Right in the core of every human being is the desire to be the best, to be right and to show he can do anything, no matter how extreme it is. This desire is so obvious that in 1951 a British engineer, Sir Hugh Beaver, got into a discussion about what was the fastest game bird in Europe and decided that there should be a book to compile facts of this nature.

And thus was born the Guinness Book of Records!
 
The first edition was launched in 1954 and since then, the book has been published annually with a collection of world records, of both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. And cars are the perfect platform to break some of the most extraordinary records. Man and car, together to break speed, distance and many other records.
 
Check out the gallery below to find out some of those records:

Fastest Coffee-Fueled Car

In 2013 the coffee-fueled Bean Machine received its Guinness World Record for reaching 65.5mph. Based on a Ford P100 and fueled by coffee chaff, it was built by Martin Bacon, fabricator Colin Davidson, electronics engineer Ben Preston and Bacon's son Philip in charge of recording the project.

Fastest car on natural ice

Nissan has set a new speed record with the GT-R on natural ice at 183mph. The record run was done at Lake Baikal in Russia, which has ice roughly 1.4m thick. Russian auto journalist Andrey Leontjev and Roman Rusinov were able to go 294.8km/h (182.8mph) across the ice.

Fastest Pitstop

Red Bull broke the F1 record for fastest pit stop at the 2013 Malaysian GP. The team actually broke the previous record five times and beat its record twice. On Sebastian Vettel's first stop in Malaysia on lap 5 the pitstop took 2.13 seconds but on Mark Webber's lap 19 stop they performed a 2.05-second pit stop.

Fastest road car in the world

Hennessey released a video showing the Venom GT hitting a GPS-verified 265.7 mph (427.6 km/h) over a two-mile strip. Even though the Veyron Super Sport hit 267.8mph, the selling version has a top speed limited to 258mph so Hennessey claims that the 265.7mph hit by the Venom GT makes it the fastest car available to the public.

Largest Ferrari parade in the world

Ferrari broke the record for largest parade of Ferraris at the Ferrari Racing Days at Silverstone on September of 2012 with 964 cars. The italian brand had claimed the record in 2007 when 385 cars gathered at Silverstone and in the following year in Japan that number was surpassed by 490 Ferrari cars at the Suzuka circuit.

Fastest lap on Nürburgring by a production eletric car

Audi set the Nürburgring production electric car lap record with an R8 E-Tron at 8:09.099. It still didn't beat the overall electric car record set by the Toyota PV001 of 7:47:790. As reference, Germany's Sport Auto magazine lapped the Ring with both the V10 and V8 R8s and got a time of 8:04 with the V8 R8 and 7:44 with the V10 R8.

European distance record on a single tank of fuel

A Ford Mondeo ECOnetic wagon from Norway set the European distance record on a single tank of fuel by going 2,536km (1,576 miles) on a single 71 liter tank of diesel. The pair drove from Helsinki, Finland, to Oslo, Norway, and managed 2.796l/100km (84 miles per gallon).

Largest number of people in a MINI

In November 2012 a group of 28 women from the same gym in East Sussex, England, have set two Guinness Records for the number of people in a classic Mini and 2012 Mini. The same group broke their own previous record of 27 people that they set in 2011.

Car with highest mileage in the world

At the age of 70 Irv Gordon is the driver of the highest mileage vehicle on the road with 2.8 million miles driven. But Gordon wants to reach the three million mark in the next three years. The Volvo P1800 was purchased in 1966 and in its first ten years the American drove 500,000 miles.

Smallest roadworthy car

In May 2009 Perry Watkins broke the Guinness record for smallest roadworthy car in the UK. The car is called "Wind Up" and measures 104.14cm (41in) high, 66.04cm (26in) wide and 132.08cm (52in) long. Initially designed as a coin-in-slot children's ride, it took 7 months to build and conforms with all regulations.

Longest time restraining a car

In July 2008 Franz Müllner broke the record for longest time restraining a car. Müllner was able to restrain a car on full power for 13.84 seconds. The record was set at El Show Olímpico in Mexico City, Mexico.

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