Mickey Thompson first built Challenger 2 as the Autolite special in 1968 to beat the outright wheel driven land speed record. But despite claiming a potential of over 500mph, Thompson never got to run the car due to poor weather at Bonneville that year. He later sold the car, then bought it back and had started to re-develop it for son Danny to drive in the late 1980?s but when Thompson was murdered in 1988 the project stopped. But in 2011 Danny Thompson decided to restart it and the car is currently being rebuilt for a shot at the piston engined record before an outright record attempt in 2012.
