[MUSIC]
You know you always remember your first.
Your first love, your first car.
Well I've come out here to the Bonneville Salt Flats for another first.
I'm going to drive this 2019 Volkswagen Jetta with a blown out 2 litres 600 horsepower motor We're gonna go 200 miles an hour.
Now a lot of my Volkswagen racing experience has been in air-cooled engines.
It's a lot slower, those vehicles.
So I have to tell you, I'm actually really nervous.
The folks at THR Manufacturing swapped the 1.4 liter turbo found on the current Jetta with the 2 liter from the forthcoming Jetta GLI.
Then they added a huge turbocharger and all the [UNKNOWN] to reach a whooping 600 horsepower.
The interior is stripped with special wheels and tires are mounted to best take advantage of the [UNKNOWN] rain.
While stopping power is provided by two rear mounted shoes.
A six feet manual transmission completes the package.
My first drawn is perfect.
[SOUND]
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Great start on the slippery salt, and the car reaches the recommended warmup speed of 160 miles per hour really quickly.
So I'm confident enough to push it just a bit further.
I reached my goal of 185 on my first pass.
This I think is going to be easy.
My God [LAUGH]
That was just the practice run, and it was a 185 miles an hour.
My God I can totally do this.
I can totally do this.
Can I Five minutes.
Five minutes, 200 miles an hour in five minutes.
I'm feeling a lot more confident after my practise run.
We got up to a 185, even though they said hey, you should probably keep it at 160, but we're a little bit faster.
So I'm really confident.
But I do know that speed is super dangerous, I'm still a little bit nervous.
Cuz 200 miles an hour, that's 2, 0, 0.
[APPLAUSE].
Did I say this was gonna to be easy, because everything that could go wrong on my second run does I have a terrible start and then I get rattled when the car bounces of the rev limiter at around 7800 RPM.
And I know I'm gonna catch a lot of gulf for this but I miss a shift.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Yes, look closely and you'll see that RPM gauge go screaming all the way up to 9,000 RPM.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] [LAUGH] That was terrible and so much fun.
[LAUGH]
Okay, first of all, that was a terrible start.
I had a great first start but that was a terrible, terrible start.
That clutch is way harder than you think.
And then it just went and I thought well, this run is gone.
This run is totally gone.
There is now way it's gonna happen.
But it just kept going faster and faster and faster, and then I looked down and it was at 209.
I set 209.
In the end THR manufacturing said no harm was done.
Afterall if I'd blow the motor, it wouldn't kept going at 209 miles an hour.
And while the Jetta GLI won't nearly have as much power as this one off race car, the engine will have many of the same components.
And if it can withstand my miss shift, it's certainly will be able to handle anything you will be able to throw at it.
[MUSIC]
