 Coast-to-Coast
Solo Speed Record
(Shot
by Peter Musurlian in New York,
South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California)
At one
second after midnight on February 6, 2005 (Super-Bowl Sunday)
Peter Musurlian set out from 16th Avenue & 1st
Street in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, to break the world record
for driving a car ocean-to-ocean, Atlantic-to-Pacific. And,
unlike other similar efforts, Musurlian would do it solo, as
two video cameras captured the entire adventure on tape.
The most
celebrated trans-American automobile races occurred during
the almost mythical 2,800-mile treks from New York to
Redondo Beach, during five Cannonball races in the 1970s, the
brainchild of writer & racer Brock Yates. Along with racing
legend Dan Gurney, Yates won the first such race in 1971, in
a Ferrari Daytona, in a time of 35 hours & 54 minutes.
The best
time recorded from those races was 32 hours & 51
minutes in 1979, by Dave Yarborough and the late Dave Heinz,
who did it in a Jaguar XJS.
In 1983,
after the Cannonball was put to rest, the late Doug Turner
of Newport Beach, along with a driving partner, made
it across America in 32 hours & 7 minutes, a record that
still stands today. They did it in a Ferrari equipped with
a second gas tank.
Musurlian’s time of 37 hours & 14 minutes puts him
at about number 21, in terms of overall fastest times. But
as far as verifiable one-person efforts, it is the fastest
solo time in history. (Wilt Chamberlain wrote that he once
drove his Lamborghini from New York to Los Angeles in 36 hours & 10
minutes, but there is no way to prove that claim’s veracity
or other more colorful boasts of the late basketball superstar).
This documentary is part speed record, part reflection on
America. The journey starts in Jacksonville, Florida, the site
of the 2005 Super Bowl, and ends in San Diego, California:
A 2,400-mile all-interstate route, traversed ticket-free in
an unmodified vehicle, with no radar detector.
Musurlian loaded-up his black, four-door 2005 Toyota Camry
LE with nine Power Bars, eight cans of Red Bull, and seven
Catie Curtis CDs, hit the gas and never looked back. The result
is a testament to technological ingenuity, sheer stamina, and
creative storytelling.
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