Supercharged Skoda speeds across the salt Back to results

Supercharged Skoda speeds across the salt Supercharged Skoda speeds across the salt

Safety Devices was commissioned to design and install a bespoke roll cage for the ŠKODA Octavia vRS in preparation for its attempt to register an impressive land speed record.  The roll cage had to meet the regulation specification of Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), the governing body who operate the Bonneville Salt Flats facility, otherwise known as 'Bonneville Speedway'.  Bonneville is a densely-packed salt pan in north-west Utah, USA, renown for land speed records.

Every aspect of the roll cage's design was bespoke to the SCTA regulations, including material gauge, plate sizes and thickness.  Safety Devices Chief Engineer, Aeron Lloyd, commented "I believe this is the most comprehensive roll cage we have manufactured in the past few years.  The thought of rolling and digging in on a salt surface at 220+mph is pretty frightening.  Some of the accidents seen on the Bonneville Salt Flats are unbelievable."  With this in mind, the roll cage (known as a 'safety cell' in Bonneville circles) was designed to be fully welded to the shell and includes practically every available extra: front turret triangulation, windscreen reinforcement bars, cross door bars, sill bars, tunnel reinforcement, upper and lower seat mountings, roof cross bracing, upper, lower and mid backstays, main hoop cross diagonal bracing, tunnel brace, harness bar, backstay cross diagonal bracing and rear turret brace.

The roll cage was also used to mount two 10Kg fire extinguishers and Safety Devices also manufactured a rear fire wall to secure the fuel cell.

On Friday 19 August 2011 at 07:45am, a ŠKODA Octavia vRS officially became the world's fastest 2.0-litre supercharged production car when the 600 bhp 'salt spec' racer, built to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the iconic vRS performance flagship badge, registered a SCTA sanctioned speed of 227.070 mph on Utah's legendary Bonneville Salt Flats.

For further information, contact Aeron Lloyd,
tel: +44 (0)1638 560524, email: motorsport@safetydevices.com.

Top photo courtesy of EVO Magazine.

Watch the final moments on You Tube:

 

Safety Devices Motorsport division has four decades experience and expertise servicing the Motorsport arena with roll over protection. Our founders designed the world's first automotive roll cage. Working with some of the biggest names in the industry Safety Devices is Europe's largest roll cage manufacturer and boasts the world's most extensive product catalogue comprising over 2000 cages. In addition to cages we offer complimentary safety products of harnesses and impact padding.