Target: Hitting 200 mph with a 68-year-old Triumph engine

It takes a special kind of crazy to get into land speed racing. You need the genius of an aerospace engineer, a stuntman’s disregard for personal safety, and a lawyer’s knack for twisting the rulebook. Plus a measure of what the Brits call ‘sheer bloody-mindedness.’ Alp Sungurtekin has those qualities by the bucket load. How else can you explain a man who has taken a 650cc Triumph pushrod motor and quintupled its output from 33 horsepower to more than 150? Alp is an industrial designer by trade, but it’s land speed motorcycles that butter his toast. His latest goal is...