Hulk would be jealous
If you take the time to explore all the layers of the discipline called motorsport, you'll see that the madness they call truck racing understandably enjoys a big chunk of popularity.
With record-breaking trucks, well, it's a different story, one that Volvo tells better than anyone else.
The brand's trucks division has a record breaking background started in 2007 by the 1,600-horsepower Wild Viking truck and carried on four years later by the Mean Green hybrid truck. 'Mean' as in 1,800 hp coming from a diesel engine and 300 hp pumped by an electric motor. So let's agree this particular word is only a soft way of describing it.
Following the timeline takes us to present day, when Volvo Trucks upped its game with the Iron Knight. Before getting into record-breaking matters, a few words on the truck's performance credentials.
Power peaks at 2,400 hp, but it's the alien 6,000 Nm of torque that enables this Usain Bolt-Hulk hybrid to shift its 4.5 tons from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in just 4.6 seconds.
In charge of abusing the tires with all that power is an I-Shift dual-clutch transmission but other improvements have been applied to the truck. For example, they tried to mend the brick shape with an aero-optimized fiberglass cabin and larger air intakes that breathe more air into the mid-mounted diesel engine.
Now, for the record-breaking bit. The truck managed to beat the world speed record for 1000 meters from a standing start with an average speed of 169 km/h and a time of 21.29 seconds, but also knocked down the corresponding record for the 500-meter stretch, at 131.29 km/h and 13.71 seconds.
During the two runs, the Iron Knight was clocked in at a top speed of 276 km/h. Talking about oversized speed demons.