CRAIG BREEDLOVE BUILT a jet-powered car in his garage. Now he's heading to Bonneville to set the land speed record for the sixth time - oh, and break the sound barrier.
Meet Craig Breedlove and you think of Mister Rogers. The laid-back grandfather has the same unflappable gentleness, the same easygoing speech. You can almost feel your blood pressure wane when he comes out with calm, slowly delivered, supportive statements like
"If your mind and body aren't both in good shape, you're not going to be able to do the best you possibly can."
So it takes a sharp leap of the imagination to consider that in a few weeks, this quiet and unassuming man wants to take himself to a dry lake bed in Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, strap his 5-foot-8, 150-pound frame into the tiny cockpit of the biggest muscle car in America, and launch himself across a sea of caked salt at 700 fucking miles an hour. This 59-year-old man who keeps misplacing his reading glasses and whose wife has taken to feeding him homegrown wheatgrass juice will take a 60-second ride at the front of a jet capable of delivering 48,000 horsepower - twice the horsepower of all the cars in last year's Indy 500.
