A Dream of Speed

Across Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats whipped the piercing whine of a J47 jet engine. Technicians huddled around their electric timers. "Here he comes!" somebody shouted. A strange object that looked like a wingless jet airplane flashed into sight, roared past and disappeared, leaving waves of refracted light dancing in the brilliant desert dawn. Strapped in his cramped cockpit, Craig Breedlove, 26, pressed a button that released two colored parachutes, and the Spirit of America skidded to a halt. "All I know," he said, "is that I was moving fast." The timers told how fast: in two runs through Bonneville's measured mile, Breedlove had averaged 407.45 m.p.h. -- faster than any man had ever traveled on wheels before.

At What Price? Breaking the world land speed record has been Craig Breed-love's obsession ever since he was a car-struck twelve-year-old in Los Angeles and talked his parents into letting him buy an aged and battered Ford -- "not to drive, just to work on." That was in 1949, two years after London Fur Broker John Cobb set a new land speed record, gunning his twin-engined, 2,500-h.p. Railton Mobil Special up to 394.196 m.p.h. Over the years, dozens of daredevils have tried to crack Cobb's mark, and few sporting pursuits have been so costly to participants in terms of money and life. The turbine-powered Bluebird of Britain's Donald Campbell is, so far, a $5,000,000 flop. Three years ago, Utah's Athol Graham was killed when his homemade car lost a wheel at better than 300 m.p.h. Last year California's Glenn Leasher drove his jet-powered Infinity past the timers at more than 400 m.p.h., but moments later an explosion scattered car and driver over a square mile of Bonneville salt.

Breedlove paid for his dream too. In stead of going to college, he took a variety of odd jobs (welder, fireman, sports car salesman) that allowed him free time to build fast cars and race them. His first wife divorced him. In 1959 he set to work on Spirit in earnest. Before he was through, he quit his job, exhausted his unemployment compensation, was scrimping by on the earnings of his second wife, a waitress in a drive-in (and a car buff like himself). "Four years," he said last week. "Four years of seven days a week, 18 hours a day--no movies, no going out to dinner, no TV, nothing but work."

A well-to-do Mormon bishop bought Breedlove an airplane jet engine. Designers helped him with problems of aerodynamics. He drew up a brochure, built a tiny-scale model of his car, went in search of sponsors. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. donated the special tires he needed, and Shell Oil Co. agreed to pick up the rest of the bill. "He's a remarkable salesman," said one Shell executive. Shell's contribution came to about $150,000.

In What Book? The painstakingly hand-crafted vehicle that carried Breedlove to his record was a bizarre contraption with three wheels and a tail fin jutting 10 ft. high. The thing was 35 ft. long and 11 ft. wide, weighed three tons. Its single front wheel could be steered only half a degree in either direction. To keep the car from taking off at high speeds, the cigar-shaped body was designed so that the terrific air pressure on the nose would hold it down ("negative lift," engineers call it). A small fin under the nose helped carve a path through the "air wake"--so strong at high speeds that it might otherwise rip the car apart.

At week's end record-book custodians were arguing over what book Breed-love's record belonged in. The Federation Internationale de l' Automobile said no, Spirit is not an automobile, because it has only three wheels and none of them is driven directly by the engine. The Federation Internationale Motocycliste said of course Spirit is not an automobile--it is a motorcycle and, helas, a motorcycle that can beat any automobile. Breedlove only shrugged. He was finally going to take a vacation. "If someone breaks my record," he said, "I'll be right back." In the meantime, if Spirit of America was only history's fastest tricycle, that was all right with him. It was undeniably, he knew, the fastest something or other.

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