1000 HORSE POWER CAR

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 79, 27 December 1937, Page 2

1000 HORSE POWER CAR

-Own Correspondent.)

Land Speed Record Songht

' CBv Air Mail-

LONDON, Nov. 26. A new attempt to beat Sir Malcolm Campbell 's world land speed Tecord of 300 miles an hour is planned by Freddie Dixon, wizard of the r'ace track and famous foT his engineering skill with raeing cars, says a writer in Reynolds. • He has designed a car that is entirely different from monsters like Eyston's Thunderbolt and Sir Malcolm Campbell 's Blue Bird. Freddie wants to make his record on a road," and not at Bonneville Salt Flatst in America» -• He "thinks it is "utterly ridiculous" to take a Car to Bonneville when Germafi drivers have alteady reached 250 "miles'' an hour on a public road, and lpO-passesager buses travel at 80 miles ari hpfif,;., " 'T, " There is no progress in xt that I caa see!" he told me. - T^ie new record-breaker will be calfed the ' ' Dart. ' ' It will look like an elongated bomb on wheels. First > departure from .. orthodox methods will be Freddie 's determination to keep to .a depign that could be adapted to ordinary motoring. Instead of a mammoth car, with a highly specialised aero .engine in a "useless" type of ckassis, he will build a small car to take a super-charged, 1000 h.p. engine of revolutionary type. The engine is barrel-shaped, with 24 horizontal cylinders. It is a twostroke, like the smaller motor-cycle engines, and not the four-stroke type used in aimost every car.

Freddie will sit at the front of the car in an enclosed cockpit, the width and height of which will be pruned to the last ineh to teduce wind resistance. The engine will drive all four wheels^ and not only the rear two as in ordinary cars. Steering will be on all four wheels, and all four wheels will have independent springing so as tp stop bouncing, while might prove fatal at spefeds of six mil'es a minute. "I am positive that my design will be better than anything known," Fred-1 die said. AsTed when his car would be ready, i he refused to make any promises. "I do not work to a timetable,'' he explained. After two years of experiment, he hopes to start work on the ear before the end of the year. To build it' and finance his attempt will cost £5000. This is small co'mpared with other record-breaking cars.