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N0KFQ > TODAY 12.11.11 20:09l 59 Lines 2723 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Nov 12
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Sent: 111112/1740Z 13935@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Nov 12, 1965:
Goldenrod sets the land-speed record
On this day in 1965, brothers Bill and Bob Summers set a world
land-speed record_409.277 miles per hour_on the Bonneville Salt
Flats in Utah. They did it in an amazing, hemi-powered hot rod
they called the Goldenrod. (The car got its name from the '57
Chevy gold paint the brothers used.) Today, the Goldenrod is on
display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Summers brothers_Bill was the levelheaded engineer and Bob
was the daredevil driver_had been hot-rod racing near their home
in Southern California and at the Bonneville Salt Flats for
years. In 1963, they decided to get serious: if they could find
the parts and equipment they needed to build the right car, they
agreed, they would try to go faster than any man had ever gone.
(The land-speed record at that time, 394.196 miles per hour, had
been set by Briton John Cobb in 1947.) But the Summers brothers
weren't the only people to have this idea: In July 1964,
Englishman Donald Campbell broke Cobb's record (403.10 mph), and
in 1964 and 1965, two American drivers used jet engines to go
more than 600 miles per hour.
But the Summers brothers thought that using jet engines was
cheating: They believed, wrote one reporter, "that real cars were
driven by friction between tires and the ground." The brothers
wanted their car to be as fast as possible by being as
aerodynamic as possible, and it was: The finished Goldenrod was
the sleekest, lowest, narrowest racer in history. It was 32 feet
long, 48 inches wide and 42 inches tall, with a pointed nose and
four 426 cubic-inch V8 hemi engines on loan from Chrysler.
(Firestone Tire and Rubber donated the specially-built
low-profile tires, and Mobil Oil provided the fuel.)
The Goldenrod's first six-mile run across the Bonneville Salt
Flats broke Campbell's record easily, averaging 417 miles per
hour. To set an official record, however, a car must make two
record-breaking runs, one out and one back, within an hour. With
five minutes to spare, the yellow car headed across the desert
for a second time. When she screamed past the timers, her
achievement was official: she'd hit an average speed of 409.277
miles per hour.
Because the Summers brothers had to return the Goldenrod's
engines to Chrysler, they never tried to break their own record.
It stood until Al Teague's supercharged Spirit of '76 broke it
until 1991. In 2002, the Henry Ford bought the Goldenrod, paying
for the car's restoration with a grant from the federal Save
America's Treasure's Fund. The car is on display at the museum
today.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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