Vegetable oil powers vehicle to record

BOISE, Idaho, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- A vehicle built by a student club at Boise State University has claimed the record for the world's fastest vehicle running on vegetable oil, club members said.

The modified S-10 pickup truck by the Greenspeed team made two record-breaking runs, shattering the existing 109 mph record for vegetable oil-fueled vehicles with a run of 139 mph and then posting another record run of 155 mph, a university release reported Monday.

"Nobody has pushed a vegetable oil vehicle like we have," said club leader and founder Dave Schenker, who was behind the wheel for the record runs. "It was an experiment. A very successful experiment."

The records were set at a Southern California Timing Association event on the El Mirage dry lake bed in California's Mojave Desert.

"We are pioneering an entirely new category of motorsports," Schenker said.

"They set a goal that they knew would be hard to achieve and they stayed with it," said John Gardner, a Boise professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering who served as Greenspeed's faculty adviser. "It's really a testament to their perseverance and their engineering skill. I'm really pleased to see them have such success."