UK Car Breaks Steam-Powered Land Speed Record
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A 140mph run in California shows that the age of steam is still alive and kicking.
You may think that the golden age of steam power is over, but that’s not what a team of British record breakers believe – especially after setting a new land speed record for a steam-powered car.
On Tuesday morning, the British Steam Car Challenge team sent Charles Burnett III tearing across California’s Mojave Desert at an average speed of 139.8mph. The team’s 25-foot-long Inspiration vehicle left the previous 1906 record – 127.6mph in Fred Marriott’s Stanley Steamer Rocket – standing.
Speaking after the record-breaking run, Burnett told reporters that the experience was “absolutely fantastic,” adding: “I enjoyed every minute of it.”
The team has spent the past 10 years preparing for the record attempt and has had to endure a series of problems and technical setbacks. In the past month alone, after arriving in the desert to ready the vehicle, there have been difficulties prepping the car’s multiple boilers, alongside a whole array of other faults.
After some promising test runs, however, Burnett finally clambered into the three-tonne vehicle at 7:27am on Tuesday and annihilated the existing record on the first run.
He recalled: “We reached nearly 140mph on the first run before I applied the parachute. All systems worked perfectly, it was a really good run. The second run went even better and we clocked a speed in excess of 150mph. The car really did handle beautifully.”
To offically break the record, he needed to complete two mile-long runs in opposite directions in under an hour. The officially recorded speed would then be formulated from an average of the two runs. The Federation Internationale d’Automobile (FIA) still needs to confirm the British Steam Car Challenge’s achievement.
For more information on this steam car and steam cars in general check out The Steam Car Club of Great Britain website at http://www.steamcar.net – regards, Jeff.
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