Bryan Reid Sr., who stars on the HGTV reality show Timber Kings, hit speeds of 90 km/h while driving a tree at Wild Horse Pass Track south of Phoenix late last month.

“It’s like being in the hottest muscle car in town ... On the race track, it handles better than anything I’ve every driven,” says Reid. “When they (turbines) get wound up, holy smokes, they whine.”

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The speed was fast enough to earn Reid, and the rest of his build team at Pioneer Log Homes of B.C. in Williams Lake, the Guinness World record for fastest motorized log.

It is a new category for the record keepers. Reid says they invited Guinness to the event and Guinness came up with the criteria to set the record. Part of the criteria was it had to do 50 km/h in two separate runs. “Even though we had never driven it before, it did that (speed) handedly.”

Until the log hit the track in late January, it had never gone more than 5 km/h and that was to drive it into a trailer.

“It exceeded our expectations,” says Reid.

The car, hood, running boards, roll bar and fenders are all manufactured out of a single 240-year-old western red cedar.

Called the ‘Cedar Rocket’, it is powered by twin, 20-horsepower electric turbines and a 35-horsepower electric motor. The electric motor is to give the car a boost off the line. With the turbines, Reid says they have calculated the max speed should be around 225 km/h, but they will likely never test it unless someone breaks their record. But the log is designed to be like a salt flat racing car and takes a while to really get up to speed.

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The total weight is about 1,000 kilograms, of which about a quarter is batteries. It is built on a Mazda RX-8 frame with an independent suspension and disc brakes.

The idea for building a motorized log came out of a conversation two years ago. Every year, Pioneer Log Homes has a display at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Arizona to advertise and meet people who like one-of-a-kind items. Afterall, most of their homes are high-end and custom built . At the event in 2014, Reid was talking to a friend, who is a master mechanic and another friend who builds turbine engines.

“We were just goofing off. (We thought we’d) put a log on a couple axles and Bob’s your uncle,” Reid says. “We got carried away. I think the paint job was $100,000.”

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After breaking the record, Reid put the log on display at Barrett-Jackson. “We were the most photographed car at Barrett-Jackson and there were Batmobiles.”

The log car is now being displayed around the continent and will be auctioned off in January, with proceeds benefiting military and veteran groups. Reid told an Arizona TV station he could see the price hitting the seven figures.

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The record drag race was also filmed as part of Timber Kings and will air in the spring.

Reid and his team will build a second car for a museum in Lethbridge, Atla., and are looking for a buyer for Serial No. 003. “We aren’t going to quit our day jobs yet.”