Last week, we brought you the badass news that rocket cars (not to be confused with jet cars, which have been around consistently for decades) are beginning to return to drag racing action. While we anxiously await the future of the quickest cars on the planet, we’ve been digging around looking at other cool rocket-powered rides. This video from YouTube user Ron Vigneri – who was a crew member for the team in the video – shows a little different habitat for a rocket-propelled vehicle: a frozen lake! This footage, shot in early 1981, shows Slam’n Sammy Miller attempting to break the world ice speed record in a rocket-powered hybrid land speed racer/snowmobile. The car, dubbed “Oxygen”, is configured basically like a land-based top speed car, but rides atop four skis instead of wheels and tires.

We see Miller make a test pass, reaching “just” 179 MPH after being under power for what seems like only a second. With everything in good working order, Miller straps back in and hits the Lake George, NY ice once again, this time for a full-out blast. Hoping to reach the vaunted 300 MPH mark, Miller blasts across the icy lake, accelerating like few other vehicles on the planet, and certainly like nothing else on ice.

While he doesn’t quite reach the triple-century mark, Slam’n Sammy does set the world ice speed record by reaching a top speed of 247 MPH in just 500 feet. The most astonishing aspect of this feat is that, according to videographer Vigneri, Miller was under power for just 1.6 seconds, covering 500 feet in the time it takes a stout street car to cover 60′ on the drag strip. We here at Dragzine were also happy to learn that a new ice dragster is being constructed as we speak. We don’t have a lot of info at the moment, but look for an article about the modern version in the near future.