SPEED RECORD BROKEN

Evening Star, Issue 19796, 21 February 1928, Page 4

SPEED RECORD BROKEN

BRITISH MOTORIST’S SUCCESS

NEW WORLD'S FIGURES ESTABLISHED

NEW YORK, February 19,

At Daytona Beach, Florida, Captain Campbell established a now world’s speed record, driving a Bluebird 206,95 miles an hour, assisted by a strong wind. The tachometer registered 220 miles an hour at one time, hut the roughness of the beach slowed the pace. A TERRIFIC SPEED. NEW YORK, February 19. Malcolm Campbell’s actual average in the Napier Bluebird Special was 206.95602mi1es an hour. The first mile took 16.765ec, or at the rate of ,214 miles an hour, and the second mile, against the wind, 18.3 sec, or at the rate of 199.66722 miles an hour.

The former record, by Major Segravo, was 203.841 miles.

[Captain Campbell recently had constructed a new car, with the latest type of Napier Lion aero engine, ?rith which he hoped to reach a speed of 180 miles an hour on Pendine Sands. Mr J. G. Pari’y Thomas held the record with 170 miles an hour. A sum of £IO,OOO was expended in building a car of 460 horse-power, named the Bluebird, in which tho hopes and aspirations of several manufacturers were centred (stated an English journal before the attempt on Daytona Beach). At his first attempt on the record tho car quite failed, and on January 24 'the engine had to be overhauled. The use of an aero engine in a motor car is not new', and other English records have been secured with aero engines of war design, but this is probably the first time a modern aero engine of such high horse power for weight as the Napier Lion, 'idjjch is the service engine of tho Royal Ah ?wce in its heavy night bombers, (ias been incorporated in a motor car chassis. Captain Campbell stated that it w r as his ambition to be the first man to achieve a speed of three miles per minute or more in a motor car, and that he had been thinking out bow to achieve that for some years. Apart from designing a car capable of the speed there was the difficulty in England of securing a long enough stretch to get the maximum acceleration before passing over the timed mile. At Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire, Wales, h» had about five miles, of which something life* two and y-half were required fe> ptt&k Misaaaai