Bob Conge aka Plaseebo kindly shares with us his custom Playsam for Super7’s upcoming Playsam 500 charity show (find out more here), the 1919 Skullwagon Land Speed Record Car! Featuring a beautifully sculpted skull cockpit and tail, the suitably ‘creeped-out’ speedster even comes replete with 2 very scared looking passengers! Easily one of our favourite Playsam customs so far, the Skullwagon will be taking it’s place alongside another 58 entries at Super7’s San Francisco location come April 28th. Head over to the Playsam 500 Facebook page for more details…
“The 1919 Skullwagon was designed and piloted by Claude Faytte Bragdon, the american architect based in Rochester, New York. The car was sponsored by the Fox Sisters, a clairvoyant duo from the same city, who dabbled in the paranormal and spiritualist beliefs.
The Skullwagon was powered by a 500 hp psychic energy turbine, the first and only of its kind. At 1:30 PM on November 23rd 1919 the Fox sisters had arranged
for 8,697 of their followers to tune in and direct their psychic energy to the specific coordinates of latitude and longitude of the location of the Skullwagon on the starting line of the Salt Flats Racetrack Playa in Death Vally California. At 1:31 PM the cars aluminum skin began to shimmer, emitting a pulsating blue light and at 1:36 the Skullwagon broke inertia, silently inching forward. Continually gaining speed at an ever increasing rate with only the sound of its wheels turning through the white dust and the air whistling along its sleek body, the Skullwagon appeared more akin to a sailing ship than car. At 1:43 she reached a top speed of 167 miles per hour shattering the previous land speed record. A title the Skullwagon would hold for the next 28 years.
Some years later, long after the memory of the Skullwagon had faded from racing history, the first siteing of the “sailing stones” appeared and continues to this day. The “Sailing Stones” which leave linear “racetrack” imprints are a geological phenomenon found in the playa. The stones, some weighing over 100 pounds, slowly move across the surface, leaving a track as they go, without human or animal intervention. They have never been seen or filmed in motion. The stones only move once every two or three years and most tracks last for three or four years.
Some believe the stones are being moved by the residue of psychic energy from that long ago run of the Skullwagon.”
shingangu.com 