by clicking 'View Photos' at left. And to see what happens when the power-tool racers come across a gas-powered ring of fire and a few cold beers, see the video at the bottom of the page.
It´s a rocket. Stuck through the back of a skull, sitting on an aging belt sander rigged to a pair of sawed-off skis. And it can haul butt down a track.

This isn't a road in the sense that it has a name or can be found on a map. It's just a trail covered with boulders and potholes superimposed on an inhospitable stretch of the Mojave Desert 25 miles south of Las Vegas. You wouldn't dream of driving over it in a car. Even in a Jeep or a kick-ass 4x4, you'd crawl along in low gear, wincing at the toll it was taking on your tires, suspension and kidneys.

Alan Pflueger flies along it at 98 miles an hour. And that's not "flying" used figuratively. He's getting air under the tires of his two-and-a-half-ton truck as he vaults over crests and crashes into gullies with a giant plume of dust streaming in his wake. Pflueger's flying machine is a purpose-built racing leviathan known as a Trophy-Truck. Created to conquer the Baja 1000, the world's toughest off-road race, Trophy-Trucks cross the gnarliest terrain on the continent at speeds that can exceed 140 mph. Almost anything goes in this unlimited class, from 800-horsepower V8 engines to state-of-the-art electronics to titanium springs the size of laser-guided missiles. "Trophy-Trucks are the most complicated and sophisticated race vehicles in existence," says former Nissan Motorsports chief Frank Honsowetz, who should know; his experience encompasses Baja, the Indy 500 and Le Mans.

See a cool promotional video put together by Audi, featuring a time-lapse construction of the R10 TDI. Click here

For a video lap around Laguna Seca, scroll to the bottom of the page (and turn up your volume).

Forget about primitive wooden contraptions driven by towheaded tykes down a homemade ramp in Your Hometown, U.S.A. The new—make that the extreme—take on the quaint old soapbox derby features sleek, futuristic projectiles riding on chassis meant to accommodate speeds of 50, 60, even 70 miles an hour.