Coffee-fuelled car breaks world record

Coffee: it's not just for helping non-morning people function. It can power a motor vehicle, too.

British engineer and conservationist Martin Bacon, 42, converted a Ford pickup truck into the world's fastest coffee-powered vehicle: the Coffee Car Mark 2.

In the presence of a Guinness World Records adjudicator, the vehicle reaches a top speed of 105.451 km/h last month, earning itself a place in the record books.

"We're thrilled to have taken the speed record for the fastest car of this kind," Bacon said after his record-breaking attempt. "This Coffee Car has been years in the making, although any car can run on gasification. In fact, during the Second World War, there were over 100,000 vehicles in the UK that ran on gasification, including cars, buses and delivery vehicles. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were over 900,000 vehicles running on gasifiers across the world."

A charcoal stove on the car breaks down coffee-bean chaff, a roasting process by-product, into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. That gas is cooled and filtered, with the hydrogen than powering the regular gasoline engine.

"Starting the car is more of an art than simply turning an ignition key," Guinness reports. "Martin fires up the boiler using kindling and a fire-lighter and then, having loaded the coffee pellets, has to wait for the gas pressure to build up."

Bacon and his team are taking their coffee-fuelled vehicle on tour across the United Kingdom to promote the British fair-trade brand Co-Operative Food.

Bacon previously converted a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco into Coffee Car Mark 1. In 2010, he drove it from London to Manchester, a 337-km journey that made history as the longest journey by coffee-powered car.