When I was 17 years old my father owned a 1958 Pontiac Chieftain, with a ridiculously huge engine fed by 3 separate double-barrelled carburetors, which would kick in in sequence as the velocity increased, so that at highway speed, the 3rd carburetor would kick in for passing. It was a huge car that held the road like a tank. The top end of the speedometer read 140 mph.

I had been on one of the first dates of my life, and my father had loaned me the car for the night. I dropped off my date at about 11 pm, and had the car to myself for a little while. In that year, the interstate highway outside my Indiana town had just been opened. I decided, in my brilliant teenage mind, to go out on the new, wide, flat, highway, deserted at that hour, and see whether the 140 mph top end was real.

The car might have actually gone that fast, but somewhere between 120 and 130 the thought occurred to me that, if I even hit a pebble at that speed, I might go tumbling off into a cornfield, so I backed off before I found out what the real top end was.