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Sport: Got Hybrid?

Barred from every one of Bonneville's 543 classes, the Toyota Prius creates
a new one.
BY AARON ROBINSON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFFREY G. RUSSELL
November 2004

The man in the orange hat points a gloved finger down the track. I slide the
stubby gear selector gently into drive and grip the wheel, ready to write
racing history. But the digital display flashes "N," and that means the
car's in neutral. I hit the shifter again, and again, this time a hard slap.
N, N, N. I wave frantically at Jim Leininger, Toyota Team Greensport's crew
chief. He scrambles through the passenger door, barking commands.

"Press the brake once!"

Brake pressed.

"Floor the gas three times!"

Once, twice, a third time.

"Press the brake again and try it!"

Nothing but N.

A frown spreads across the weathered face under the orange hat as it scans
the half-mile line looking for another car to wave forward. Leininger
punches the big dashboard button marked "Power." The digital screen goes
blank.

"Damn computers," he mutters as the Toyota Prius hums and clicks and reboots
itself.

Nobody ever had to reboot a Holley carburetor at Bonneville, but over a
century of racing, that vast sun-baked, sodium-chloride playa has seen some
changes. Overhead valves, overhead cams, fuel injection, turbines,
diesels-they all made their debut here. Why shouldn't the next noteworthy
first be a completely computerized car? The larval-shaped Prius has four of
the little buggers onboard, and here at supercharged, open-piped,
stand-on-it Bonneville, it sticks out like Rachel Carson at a lumberjacks'
convention.

In 2004, the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), which stages the
Bonneville National Speed Week in mid-August on this dry salt lake in
northwestern Utah, published a 188-page rule book for cars and motorcycles.
It reads like a CIA cipher, full of codes such as XXO/ VGALT, for vintage
(pre-1948) gasoline (but not blown) altered (or tweaked from its original
shape or engine configuration) coupe powered by any flathead or
overhead-valve V-8 or V-12 that isn't from a Ford but that does have a
modified cylinder head (the record in that class is 154.103 mph, set by K.
Young in 2001). There's also XXF/VGALT, which is the same but with a Ford
flathead modified with an overhead-valve cylinder head (lucky M. Osborn has
that record at 155.508 mph).

The book lists speed records in no fewer than 543 classes for cars and 370
for motorcycles. Show up in a Radio Flyer wagon, and they'll put your name
in the book, it seems. Current and former Car and Driver editors hold three
of those records, so it can't be very hard. But the Prius, on a red-hot
track to set a record this year with 50,000 units sold in the United States,
is barred from every class.

The hitch isn't the computers, exactly, but the fact that a Prius has two
powerplants-one electric, one gasoline. A 1.5-liter DOHC 16-valve
inline-four makes 76 horsepower to drive the front wheels. Plus, a 67-hp
electric motor that Toyota calls the "motor/generator 2," or MG2, also
drives the front wheels, sometimes by itself, sometimes in conjunction with
the engine through a torque-splitting planetary gearset controlled by
another electric motor (called the MG1) that also starts the engine and
works as a generator to recharge the battery pack. No extension cords
required; just gas it up and go-about 40 to 50 mpg in normal driving,
somewhat less when you approach the stock top speed of 104 mph.

A system designed to wring gasoline out of your daily commute might just
wring more speed out of a small engine on the salt flats. This isn't just
idle daydreaming for Toyota, what with Lexus about to launch the RX400h, a
sport-ute that uses a hybrid system mainly to increase its 0-to-60 time
rather than its fuel economy. Toyota's Bill Reinert, U.S. manager of the
company's advanced technologies group, put the idea forward to demonstrate
that hybrids are more than just slow-moving slugs for tree huggers. The
first hybrid speed record might be a fine little feather in the corporate
cap. He let it slip over red wine one night at the 2004 Detroit auto show
last January. We let it slip that we were interested in the story.

Jim Leininger thinks more like a salt-flat racer. He's a field product
engineer for Toyota, writes and produces his own songs, fought in Vietnam,
and was tagged as the Prius's crew chief because he has run Bonneville with
a variety of vehicles since the 1960s. He wondered if the Prius would beat
the Bonneville record for 1.0-to-1.5-liter production cars (or H/PRO), which
is 131.769 mph, set by one L. Monreal in a Volkswagen back in 1985.

A hybrid appeals to speed geeks in at least one way: Electric motors aren't
affected by altitude. The salt flats sit at 4200 feet, thin air even on a
day with a high barometer. When the barometer sinks, as it did during the
2004 Speed Week-all the way to an asthmatic 25.6 inches of mercury-an engine
loses power. In that air, Leininger figured the Prius would generate a total
of 125 to 130 horsepower at the starting line. Would the electric motor give
it any advantage over a normal engine rated at the same output?

Did it matter? Since no one had ever taken a hybrid to Bonneville before,
all Toyota had to do was show up and complete the timed mile twice. The
average speed, whether it was 130 mph or 30, would be a record for hybrids.
There was only one problem with the plan: The SCTA wouldn't publish a record
without a class designation.

Bonneville's organizers have nothing against a car with two engines,
especially one that only goes 104 mph. The Pigasus Racing streamliner run by
C. Calvin Smith-a streamliner is basically a syringe on wheels-packs two
Oldsmobile V-8s and goes over 180 mph. But when Leininger began researching
how a Prius might get into the SCTA record book, the picture wasn't good.

Bonneville runs on rules the way the Southern Pacific runs on rails-any
deviation causes an ugly mess. There simply weren't any rules for a hybrid
because the SCTA has never hosted one on the salt flats in its entire
56-year history. The last time the SCTA created a new class was two years
ago, just an engine-displacement addendum to an existing class. Minor stuff.
The manuals are dusty on developing a class for a whole new propulsion
system.

There had already been interest in and talk about a hybrid class, says SCTA
rules advisory board member Dan Warner. "To keep this sport active, we have
to take in new technology," he says. "The amount of support I got when I
voiced the proposal, even from people I didn't expect would support it, was
surprising."

But a hybrid class was just conversation, and some of the conversation
scared the old hands, what with talk of 500-volt electrical cables and
exotic battery packs that can explode in a lethal toxic cloud. Home-built
electric cars, which have been clocked at over 250 mph at Bonneville, have
some of those dangers. But they are required by the SCTA to have certain
rudimentary safety items, such as a wood floor in the cockpit to attempt to
isolate the driver and rescue crew from mega-zaps. A steel-bodied production
hybrid like the Prius, where all the safety backups are factory
installed-hidden under the floorboards or in microchip memories-"is a whole
new ball of wax," says Warner.

The SCTA was waiting for someone to show up with one. Then the club's safety
inspectors could learn a few things about the technology and write a set of
rules. Then, maybe for the following year, those rules would go into the
book, and anyone could show up and set the first record in the class. Maybe.

That meant the Prius's first runs at Bonneville would be academic, just
unpublished data generated in the service of creating a class that Honda
might easily dominate later with a five-speed Insight running a VTEC rat
motor. Toyota wanted the first published record. While negotiations
continued between Leininger and the SCTA, decision makers at Toyota huddled.
If they didn't go, they might miss a historic opportunity to be the first
hybrid to set a record at Bonneville. You don't get a second chance to be
first.

The final decision came in June, just two months before the event. Chuck
Wade, Toyota Motorsports technical group director, and his employees Rich
Garver and Marty Schwerter had already done some of the necessary cutting
and welding. As the Speed Week kickoff on August 14 loomed, Leininger also
recruited his son, Mark, who has driven over 170 mph at Bonneville, to help
swing wrenches.

First and foremost, the Bonneville Prius is a road sucker, dropped more than
five inches from stock to minimize airflow under the already slippery body
with its 0.26 drag coefficient. This was no simple matter of changing
springs and bump stops. At the desired ride height, Wade and his crew
discovered the inner constant-velocity joints of the driveshafts cocked at a
dangerous angle, beyond what engineers in Japan considered safe. Since Wade
planned to remove the differential and lock the left and right wheels
together for better traction on the salt, a snapped CV joint could cause the
Prius to veer wildly off the track.

The solution was to "clock" the transmission case, or rotate it relative to
the engine, to bring the CV joints higher up, more in line with the wheel
centers. To do that, Wade had to cut arches in the chassis for the
repositioned shafts to pass through. He also installed a taller final-drive
gear and reshaped the inner fenders to accommodate tires up to 29 inches in
diameter. A larger tire equates to a taller top gear, so the bigger you go,
the faster you go until your engine can't make enough power to overcome the
increasing workload. With the Prius scrunched down and huge tires stuffed
in, body motion had to be restrained-actually, stopped altogether. Wade
installed custom Bilstein shocks and 3600-pound-per-inch Eibach springs in
each corner, about 30 times stiffer than the stock springs and the next best
thing to welding the axles directly to the car.

Bonneville's typical 100-degree summertime temps were a factor, especially
in the car's inverter, where the 202 volts of direct current produced by the
nickel-metal hydride batteries become 550 volts of alternating current for
the electric motor. The smaller motor/generator, the MG1, might also roast
during forced charges of the dead batteries, or when the pilot floors the
gas and holds down the brake at the same time for about two minutes, using
the engine to drive the generator through the planetary gearset until the
multicolor dash display shows a full pack. The hotter the electrical
components become, the less efficient they are. So out went the passenger
seat and in went a 15-gallon tank to be packed with ice water right before
the run. The water would be circulated by an electric pump through the
inverter and electric motors. The 125 pounds this added to the car's curb
weight didn't really matter; at Bonneville, weight is desirable. It
increases traction and stability on the salt.

The 1.5-liter engine's block and head were stock Toyota Echo, or basically
the same as the Prius but without the fuel-maximizing Atkinson-cycle
valve-timing mechanism. The restrictive intake was from the Prius, as was
the stock exhaust system. It was probably the only car racing at Bonneville
ready for a California smog test. When the SCTA tech inspectors opened the
hood, somebody in the crowd cursed and said, "It's a nuclear reactor!"

The tech tent at Bonneville is a notoriously prickly place, at times
resembling a convention of southern sheriffs. Wrong answers and shrugged
shoulders aren't tolerated. As the Prius was picked over by the clipboards,
Leininger stood close, quick with a courteous answer. The car's sealed
boxes, thick cables, and five-step process just for shifting into neutral
were carefully explained, sometimes twice.

"Look at it from their viewpoint," Leininger said later. "Some of these cars
have been coming for over 50 years, and the rest of the time they sit in a
barn with the salt eating away at them. If the tech guys aren't thorough,
people get hurt."

Given that, the Prius's checkout went relatively smoothly, especially since
many of Leininger's answers to questions such as what prevents the driver
from accidentally removing the key were, "The computer won't let him." Soon
the inspectors just nodded and echoed back, "The computer won't let him."

Still uncertain as to whether the car's runs would be published by the SCTA,
the crew pushed the Prius into a three-hour staging line. There was ample
time to meet some of Bonneville's 439 other pilots. The field seemed to
break down into three groups: the salty dogs who return year after year in
the same basic V-8 lowboys and T-buckets, the motorcyclists, and the
screwballs.

Firmly in the latter category is Marshall Brasel from Landrew, Wyoming, who
built a four-wheel, spear-shaped streamliner around a 1954 GMC firetruck
engine. "I'm kind of a six-cylinder buff," he says, nodding toward a black
cast-iron lump the size of a home furnace. He had just driven 192 mph, a
personal record. It might have been faster but, "my leg was shaking so bad I
couldn't hold down the gas pedal."

"In this kind of racing, people accept and love diversity," says Travis
Heap, whose late father, Carl, was one of Bonneville's legendary screwballs.
Carl Heap built and drove the Phoenix, a 1943 International mine truck
fitted with a 4000-hp Detroit Diesel V-16 and an emerald-green swoosh of
bodywork. It went 272 mph in 2003 on tires made for a Boeing 747.

"If they'll accept a bunch of crazy truckers from Oregon, they'll accept
you," Travis said. And they did, the grizzled veterans wandering over in
large numbers to inspect the Prius.

At the starting line, I could feel the gentle thump of our push truck, a
Toyota Tundra, hitting the rear bumper bar. Push trucks are a tradition at
Bonneville, used to help the rods and streamliners get rolling on their tall
gear ratios. Toyota had learned in a hasty test session that the batteries
would last long enough to accelerate the Prius from a dead stop all the way
to 128 mph, but that was it. The "short course" at Bonneville for cars doing
less than 175 mph is four miles long, with the third mile being the timed
one. If the Prius accelerated on its own, it would be slowing down at the
timed mile, out of juice.

Pushed by the Tundra to 40 or so mph-the transmission in drive and turning
the MG1 to generate a top-off charge for the batteries-the Prius would
spring from the Tundra's bumper primed with plenty of battery to complete
the course. Plus, the big motor (MG2) would already be turning at its most
efficient speed, about 3400 rpm.

I had already done one pass down the course on 25-inch tires, proving the
system worked and recording a speed of 129.443 mph. There were even bigger
grins all around when the SCTA's Warner informed us that the Prius's best
speed of the week would be published in the 2005 book as a baseline record
for a new hybrid class. That class will likely allow few modifications to
the stock body and powertrain.

That means no hybrid streamliners, at least for now. It's the go-slow
approach, Leininger explains. "The SCTA is an amateur club. It simply
doesn't have the resources to protect someone against a Frankenstein."

Now the Prius had 26-inchers on the front wheels; Leininger wanted a time
slip for over 130. The computers had other ideas. The Prius's
traction-control system has no off switch, and it dials back engine power
when it detects a speed difference between the front and rear tires. Wade
had sized the front-wheel arches for larger tires but left the rear arches
alone since only the drive wheels need to be bigger to get the ratio effect.
The mixed tire sizes, though good for speed, would be perceived by the
computer as a dire safety hazard.

Leininger had-or thought he had-a work-around. By stomping the brake and gas
in a precise sequence, he could tell the computer to disable the
traction-control system. It worked great, except that the computer now
refused to put the car into drive.

"Hell with it, let's reset and see what happens," he said at last. The
Tundra roared, the Prius lurched, the salt went tink-a-tink against the
floorboards, and the tires whisked like two skis in snow. At 40 mph,
Leininger hit the Tundra's horn, and I rolled onto the throttle. The Prius
accelerated quietly but stoutly, running so straight and stable (and
relatively slowly) that there was time to look around.

Speed is impossible to gauge out on Bonneville's vast, featureless
saltscape. The bleached playa is so broad that only the peaks of some
mountains can be seen above the horizon, which bends with Earth's curvature.
Rainstorms drift across the landscape like ghostly jellyfish, sometimes
blowing up towering walls of salt dust before them.

The radio clattered with the timing report. The Prius hit the measured mile
at 130 mph, crested 131 a quarter of the way through, and exited the back
door around 129. The official speed: 130.794 mph. Thunderstorms rolled in
before even larger tires could be tested, but the car went 134.339 with its
seams and lower grille taped up, an illegal modification in a production
class but okay for a car with no class.

The traction control never did come on. Nobody knows why. Damn computers.

Copyright© 2004 Hachette Filipacchi Media, U.S., Inc.