If we could go back in time six or seven decades and tell our hot-rodding forefathers what street cars would be capable of in the future, they’d have us committed to the looney-bin.

But here we are.

Photos by Luke Nieuwhof

It wasn’t until 1972 that a wheel-driven, piston-powered vehicle of any kind ran a 5-second elapsed time; those were lightweight, aerodynamic dragsters of the anything-goes variety on nitromethane. Even at that time, the thought that a full-bodied car could run that quick would have been ludicrous. That a car could do it and drive hundreds of miles under its own power would have been on-par with alien sightings. But in 2019, Michigan native Tom Bailey eclipsed what is likely the final frontier for a street car when he clocked a 5.996-second elapsed time at 250 mph in his “Sick Seconds 2.0” Camaro on Drag Week. The car has actually been 5.77 to the 1/4-mile, in race trim.

Of course, Bailey’s challengers past and present had already been through the sevens and the sixes, which were likewise once unfathomable numbers, but the “five” was the icing on the cake.

Bailey’s Camaro, powered by a 481X-style, 526 cubic-inch big-block built by Steve Morris and known as the “SMX” platform, is boosted by a pair of 94mm turbos and produces a no-doubt-about-it 4,000-plus horsepower….extreme stuff. This car has proven its highway driving manners by covering hundreds (probably thousands) of miles during Drag Week, but Bailey, like any car-guy, likes to fully enjoy the fruits of his labor, so he routinely gets the world’s fastest street car out for cruises, evidenced by this drive he and Morris took into Fort Myers, Florida recently for ice cream while in Bradenton for some testing. As you can see, the car has the race slicks on it and all, and cruises about as well as any other highly-modified, Pro-Street-type car or street rod.

See more of Bailey’s racing exploits on his YouTube channel.