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

by Ed Bolian

  As someone who has been a traveling consultant for an entire career, I didn’t have any local Atlanta friends. My entire social network was in San Francisco, South East Asia, and Europe, and none of my friends were “car guys.” I found myself looking for group car events and stumbled upon Caffeine and Octane. I awkwardly attended my first one, then a second one. During one of them, I remember seeing a Lambo, and couple of Aston Martins pull in. It was Ed, his wife Megan, and some others. They seemed like an intimidating bunch - young, attractive, and driving cars that cost twice as much as mine, but the C&O show was a comfortable place where I could chat with other car people and not feel like the only fool who parts with a good portion of his wealth on a car. The next C&O, I connected with a guy from Maseratilife (an online Maserati Forum) - Scott Shetler who brought his Verde Ithaca Gallardo. While talking with him, Ed approached and we were introduced. The intimidating aura was gone.

  Ed invited me to go on a mountain drive and a few months later invited me to a supercar owners’ dinner. These were a blast and over this time, I got to know Ed better. One of the first times I met with him at the dealership, he said “you know...a GT car like a Maserati is a ‘gateway car.’ You’ll either go with more luxury like a Bentley, or more performance like a Lambo.”

  “I see what you’re doing there...you’re trying to plant a seed in my head,” I said. “But I’m cool with this car...if I sell, it will be to the end of my foray into cars altogether.” But over time, I appreciated that Ed had a deep understanding of the relationship between a person’s psychology and the qualities of a car - it’s brand / design language, sound, and other visceral qualities. Ed proved himself to be the only car dealer I’ve ever met who could sustain a conversation at this level.

  A few months later, I was looking at used Maseratis online and saw that my car was catastrophically depreciating. A friend of mine suggested that I get a Lambo, and even had a line on one that would be a decent value. It was the first time I seriously thought about owning one - it would be another famous Italian marque...a checkbox. I didn’t love the idea of such an impractical car, but as a means of staying in the car hobby a little longer, it made sense. I started getting into serious discussions with Ed about a buying a Lambo - looking for one that would cost about the same as my Maserati. That meant a Gallardo five years older with twice the miles. I still didn’t think I would actually buy one...yes, it would be cool, but no, I shouldn’t. Ultimately, I thought I had a “kill switch” to prevent me from actually buying one - my ridiculously steep driveway.

  I told Ed this, who quickly replied, “Let’s try it.” So we did, and at the right angle, we were able to climb the driveway without scraping the front. To see a Lamborghini in my driveway sealed the deal - I was going to buy one. The next few days were exhausting, I couldn’t sleep. I finally decided to go to the dealership and buy the car we had test driven - it was close to the price of the Maserati and would make sense financially.

  When I arrived at the dealership, Ed did the “let me show you something else” trick (which I now appreciate). He took me to their back lot, showed me a different one - a black 2011 Superleggera that was still under warranty. It was a press car that had been slightly abused, but the price was such that I could own it without losing money - it just required a significantly higher payment.

  Sure, why the hell not? Within the first few days of ownership, I was looking at some photos I had taken of this black beast. It hit me - the wing, the black, the big air intakes - it was the modern day equivalent of the black Countach in Cannonball Run. Realizing this ignited the thirteen year old in me. It’s probably why I enjoyed showing it, and giving rides to teenage car enthusiasts - I was reliving my teenage years through their enthusiasm.

  My company laid off my team the next month. Unemployed, I found myself attempting another startup. My daily ritual to clear my head, was to go to QuickTrip for a soda. The QuickTrip is across the street from the Lamborghini dealership. Frequently, I’d stop in to look at the new arrivals by driving around the parking lot, and frequently, I’d go inside and say hi to Ed and everyone. Without a job, they bore the brunt of my need to get a daily fix of human interaction.

  Ed also organized a trip to Palm Beach, Florida for the Lamborghini Esperienza track training event. I drove my SUV while Ed and others followed along in Lambos and various supercars. I would have driven mine, but I was too tall and got frequent back pains while driving short distances. I averaged between 85 and 95 mph, and would drive ahead a few miles, spot for police, then call back to the group to proceed. Within a minute, they’d be blowing past me, slowing down, letting me pass to do it again. On one particularly empty stretch of the turnpike headed south I opened up a few miles of space and Ed started closing the gap quickly in his orange Murcielago LP640 Roadster. He blew past me so fast I was not sure his tires were still on the ground. I called on the two way radio to see how fast he had gotten and he said to me “194.” I made him repeat that a few times.

  The Lamborghini training event was a lot of fun and gave me a lot of confidence at higher speeds, even when the brakes were fading the tires were so soft that they felt like sponges.

  April 27th, I received the DVD “32 Hours 7 Minutes” - a documentary about the transcontinental races and speed records. It ignited something in me - the desire to escape with an epic road trip...check, the desire to speed...check, the desire to thumb my nose at laws clearly designed for the lowest common denominator...check, and using technology and innovation to do it? CHECK! i.e., it resonated strongly with me. But seeing Alex Roy break the record, all his expense and preparation made me shy away from the idea of wanting to do the NY to LA Cannonball. This was clearly not something that could be casually approached. Instead, I started plotting out a longer route from Seattle to Key West - the corner-to-corner run - much longer than the Cannonball, and something that could be established as a new record.

  During one of my visits to the dealership, I shared this rally idea with Ed. He mentioned that it’s a terrible idea in this legal climate to promote a race. Untimed rallies are ok, but when a timer got involved, the organizer could find himself catastrophically broke or in jail. I was disappointed, but it also explained why Cannonball races don’t happen anymore. Given the spirited drives I had joined Ed on in the prior months, I believed that if there were a way to organize a large scale Cannonball race today, he would have figured it out.

  At this point, he motioned that we should walk into the other showroom away from the other employees. He put on his serious-face and lowered his voice. Having experienced this before, I knew this was going to be good. “Can you keep a secret?” He asked. Wow, it’s going to be real good.

  “Totally,” I replied. “Working for Apple for twelve years requires it.”

  “Ok, you can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Ok,” I replied...this *is* serious. I was starting to think that he was going to tell me some juicy gossip about someone I knew, or offer a business proposition, or tell me he was going to start his own dealership - something big.

  “I’m going to break the Cannonball Run record,” he said solemnly. I nearly choked with laughter on the water I was drinking.

  “Bullshit,” I replied.

  “Nope...I’m serious...I’ve got a car at CarTunes getting equipped with everything...I’m going to do this in the next couple months.”

  “Ok,” I thought...I started to believe him and it started sinking in. Then, possessed with the ghost of the teenage version of myself, I rapidly replied “DO YOU HAVE A CO-DRIVER?!!!!!” It was a bullet-time moment where I imagined that the entire “hush-hush secrecy” was a prelude to him asking me to be his co-driver.

  I was envisioning the next moment where he would say “that’s what I’m talking to you about”, but instead it was “Yeah, I have this guy in Ohio...”

  I couldn’t hear anything else after that point. I was so bummed...all these boner-inducing theatrics leading to a total letdo
wn. Despite my disappointment, I replied “Hey, I totally want to be a part of this somehow...let me know if I can help.” Ed explained that he might need some help getting out of New York. “I’d totally help you with that...just let me know and I’ll fly up, rent a car and tear it up on the turnpike” - this probably came from watching Smokey and the Bandit dozens of times.

  I went home and swore Lisa to secrecy before telling her the news. She had known me when we were teenagers so she understood the significance of this to me. Unlike my experience just a couple of hours prior, when she thought that the next element of the story might be me telling her that I was co-driving with Ed, she was relieved rather than devastated as I was.

  Months passed. I saw the equipped car at the dealership one day and again, I was struggling with my jealousy over being part of the attempt. But I just kept quiet...waiting for the call to fly up to NY to help. The only problem was that I had been unemployed all these months, and the idea of flights, tickets, and increased insurance premiums were starting to look like real money. I wasn’t so sure I would be in a position to help.

  Chapter 11

  Assembling the Bomb

  There are not many jobs where the pursuance of this record would not pose a serious problem and threaten the future of your employment. If I were an elementary school teacher like my wife, a politician, or a cop; this recreational activity would be frowned upon. Fortunately in the car business, it works. My boss and the owner of our dealership were unsure of whether or not they would still be able to have me on our insurance policy afterward but they did not bother to share that concern with me. They thought it was great idea and Brandon, our general manager, actually agreed to have the store contribute $5,000 to the project. It was an unbelievable help at a moment when I was not sure where the final cash infusions were going to come from.

  I was pot committed at this point. I was beyond the point of counting receipts and maintaining a consciousness of what this effort was costing me. If I needed it and had the money it was on its way. In addition to the financial support, the dealership had given me permission to proposition our twenty-year tenured master Lambo tech into devising a fuel system for the car as a side job.

  Charles gave me a shopping list for the JEGS catalog and I ordered two additional 22 gallon fuel cells with pumps and tubing. Charles devised a transfer pump strategy to take the fuel through the factory gas cap into the existing filler neck. The smaller cell in Alex’s car was gravity fed because BMW puts their fuel tanks under the floor of the trunk on a 5 Series. Mercedes puts the tank upright, between the rear seats and the trunk. I liked this because it meant that the factory heat shielding was between me and the extra forty-four gallons of fuel.

  Charles’s strategy kept the check engine light on for an evaporative system leak but it was elegant in its simplicity. He spoke at length to Michael Luongo who was the Ferrari technician that Rawlings and Collins had used to install their fuel cell in the 550. It worked very similarly to ours but was smaller in capacity. In my experience techs love talking about working on cars more than actually working on cars. This was the type of project that you got some miles out of talking about.

  REMARKS

  From Charles Carden, Master Lamborghini Technician

  There is only one Lamborghini technician still at a dealer in the US that has a longer tenure with the brand than I do. In the twenty years that I have been with Lamborghini Atlanta, the only person who has come along with as strong an affinity for the brand as I have is Ed Bolian.

  Ed was hired as a sales guy a few years ago but we knew Ed well through servicing the cars for his rental company. We watched as his early Gallardo hit a deer at the beginning of rut one year, spun a connecting rod bearing and sent pistons through both sides of the block due to oil starvation, and required a few paint repairs ranging from a wheel scuff to colliding with a Ferrari.

  When Ed came on, he really shook things up. Our new car sales exploded and our customers became a lot more active. That helps me because we started to see a lot more customers actually servicing their cars. When life gets in the way, neglecting the care of your supercar is quick to happen. Ed seemed like the kind of guy that could sell ice to an eskimo and then somehow get that eskimo to come back in six months and trade for some nicer ice. He was pushing cars out faster than we had since the heyday of the exotic car industry in 2007. Ed also built quite a brand for himself. People came from all over the country and internet to buy cars from him.

  He was never shy about accumulating miles on the cars. He is the only sales guy I have ever seen care anything about owning the cars himself. Even after he was finished with the rental business, Ed would always wander back to my corner of the shop and ask for my advice on cars to buy, issues to look out for, and my thoughts on the significance of each model. We both grew concerned about the futures of some of the technologies that were being added to our favorite supercars. Those conversations would also occasionally drift something else entertaining - Cannonball.

  I am old enough to be Ed’s father so I remember the tales of outlaws racing across the country, no holds barred, sea to shining sea. I stay close to the racing community and live a couple of miles from Road Atlanta, a circuit used annually but many top racing organizations. My son, Casey, is the head instructor at Skip Barber Racing School. They are the tenant that replaced the Audi/Panoz Racing School Ed told me he had worked at years ago. My weekends are always spent re-building Vespas or race cars with my son. Watching him grown up from Karts to top level racing seats has been one of my proudest achievements. Early in 2013 Ed approached me to start making progress towards his own competitive driving goal.

  Ed told me about his plans to break the Cannonball Run record around 2010. It was clearly something that he had been working on and thinking about for years. Having watched many racing efforts take years to develop, this was not new but the context was definitely peculiar. I had seen Richard Rawlings on Fast & Loud bragging about his forearm tattoo and talking about his 31:59 time but I asked Ed how many people were actually trying to do this. He told me about Alex Roy and some of the other history that existed in the gap since 1979. It was fascinating stuff, particularly when it came to outfitting the car.

  In 2012 Ed showed me the blue-ish CL55 after he had bought it and he ran down the list of gadgets that he had ready to be installed. It was clear that he had put a lot of thought into this idea but there was something different about Ed. Normally the guy exudes confidence like 9 bar brewed espresso but I could sense the nervousness in his voice. The stakes were different than his normal half a million dollar car transactions. This mattered. He asked for my help in rigging up the auxiliary fuel system. We talked about the range that he was looking for and how the packaging needed to work.

  Ed told me that he never cared if the car could be put back to stock but I could not help but think that even our super-human-salesman might be over his head with this one. it seemed like a shame to build something onto this Mercedes that could not eventually be taken out. That was also likely unnecessary because there was clearly not going to be any easy to way to gravity feed the cell into the main tank due to the elevation of the factory tank within the car. If there was ever anything Ed lacked, it was certainly not confidence but the parent in me never stops trying to be the responsible advisor.

  One Saturday I took the Mercedes up to our shop, opened a case of beer and just stared at the open trunk, lining removed. I remembered reading about the guys who had engineered a system of 55 gallon drums within the hull of an airplane and used surgical tubing to feed the fuel into the wing tanks as they flew all the way around the globe. I called Mike Luongo who I knew from Lambo training in years past. He had moved over to Ferrari and then started an independent shop. My thought had been some low pressure transfer pumps coming out of each cell and T-ing into a line running through the gas cap. He confirmed that their approach was similar. I gave Ed a shopping list and a JEGS catalog.

  I fashioned a bracket to b
ridge across the spare tire well under the factory trunk floor that would support the weight of the tank. I mounted the cells, plumbed in the lines, got power to the pumps, rigged up some gauges for the tanks and mounted them on the dash, and created a 180 degree turn that would keep the factory gas cap cover in place. It was removable during the refueling process so that Ed could use two pumps at the same time to fill the three tanks. Ed bought a spare factory gas cap and I cut into the old one.

  The guys from CarTunes, our local stereo and aftermarket electronics gurus, had wired a switch for the transfer pumps into a custom panel where the car’s ashtray used to be. It had controls for some of the radar and laser systems, a kill switch to the relays sequenced into all of the wiring for the rear lights, and a traffic light changer that one of Ed’s Georgia Tech friends had rigged up for them. The gauges were not very accurate but bench testing revealed that it was moving about a gallon every ninety seconds. When Ed and I tested the transfer, the latency of both the auxiliary gauges and the stock gauge was significant so I told him to transfer four times for fifteen minutes to drain the tanks. Each transfer session should have moved about ten gallons of the forty-four that he would have. It was a simple enough system.

  At least that is what I thought until I got a call from Ed on his way to New York telling me that they had just sprayed gas all over a silver Impala that was following them on the highway...

  Chapter 12

  The Nine Thousand Dollar Tune Up

  It took CarTunes about three weeks to install everything in the CL. The build had more devices drawing more power from more locations than they had ever put in a car. It came with a discounted labor rate and a solemn disclaimer that if this skunkworks project went sideways it was still my inoperable dune buggy and they were indemnified. I was not exactly reassured by that caveat but I knew Monty was their best installer and he was on the job.