Cars
The Speed Record Story 5 - Aircraft engines for new milestones
Land speed records kept rising in the 1920s and 1930s, and it became clear that modified production vehicles were no longer enough.
As the land speed records continued to rise, it started to become clear that using modified production vehicles was no longer enough. Indeed, the 235 km/h reached by Campbell’s first Bluebird was easily beatable, and the record holder himself was already busy building a new Bluebird. The year was 1925 and many people wanted to write their name in what was rapidly becoming a veritable ranking of courage.
Bought for little money, John Parry-Thomas transformed a hand-crafted car by shoehorning a 450hp Liberty V12 aero-engine into his record-breaking “Babs”, which reached 275 km/h in 1926, but sadly, he lost his life during his next attempt
The first man to show that it was possible to go faster was an English hot-head, John Godfrey Parry-Thomas who, just one year later in 1926 and with very little money, modified a hand-crafted car, complete with chain-driven transmission. Re-bodied and upgraded with a Packard Liberty 450 horsepower aero-engine and nicknamed Special “Babs”, he reached 275,229 km/h in Pendine, Wales.
