Land-speed record cars

Want to be a land-speed record breaker? What you need is dedication. That’s what you need. And rockets – they help a lot.

Like a broken record

1906 Good steam work

1940 The one that got away

1898 Charge!

The first land-speed record cars are electric-powered. The Jeantaud Duc, driven by Gaston de ChasseloupLaubat, manages just shy of 40mph. The following year, driving the more aerodynamic Duc Profilée (pictured), was up to a heady 57.65mph.

The first land-speed record car running on steam is Léon Serpollet’s Gardner-Serpollet Easter Egg in 1902 (pictured); the last is Fred Marriott’s Stanley Rocket, which hits 127.88mph at Daytona in 1906, and holds the record for any steam vehicle until 2009. The steam is generated in a boiler under the seat, heated by a vaporising petrol burner.

Previous Mercedes record-chasers had been based on the Silver Arrows GP cars, but the T80 is different. Conceived by driver Hans Stuck, designed by Ferdinand Porsche, it has a 44.5-litre V12 aircraft engine, held in a spaceframe, making around 3500bhp. It runs on six 46-inch wheels. The target was 400mph, but the war means the run never happened.

2021 Meanwhile, back in the real world…

The record for production cars continues to creep up, with Bugatti and Koenigsegg vying for supremacy. Then in October 2020, US supercar makers SSC runs the 6.9-litre twin-turbo V8 Tuatara at what looks like 316.11mph (a two-way average). But mismatches between video recordings and GPS data prompt a rerun, which results in a lower (but still record) 282.9mph in January 2021. 1898 1903 1906 nd 1924 1940 1997 2021

1903 The age of the train is over

Until 1903, the fastest vehicles on the planet aren’t cars but trains. In 1848, a train named the Antelope is recorded at 60mph in New England (and in 1934, the Flying Scotsman, pictured, is doing 100mph). The 1903 record-smashing car is a Gobron Brilllié, with an internal combustion engine, driven at 83.46mph in Ostend by Arthur Duray.

1924 Aero engines arrive

As car engines get smaller, some massive aircraft motors are being developed, and the land-speed crew sees their potential. Ernest Eldridge tops 145mph with his 21.7-litre Fiat Mephistopheles, followed three months later by the first of Malcolm Campbell’s records, 146.16mph at Pendine Sands in his 18.3-litre Sunbeam (pictured). The trend peaks in 1939 at Bonneville, where John Cobb’s Railton Special (two 23.9-litre Napier Lion W12s) reaches 369.74mph.

1997 Through the sound barrier

In 1965 at Bonneville, Craig Breedlove smashes two conventions: his Spirit of America, which makes 407.447mph, has only three wheels – and, furthermore, they aren’t driven. We’ve entered the era of the turbojet, the rocket and the turbofan. This climaxes in 1997 with Andy Green doing 763.035mph – that’s faster than the speed of sound – in ThrustSSC at Black Rock Desert.