Hormel motorcycle is fueled by bacon

To promote the company's reputation as America's favorite doughnut shop, Dunkin' Donuts created the slogan "America Runs on Dunkin'." Now, I'm not calling Dunkin' a liar, but everyone knows that America really runs on bacon, and Hormel Foods has set out to prove it.

San Diego is hosting the International Bacon Film Festival at the USS Midway Museum on August 29. To promote the event, Hormel, one of the most prolific bacon makers in the country, has teamed up with Bio-Blend Fuels to create a motorcycle that runs on a biofuel made out of bacon grease. And they've recruited a "bacon lover" to ride their creation across country from Austin, Minn., to San Diego, with a camera crew alongside to document the journey.

The project was the brainchild of BBDO Minneapolis, an advertising company that has done extensive work with Hormel on the likes of Spam and Hormel's Black Label bacon products.

The journey took the scenic route from Minnesota to California, stopping at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, and cruising through Wyoming, Utah, and many other states on the way to SoCal. The crew rolled into San Diego on Wednesday, and you can view snippets from the journey at the Driven by Bacon site. The finished documentary will be shown at the festival later this month, because bacon.

The motorcycle itself gets between 75 and 100 miles per gallon of fuel, and the exhaust from the bike reportedly fills the air with a mouth-watering bacon smell. We can only hope that converting bacon grease to biofuel becomes a thing, because who could really get upset sitting in traffic with everyone's nostrils filled with that beautiful bacon smell?

(Via Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Austin Daily Herald)