Author Topic: Did Hal Needham ever drive the Budweiser Rocket Car at high speed?  (Read 1575 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline J79

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 165
  • J79 Exhaust from a F4 Phantom II
Did Hal Needham ever drive the Budweiser Rocket Car or any other cars at high speed?

In this video about the Budweiser Rocket Car, at 18:15, 19:10, 55:55, Hal Needham is mentioned driving at and was almost was killed driving at 600mph...What car was he driving to go 600mph?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSBl9IjS60E&t=2934s

From this article it says: "Needham never even got behind the wheel." That is vague. Does that mean Hal never drove the car that season at Alvord or does that mean Hal never drove the car at all?
"But dialing in more power was not an option for O'Neil: under her contract, she was only permitted to drive the "Motivator" to a new women's record. The movie director Hal Needham had paid $25,000 for the chance to steer the car to a new overall world record, and he was determined not to lose that chance to a woman. So, after O'Neil set her record, Needham rather unceremoniously demanded that she be pulled from the drivers' seat. (His spokesman even told reporters that it would be "degrading" for a woman to hold the "man's" record.) While the lawyers squabbled, it began to snow, and Alvord was closed for the season. Needham never even got behind the wheel."
http://www.gregwapling.com/hotrod/land-speed-racing-history/land-speed-racing-kitty-oneil.html

Wikipedia page on the Budweiser Rocket Car says nothing about him driving the car.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_Rocket

Wikipedia page on Hal Needham says nothing about him driving the car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Needham
« Last Edit: February 17, 2018, 08:48:36 PM by J79 »
"My, people come and go so quickly here." Dorothy, from the movie Wizard of Oz.

"I have marveled often at the thin line that divides success from failure, and the sudden turn that leads from apparently certain disaster to comparative safety." Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic Explorer, 1874-1922.

From the movie Dr. Strangelove, General Jack D. Ripper:

"Mandrake, in the name of Her Majesty and the Continental Congress come here and feed me this belt boy... Mandrake, come over here, the Red Coats are coming!"

"He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious "automotive" bodily fluids."