All steamed up

[expat]

Early next year an all-British team, complete with lady driver, will make an attempt on a world land speed record that has remained unbroken for 100 years. Jesse Crosse reports on how they are facing up to the pressures
In the spring of next year a small team of British record breakers will decamp to the Verneuk Pan, a lake bed in South Africa's Northern Cape. Their equipment will include the usual paraphernalia: toolkits, laptop computers, timing gear, safety equipment and, of course, the car - a sleek missile on wheels finished in British Racing Green.
Steam powered car
Green machine: the sleek, British Steam Car Challenge vehicle
The fuel will be quite unusual, however. Instead of petrol, diesel or aviation spirit, the team will carry only bottles of camping gas and a large quantity of water. With this curious mixture, they aim to set a new world land speed record for steam-powered vehicles of 200mph.
Land speed records rarely last for more than a decade or so before a new challenger emerges. But, officially, a steam-powered car has yet to better the record set at 127.659mph by Fred Marriot's Stanley Steamer in 1906. Running at Ormond (now Daytona) Beach in Florida, Marriot not only took the outright land speed record but dispatched two petrol-powered Fiats and a Napier into the bargain. Much later, in 1985, Bob Barber managed 145.607mph on one run before his steam-powered car was destroyed by fire. But to qualify for a land speed record, the F

[Woodlouse2002]

Christ. I want to meet the maniac that took the record in 1906.

[beaky]

Christ. I want to meet the maniac that took the record in 1906.

Here he is.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove ... t_758.html

that's actually a pretty nifty-looking Steamer... and the first auto of any kind to bust 120mph!  :o

[expat]

Here he is.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove ... t_758.html

that's actually a pretty nifty-looking Steamer... and the first auto of any kind to bust 120mph!  :o

120 mph on bicycle wheels too............respect. I drive, as a matter of course at 120 mph most days to work on the Autobahn. When you look at it in simple terms, we have not come that far in 100 years.

Matt