For the Record: 28:50 - A journey toward self-discovery and the Cannonball Run Record

by Ed Bolian

  The Obstacles - Construction, weather, traffic, accidents, and every other roadway risk needed to be dealt with. Any shortcoming here could easily render the aspirational times impossible. These challenges would require an immense time investment in planning.

  The Verification - I needed conclusive proof. This would be easy from the tracking devices I used for the rental company but I would need redundancy. Alex’s crusade against the validity of the Rawlings/Collins time elevated the need for conclusive proof. Without an official governing body or organized event, providing layered proof was a challenge.

  The Reveal - The release needed to be controlled. More press would be better and it needed to read right. It felt like a story which could so easily get crucifyingly negative. I needed to make sure we painted it in a light that was paying tribute to this compelling chapter of car history rather than in the same protesting-the-system spirit that had originally spawned the formation of the event.

  The mental challenge of formulating a strategy to break the record was a hugely interesting. We had seen how Richard and Alex did it, an invaluable resource unimaginable just a few short months prior. We had a few ideas of our own to throw in as well.

  While I was a student at Georgia Tech, I was told there was someone I needed to meet. Forrest Sibley was an electrical engineering major with a passion for police countermeasures. Everything about Forrest fit the eccentricity of this project. He loved distance cycling, had a sweet blonde ponytail, wore Hawaiian shirts and spandex at the same time, and had a fantastic laugh. An eccentric social awkwardness exists within all of us in this realm but his was a brand of its own. He fit in great.

  His passion project was not breaking a New York to Los Angeles driving record but it was very complimentary to it. He wanted to build a fully effective civilian radar jammer. He called it the Bacon Blocker and at that point it was pretty much just a well formed theory in his own head. In my limited understanding of electronics it sounded like it might actually work.

  He owned several laser guns for testing and had pretty much every existing anti-police gadget installed in his battle scarred Acura RSX. He had some other seriously interesting ideas that applied to my pursuit such as anti-laser paint, strategic police scanner programming, and a MiRT which is an LED traffic light changer as used in ambulances around the country. He offered some great [expensive] additions to my eventual shopping list.

  Of course, life was not done getting in the way.

  Megan and I got engaged in 2007. She was in her first year of teaching and I was nearing graduation. We intended to get married after I got out of Tech, at which point she hoped to move closer to the Atlanta area but at the time she was still teaching near the University of Georgia, from which she had recently graduated. I would frequently go up to read to her class, dress up as Johnny Appleseed, or borrow a friend’s pet Alligator and go play Crocodile Hunter (due to some very effective crisis management on the part of the Discovery Channel, none of the kids knew he was dead).

  Engagement was the most miserable time of my life. You have all of the stresses and anxieties of being permanently together without the benefits - operatively in our case were the convenience of living together and the satisfaction of sex. We had both chosen to remain sexually abstinent until marriage and while it certainly strengthened our relationship both then and now, it was a profound challenge at the time.

  In 2008 a few things happened to bring the Cannonball goal closer to reality. One of my good friends and customers crashed my Ferrari 612. He was actually using the car for a cross country car rally and the accident happened in Texas. In Georgia and most other states after an insurance provider pays to repair your vehicle, they are still required to compensate you for the diminished value of the car. I was the recipient of the highest diminished value settlement ever in the state of Georgia at nearly $50,000. It was a great cash infusion into Supercar Rentals, allowed me to pay off Megan’s engagement ring, and left a little bit for something discretionary.

  Megan’s parents were definitely not wild about the idea of her marrying an entrepreneur with a mountain of debt collateralized on depreciating assets and a cash poor business that was barely stable on a month to month basis. Despite the pressure - she held steadfast and kept believing in me. Even then though, life was not without its occasional pokes by Megan to explore something new and safer.

  Graduating from college was one of those rare sensations that completely lived up to my expectations of it. The balancing act between Megan, business, and school had been so intense it felt like finally finding an exit from an intense night club. The ears were still ringing and it took time for the nervous sensitivity to subside but the cool, dark air just washes over your body and cleanses the anxiety from every fiber of your sensational being. It felt exactly as good as I had ever dreamt it would.

  I moved out of the six bedroom/six bathroom/dual kitchen house I had lived in with my roommates and intramural teammates for the past two years. I found a quiet warehouse a bit north of the city, previously an ambulance depot. It had all of the appropriate fire suppression walls to legally store cars inside. It was off the beaten path enough to keep the cars safe. My business model primarily involved delivering the cars to customers so it was simply a great place to store the cars and as it turned out - me.

  The warehouse was built out with a bunch of offices. It was only a utility sink converted into a shower away from the perfect bachelor pad. I dealt with this issue employing my caveman level of carpentry proficiency. Of course, subsequently I found out the warehouse only had a five gallon water heater so I could take a warm shower at about a thirty percent flow for 45-60 seconds at a time. Megan did not visit often.

  I made one of the offices into a bedroom, another into a kitchen (room with a microwave, hot plate and a fridge), and another into a closet. That left a lovely space for an office, client seating area, and then an open space to store the cars. It was perfection. You have never slept until you did so in the only room of a warehouse where the heat is fully functional that happens to be forty feet from any room with an exterior window.

  Ferris Bueler advised us all to purchase a Ferrari 250 GT LWB California if we had the means. Great advice. If you happen to not have the means to afford traditional housing, I strongly recommended warehouse living. It was everything I wanted it to be. I lived there for thirteen months between graduating college and getting married. I regularly ask Megan if we can move back. It is vacant.

  It had always seemed to me that such an interesting automotive feat could serve as a great marketing ploy or publicity stunt for a manufacturer. It certainly existed on the fringe of social acceptability but I wanted to bank on the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity. A company like Mercedes or BMW was likely too big to take this kind of risk but some of the fringe exotic or luxury brands seemed like good candidates for a proposal.

  After the Bentley/Rolls Royce split, BMW bought Rolls in 1998. The reputation of Bentleys as cars that you drive and Rolls Royces being the cars that you should be driven in was starting to blur. Volkswagen took Bentley into a much more mainstream market position with the introduction of the Continental GT. It was very similar to Audi’s influence on Lamborghini with their part in the conception of the Gallardo. Rolls Royce was a bit slower to the corporate growth strategy.

  They phased out the Silver Seraph and created the new Phantom for 2004 much to the delight of every hip-hop artist ever. In 2008 they brought out the two door Phantom Drophead and then in 2009 they were going to release a fixed roof version. Rolls Royce billed the car as the best way to travel long distances. They said it was a true alternative to private jet travel. This was an interesting claim. Surely they needed someone to test that.

  I sent a letter in 2008 to the North American marketing representatives of Rolls Royce with a proposal. Send me one of your cars and I will use it to break the Cannonball New York to Los Angeles record. Surely there could be no better testament to the distance capability of t
he car than the most legendary point to point record ever.

  I received no response. Good - now I had someone else to prove myself to.

  The rental company was floating along with the occasional bob but I was periodically able to add something new to the fleet. Of course, such additions usually detracted from cross country car buying resources. One day I got a call from the local Ferrari dealer’s service department. Given the dubious reliability of Italian cars and the stresses of rental driving I was quite the consumer of their wares. It was the end of the month and they needed to close out a $9,000 ticket on an Argento Nurburgring (silver) 360 Modena. It had around 21,000 miles and although they already had it torn apart the customer had said he could not afford to pay to finish the job.

  It turned out that he had been given the car as a gift when he signed to a hip hop label. He had never driven the car much and it had sat in his parents’ garage until one day they decided to see if it would still run. Trying to jump start the car, they put the cables on backwards and fried the entire electrical system. The car needed engine computers along with brake pads/rotors/calipers (due to the fluid solidifying), a big service, and some minor cosmetics. It was certainly not the caliber of car they wanted for their used car inventory so they went flipping through their rolodex looking for someone that would put a hard number on a non-driving Ferrari with a laundry list of needs. Fortunately, they had just the right non-discerning customer with an appetite for a cheater car - me!

  Mark, their service advisor, called me and asked if I wanted it. “Sure,” I said assuming it would be cheap but still having no idea how I might pay for it. They just wanted their service bill paid and they had the owner’s permission to share his contact info with me if I was interested. I got the owner’s phone number and gave him a call.

  The car was worth about $75k at the time if it were perfect. It was not a particularly interesting example of a 360 and the owner was out of options. There were also no competing bidders because the dealership was not wild about being stuck with an unpaid service bill. After they found me they stopped looking.

  I offered him $30,000 for it. He was a shrewd negotiator so he ended up making me pay $31,000. I settled up the bill at Ferrari and ended up owning the car for $40k. Well, I should say Megan owned the car for $40k. While the income earning and money retaining tides have shifted since we got married, Megan came into our relationship with about $50k in an investment account from living inexpensively, getting lots of scholarships, and working hard in the summers. I don’t think the rainy day fund was intended to be either a dowry or the means to be a cash purchaser of a Ferrari as a 23 year old schoolteacher but she was now precisely that.

  We bought it, rented it a couple times, drove it a bit, and sold it for $60k. That was a big help in engendering her belief in the great things that can come from owning exotic cars. It was a quick, easy, handsome profit.

  Life was moving fast. When I had gone off to Georgia Tech and started the rental business and then met Megan, Kevin Messer and I were not nearly as close as we had been growing up. He was involved in a muscle car restoration and brokerage business and doing well. We spoke once or twice a year and our paths intersected occasionally. The conversations always involved a status report revealing my lack of progress toward the record.

  Early in 2009 I got a call from my father. Kevin had been out drinking one night and accepted a ride home from a friend who had also had a few too many. On their way home, a police officer saw them and attempted to pull them over. The driver decided to try to evade the cop and in doing so ran off of the road and into a field. Kevin was impaled by a fence post and killed instantly as a passenger. The driver was fine.

  The death of my childhood best friend hit me really hard. He was the person that had been there at the genesis of the idea of Cannonball and I had always assumed that no matter how distant things had become it would eventually be something that we finished together. It always seemed like the the odds had been if either of us were ever to die in a car, the other would be riding shotgun. It reignited the fire in me to pursue the Cannonball even more aggressively. With some money left from the 612 diminished value settlement and some of the proceeds from the ex-rapper 360 sale, it was time to go car shopping.

  I found a white 2003 Mercedes Benz S55 AMG on Craigslist for $25k. It had 90,000 miles, a lot of cosmetic needs, a minor accident on CARFAX, and was the cheapest one in the world...ever. In my discussions with Chris and Kevin of what car would be best for breaking the record, the AMG Mercedes cars kept rising to the top of the list. It turned out Carmax had offered him $16,000 for the car. We settled on $16,001. It was utter perfection.

  I drove it for about 90 days until someone made an illegal left turn into my lane, hitting me head on when I was on the way to a couples’ wedding shower. I remember the accident vividly. I saw his decision making process and the inescapable trajectory toward my front right bumper. There was a clear feeling I was about to find out what it felt like to be hit by an airbag. Fortunately, they did not deploy but the rest of the safety systems did. The seat repositioned, the belt tensioners fired, radio went off, and the hazards turned on. It decimated that silver Honda Accord but fortunately both of us were fine.

  It was a borderline total loss but I called in a favor at my local body shop, another local business where I had frequent flyer privileges. I told the owner I would rather not see the car again. They wound up totaling the car and that gave me a renewed invitation to go car shopping, my favorite pastime.

  The best person to ever sell a car to you is someone else’s insurance provider. With the ink of my signature barely dry on the title, they got me a check from the insurance company for $27,500 for a quick 72% profit. I used that to buy a much nicer gray 2003 S55. The dream remained alive.

  The week before our wedding, in June of 2009, I rented two of my cars to a repeat client. He was previously an Atlanta Police Officer. He rented the Bordeaux Pontiveccio Ferrari 612 Scaglietti and the Giallo Midas Lamborghini Gallardo. That Wednesday night I was at my bachelor party racing go-karts and I got a call from an unknown number. The woman on the other end of the line had some interesting things to say.

  “My husband is the guy that bought your Ferrari today and gave you our BMW and the $15,000 in cash as a down payment. He made a mistake and we want to undo the transaction.” I am Jack’s unexpected gut punch.

  There were so many things wrong with that statement. I could see the next few days of what was already the busiest week of my life starting to crumble into chaos. The rental customer had decided that he was going to sell the car, which I came to find out was called Auto Theft by Conversion. He took a BMW 750 and some cash as a down payment and agreed to let the buyer pay over time. Of course my customer was now failing to answer his cell phone.

  The tracking device on the Gallardo said it was in midtown Atlanta. I found it in a body shop with the front smashed off of it. That granted me a half sigh of relief. I got it towed to my preferred body shop and filed a claim with the renter’s insurance company. Fortunately his participation was not required. The Ferrari was another story.

  Without a way to get the BMW and their money back the “buyer’s” self proclaimed lawyer wife was not willing to give my Ferrari back. Obviously I told them I was reporting the car stolen but their response was to hide it rather than give it back. Clearly the caliber of person who buys a Ferrari without any paperwork or documentation is on a slightly different level of reality. They made many questionable decisions in other areas of their lives as well.

  I finally got in touch with the rental customer on Friday. He did not have the guy’s name, address, phone number, or anything other than the fact that he went by Lucky. He had no good reason for selling the car but seemed to have convinced himself I might be happy about it. There was a general derangement about him not entirely inconsistent with the rest of my customer base at the time.

  When you know who stole your car, the police don’t try very hard to find it
. Since the theft officially occurred in one county and the car was in another county, the normal BOLO/All Points Bulletin reclamation strategy did not happen. I would get reports of the car showing up in restaurant valets, mall parking lots, etc. but it kept moving. Beyond the whack a mole location effort, my satellite tracking device was malfunctioning within the typically unreliable electronic system of the Ferrari so that was no help. Fortunately, GPS/Cellular technology, particularly in capacitance, has been quickly improving since then.

  I was on the phone with friends who were out looking for the car, police, my lawyer, the rental customer, valets around town, and everyone else I could think of throughout the evening of our rehearsal dinner and the day of our wedding. We couldn’t make any progress. Predictably this was not a great way to impress my new wife and her family. Fortunately, we were able to get a few wedding photos without a Blackberry sticking out of my ear.

  It is worth noting here that exotic car rental insurance is one of the hardest to find products in the insurance marketplace and it is laughably difficult to keep. Not only is there a clear understanding that if you ever file a claim against the policy you will not be able to renew, but also if they find out you experienced a loss that you end up paying out of pocket they still may drop you. Reporting the car stolen through the company insurance policy would have gotten me paid but put me out of business just a few months later.

  We left the next morning on our honeymoon to Jade Mountain Resort in St Lucia. The car was still missing and progress was at a stalemate. I left it in my lawyer’s hands and told him that I would be back in a week. It is difficult to enunciate in written form the level of anxiety I had to suppress to enjoy my honeymoon with my new wife but I managed to. We had a great time and despite the odds my blood pressure stayed where it needed to be.