Hayden Proffitt II always wanted to go fast, just like his grandfather, a four-time national champion in the NHRA. But it was his uncle’s vehicle, a rocket-powered dragster named the USA Rocket 1 that ran on hydrogen peroxide that fascinated him. The Rocket 1 set a quarter-mile record in 1978: 4.355 seconds at 349.77 mph.
“But I joined the military, and that detoured my plans for nine years,” Proffitt says. Fortunately, one of the jobs he held in the military was working on jet planes.
So when he mustered out, he began thinking: If one Pratt & Whitney 34-48 jet engine, once used in Navy fighters, was a good idea, two would be better. Hence the Hot Streak II jet truck, operating out of Proffitt’s shop in Central Texas. It is, he says, as amazing to drive as to watch: During his training in jet vehicles, provided by the legendary Les Shockley of the Shock Wave jet dragster, Profitt said that on his first full-power run he almost passed out at the 1,000-foot mark. Scared? No. “I had forgotten to breathe,” Proffitt recalls.
In an exhibition Saturday at San Antonio Raceway for the IHRA Texas Nationals, Proffitt made three runs — one at 81 percent power, one at 100 percent, and the last one at over 100 percent, he says.
That last run, made at night, ended with the Hot Streak II getting to the end of the quarter-mile at about 220 mph. If you were standing behind it, your clothes were so drenched with kerosene that you’d be afraid to light a cigarette.
Proffitt says his truck has run 400 mph on a closed mile, and we believe it. For a 5,500-pound 1957 Chevy pickup, that’s impressive.