Fastest log?

[Mugwump]

The world's fastest motorized log is for sale



A B.C. red cedar on wheels is up for auction after setting the world record as the world's fastest log car.

The Cedar Rocket was built by the team at Pioneer Log Homes of Williams Lake, B.C., whose wood-based creations earned them four seasons as the stars of the television show Timber Kings.

Although he's usually building luxury log homes, company founder Bryan Reid Sr. came up with the idea for the car after attending the Barrett-Jackson luxury car auction in Arizona back in 2014.

"When there's thousands of cars being auctioned off... sooner or later it comes to 'why don't you build a log car,'" he told CBC in a 2015 interview about the project.



It also helped that he was attending the auction with two people equipped to make the idea become a reality: high school friend and mechanic Gerald Overton of Williams Lake, B.C., and a former client, Louis Horschel of Buffalo Turbine in New York.

    'Timber Kings' star makes car out of a single piece of western red cedar

The three got to work combining a single Western red cedar with parts from a Mazda RX-8 sports car and turbines to give it juice. They opted to make the car electric after realizing the complexity of keeping a fuel tank in a wooden vehicle.

By January 2016, their dream was a reality and Reid was driving the Cedar Rocket around a race track in front of Guinness World Records book officials — the first time it had ever been driven.

"It wasn't a pushover," he said. "There was a lot of shaking."

In order to qualify for the record, Guinness World Records officials told Reid he would have to complete the track two times within an hour, achieving a minimum speed of 50 km/h. In the end, Reid hit 76 km/h — despite the car's weight of approximately 1,000 kg.

After that the car hit the tour circuit, appearing at events across North America and in an episode of Timber Kings. Now, though, it is being auctioned off at the place where it all began — lot #3005 in the 2018 Barrett-Jackson collector car auction, with bids being accepted online and in-person.

   All proceeds will be donated to veteran's groups in Canada and the U.S., including the Royal Canadian Legion, and Reid is hoping to receive "six or seven figures," for the vehicle.

"It truly is a thing of beauty," he said. "Mother Nature created it ... we just cleaned it up."

He also warned it isn't likely that a new log car will be constructed by Pioneer Log Homes anytime soon.

"This is number 0001 and I think it will stay at that," he said.