The fastest I have ever driven

Glenn Reynolds echoes this headline: What’s the Fastest You’ve Driven?

It’s a safe bet few among us has the skill, not to mention the car, to do 268 mph like Bugatti pilote officiel Pierre Henri Raphanel. But that’s not to say many among us haven’t tried.

Raphanel’s amazing run made the new Bugatti Veyron Super Sport the world’s fastest production car.

Glenn says he once drove, "A shade over 135, on U.S. 50 in Nevada, back before I had any dependents. . ."

When I was stationed in Germany, I drove 125 with my wife and parents in the back seat of my Mercedes S-Class sedan. That was my usual cruising speed on the autobahnen, although most of the time the autobahn was so crowded that such speeds were practical for not very long. Early one Sunday morning though, I drove to the Frankfurt international airport to pick up my brother, who was coming to visit. Germans sleep in on Sundays so the A5 Autobahn was practically empty. Sure made the drive quick!

But that's not the fastest I have driven. One night, heading to Frankfurt, I turned onto A5 heading to Hanau by mistake. Once on the on-ramp, you are committed because backing up on the entrance or exit ramps can land you in prison there, not just jail. Knowing that the next exit was 20 kilometers away, I had no choice but to floor it.

I made it to my appointment in Frankfurt with five minutes to spare. En route, my Benz's speedometer read 240 kph, or 149.1 miles per hour. I am sure that I pushed to 150 at least a couple of times, so that's the fastest I have ever driven.

Don't care to again, though. It was night and at that speed headlights are a mere formality.

A few years later I had the chance to get a driving lesson from Darrell Waltrip. I mentioned that I had driven 150 on the autobahn. "Ah," he thoughtfully replied. "Third gear."