CRAIG BREELOVE

How fast was that daring young man? How dangerous was that game?

It all had to do with being fast. He was lightning fast. He was sneaky fast. Craig Breedlove was so fast he had buried the needle on the speedometer of life before he was barely off the starting line.

By 13, Breedlove bought his first car, a little deuce coupe. By 16, he ran his first drag race. And by the time he was 21, Breedlove clocked 377 km-h in a supercharged Oldsmobile at the salt flats at Bonneville in Utah.

“I’m sitting six inches off of the ground, going faster than a bullet,” Breedlove once told Popular Mechanics magazine, describing his life as a drag racer. “It’s quite a rush."

If anyone was ever destined for life in the fast lane, Breedlove was your man. Holding the record many times for being the fastest human being on land, he was never afraid to hang it out there and run with his hair on fire.

Driving missile-shaped vehicles at speeds that only airplanes attempt is not for everyone. At 400, 500 and 600 mph, real estate is gobbled up at an alarming rate. The curve of the Earth becomes apparent. And one miscue can turn you and your vehicle into dust.

“It’s not for everyone,” Breedlove once said. “But it’s for me.”

Men would come to the salt flats just to try and knock him off the speed charts and replace his name with theirs as the fastest man alive. But they didn’t have the pedigree, or the drive.

Breedlove grew up in car-crazy Southern California in the 1950s. His father, Norman, was a motion-picture studio special-effects man. His mother, Portia, was a dancer who worked in studios. Craig grew up in Mar Vista, Calif., and wanted nothing more than an education in aerodynamics and gas in his car.

After high school, he worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica as a technician in structural engineering where he built model airplanes and learned about engineering and design. Oh, one more thing. Breedlove wanted to drive faster than anyone else. He had a taste for doing that a few years earlier when he took his 1934 Ford coupe to 246 km-h on the dry lakes of the Mojave Desert. Four years later, he took that Oldsmobile to 377 km-h at Bonneville.

Ultimately, what Breedlove really wanted was not be the fastest in his class, but to be the fastest, period.

So, in 1962 at just 25, he built a team around a car called the Spirit of America. Powered by a jet engine from a U.S. Navy fighter, an engine that cost him $500 three years earlier, he knew it could take him to the top of the speed charts. That was something no American had done in 32 years.

“I became convinced that we could build a car that would capture the unlimited record for the measured mile,” he said. “We lacked only money.”

At the time, John Cobb of England held the world record of 3632 km-h, a mark set in 1947. Land-speed rules dictated that for a record to be official, a car must make two runs within one hour, the average of the two being the official time.

With sponsorship money, Breedlove and his team rolled his 10-metre-long missile onto the salt and tried to set the record. Handling problems thwarted the attempt. A year later, in 1963, Breedlove was back and wouldn't be denied. He clocked 651 km-h in two runs to become the fastest man on Earth, giving an American the honor once again.

“Once we hit the magical (600 km-h) barrier,” Breedlove once said, “we knew we wouldn’t be alone.” The race was on. Driver Tom Green followed with 660 km-h a year later.Then a drag racer, Art Arfons, hit 694 km-h. But it always came back to Breedlove.

It didn’t take long to take back the title, as he broke the 800 km-h barrier. Then he hit 960 km-h in 1965.

But by the end of 1965, sponsor interest waned as attention turned to grander spectacles such as the space program. Breedlove’s 1965 record of 960 km-h held until October 1970 when Gary Gabelich drove the rocket-powered Blue Flame to 995 km-h.

In the 1970s, Breedlove tried to build more rocket cars, but restrictions on the use of that type of propulsion made it too difficult and expensive to continue the program. In the 1980s and 1990s, Breedlove stayed in the game, building more engines and drag-race vehicles for other drivers.

Breedlove is now 80. He certainly made his mark in time several times over, and his drive to be better and faster is the true spirit of America.