GRX (1967)

The GRX (known as the E-RX in the original Japanese manga) is featured throughout the Speed Racer franchise, most prominently in the original 1967 animated series and the 2008 live-action film directed by the Wachowski brothers.

Speed Racer (1967)
The GRX appears in the two-part episode "The Fastest Car on Earth". It is an extremely powerful and infamously dangerous racing engine created by automotive genius Ben Cranem. Ten years prior to the events of the series, it took the lives of five test drivers, as well as Cranem himself. Five years after the crash that killed Cranem, the engine was buried with the body of its creator at the Spook Cemetary. In Part 1 of the episode, the GRX was stolen from Cranem's grave by Oriana Flub and her subordinates, who intend to use it to win the Oriental Grand Prix. The engine is installed in a sleek, golden car, which Flub entered in the race.

She also develops a special drug known as V-Gas, which allows the user to endure the immense and dangerous speeds that the engine propels the car at. However, V-Gas has two nasty side effects; The first is that it makes the driver extremely thirsty to the point of desperation, but the second is much worse; If a driver under the influence of the drug were to drink water, there would be a chemical reaction where its effects would be negated, also negatively affecting his mentality and inducing tachophobia (fear of speed).

Pops Racer is familiar with the GRX, and had even recognized the distinct sound that the engine made when the car was first taken for a test drive at the track. Seeing the threat posed by the engine, he intended to destroy it as he should have done when it was first built. He had even tried to convince Oriana Flub to hand it over to him to no avail.

After getting into a fight with Curly Cranem, the son of Ben Cranem, Speed gives in to temptation as he gets into the driver's seat, start the car up and drive off from Oriana Flub's lair, with her minions in pursuit. However, as Speed went faster, the engine took its toll on him and he loses consciousness. Thankfully, Pops, Spritle and Chim-Chim were able to rescue Speed. After a driver named Louis Towcar died crashing the GRX when he drank water out of desperation from his exposure to V-Gas, Speed was offered a chance to drive the GRX a second time by Oriana. He was subjected to the V-Gas as he then drove the car, but when he drank water, he falls victim to tachophobia.

With help from Pops, Speed gets over his fear of speed during the Oriental Grand Prix, where Curly is the new driver of the GRX-powered car. As with the previous drivers before him, he takes V-Gas to endure the immense horsepower of his father's dangerous creation. However, when he drank some water at the pit stop and continued driving from there, he develops tachophobia and loses control of the car as he then died in a horrendous crash.

Engine
The GRX engine is depicted as a V-block engine, and features its initials on the cylinder heads.

Car
The car that is powered by the GRX is a sleek hardtop coupe built in a right-hand drive layout. It has a front end like a spear head, and featured headlights like the narrowed eyes of a predatory animal. It also has power windows, along with a dragster-style parachute that was deployed during the test run at the track.

Trivia

 * The episode title in the English dubbing of the series marked a continuity error. In the first part, the car reached a speed of 300 km/h (186.411 mph) on it is shown on the speedometer in the beginning of the episode, however, due to a continuity error in the Japanese animation, the car goes in excess of 360 km/h (223.694 mph) when Speed drove it. This would make the GRX slower than the Mammoth Car (whose top speed is 500 mph) in terms of the dialogue.
 * Along with that, when Speed said that it is as fast as the speed of sound, this is also a misnomer, as 1 unit in the speed of sound is equivalent to 767.269 mph.
 * A close-up of the engine at the beginning of "The Fastest Car on Earth" Part 2, depicts it as having eight carburettor stacks, suggesting that it is a V8 engine.

The Return of the GRX
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Film
In the 2008 film, the GRX (#66) is a T-180 race car developed by Royalton Industries and driven by Jack "Cannonball" Taylor. Already a fierce car, it became even fiercer as Arnold Royalton secretly installed a spear hook on the vehicle for the final race of the season, the WRL Grand Prix. In the end however, Taylor failed to beat Speed Racer let alone take him down, as the latter flipped both their cars and exposed the illegal device to the track cameras, causing the GRX to crash and disqualifying Royalton.

Video Game
The GRX also appears in the tie-in video game based on the film, once again driven by Cannonball Taylor.

Specifications
The GRX race car is powered by a next-generation Longitudinally-Mounted Transponder (LMT), which is developed by Royalton in collaboration with Musha Motors. Cast of materials mined from the lunar surface, the inter-positive transponder is a significant step-up above anything equipped with a positive displacement supercharger in terms of horsepower. The vehicle's wheel wells feature a redesigned version of the T-180 joint system, dubbed T-360, in which the wheels can swivel a full 360 degrees. An innovative exhaust system by Jonchee independently recycles excess thermal energy, which when combined with two dozen ground effect channels carved into a single-forge body system, puts the car "on a road that might be better suited for space travel". All of these features make the GRX the most technologically advanced car of its time. It was confirmed by Royalton that the GRX is able to reach speeds of 800 km/h (Equivalent to 497.20 mph).

Trivia

 * The Jonchee logo is seen on Pitter Pat's car, the Feral, indicating that it is one of his sponsors.

The Return of the GRX
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