Bernie Towns likes to drive fast. And he’s determined to prove that is still possible when his “baby,” a Mercedes SL600, is fueled by compressed natural gas.

Towns is working with a Chicago company to beef up the 12-cylinder engine on what is already a high-performance roadster.

Once it’s ready to handle the power it takes to reach the kinds of speeds Towns wants to achieve, he and his crew will begin converting his car to run on natural gas.

Towns, a software system engineer for Oklahoma City-based HighMount Exploration and Production LLC, said he got interested in natural gas at work.

Many in the oil and gas industry are touting compressed natural gas as a cheaper, cleaner alternative to gasoline, but not everyone is convinced it is a viable vehicle fuel.

“A lot of people say you can’t get the power you want from natural gas,” he said.

Towns, who calls himself “just a geek,” said people often are surprised by his interest in cars, but “cars have always been my life.”

He likes to tinker with cars in his spare time — “I just really can’t leave anything alone,” he said — but his latest project has moved beyond anything he’s ever done before.

“It’s turned into kind of an animal of its own,” the Blanchard resident said.

Towns, 51, has been footing the bill for all of the modifications made to his Mercedes over the past several months, although he admits he hasn’t totaled up how much he has spent in his pursuit of a world record.

He said he is hoping to line up some sponsors to offset some of the costs.

Towns and his team at Speedriven Inc. in Chicago are optimistic their experiment will be a success.

In a recent test at the Texas Mile in Beeville, Texas, Towns managed to reach speeds of about 175 mph.

“The car handled it beautifully,” he said.

Towns said he is convinced the car has enough power to make a run at the world record, set in 2009 in Germany with a CNG-fueled Audi A4 that hit about 225 mph.

Team Towns still has to convert his Mercedes to run on natural gas. They have some of the necessary parts, but will have to engineer their own conversion process.

Towns said he hopes that process will be able to be applied to other sports cars, too.

Towns plans to make his bid to break the speed record in October, after he completes a high-speed driving class. He hopes to be able to make his attempt in Oklahoma.

“The way I look at it Oklahoma really is the CNG capital of the country,” he said. “That’s why I want to do it here.”

No matter where it happens, Towns is eager to take a shot at the record.
“It’s either we break the record or break the car,” he said.

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