Oak Grove, Missouri - Let's get a few definitions straight here: the world's fastest street-legal quarter-miler is not a road car. Street-legal, in this case, does not mean standard. It doesn't even mean based on standard.
What it does mean, is that that Larry Larson's 6.16-second bakkie has certain parts of a Chevy S10 one-tonner body on it, and a Chevrolet-based aluminium V8 block.
It has a permanently attached steel body with working doors and wind-up windows, not a one-piece carbon-fibre lift-off replica shell - but under that there's a genuine honest-to-Christmas-tree drag racer.
The big deal is that it has also been assembled in such a way - with lights, mirrors, safety glass, bumpers, a hooter, treaded (sort of) tyres and a road-legal 82db exhaust system - that it was able to pass a roadworthy inspection in its native Missouri and be driven for 1600km without requiring outside assistance other than refuelling.
So it is, by definition, street legal, and it is registered for the road. But it's not a street car. Oh no.
What Larson Race Cars has done is to bolt most of a 1998 Chevy S10 pickup body on to an SFI-approved tubular-steel racing chassis; the cab, doors and load bed are original, as is - most important of all - the original windscreen frame, to which is attached the donor S10's VIN certification plate, without which it is almost impossible to register a vehicle in the United States.
Under the remains of an original S10 steel bonnet, there's a 620-cubic inch (10.16-litre) V8, built by Pro Line of Ball Ground, Georgia using a GM-based Brodix aluminium block with its bores spaced 125mm apart, a 'stroker' crankshaft specially cut from a solid block of steel by Sonny Bryant, DME rods, Diamond Custom forged pistons, a Pro Line billet steel camshaft, Brodix cylinder heads, and two 98mm Precision Turbo Gen 2 Pro Mod turbochargers.
It has two complete fuelling systems: on the street it runs ordinary petrol (and Missouri petrol is very ordinary) supplied by two Aeromotive fuel-pumps inside the fuel tank, one feeding a set of 100kg/hour Precision fuel-injectors in the upper row of the Edelbrock inlet manifold and the other a set of 250kg/hour spritzers in the lower row.
On the dragstrip, however, the Doomsday Machine runs pure methanol, supplied from a separate fuel tank by a belt-driven Aeromotive fuel pump.
Its exact specs and power output are a closely-guarded secret, but insiders speak of 'several thousand horsepower' and Pro Line actually advertises a similar engine at 2400kW - yours for only $43 900 (R480 000) ex works - a not-inconceivable number for a methanol-burning 10-litre V8 running heavy boost.
The rest of the drive-train is actually quite ordinary; it has a three-speed auto transmission with a conventional torque convertor, with an external overdrive to lower the revs for highway cruising, a 3.89:1 Strange differential and conventional steel brake discs all round.
What it can do, however, is not a secret - it's a matter of record: on Saturday 13 September it ran the standing quarter at Hot Rod Magazine's Drag Week in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 6.16 seconds, crossing the line at 350.4km/h.
And then Larson drove it home.