LAND SPEED RECORD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 13, 16 January 1932, Page 10

LAND SPEED RECORD

THE NEW ZEALAND EFFORT. ELABORATE PREPARATIONS. Mr. Norman (“Wizard”) Smith’s pending attack on the land speed record has attracted increased attention during the past week. The attempt to break the record will be made on the Ninety-Mile Beach as soon as conditions are favourable. Mr. Smith has a long record of success as a driver, a review of which was published on Tuesday last.

The land speed record which Mr. Smith aim. a'- capturing is at present held bv Sir Malcolm (Captain) Campbell. In March, 1929, Sir Henry Segrave regained the world’s land speed record for Britain, covering 231.36 miles per hour on Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S.A. In 1928 Captain Malcolm Campbell attained an average speed of 206.956 miles per hour, which was beaten shortly afterwards by Mr. Ray Keech, a United States of America driver, with, a speed of 207.552 miles per hour. Mr. Frank Lockhart, another United States driver, was killed a little later when attempting to better this time.

On February 5, 1931, Captain Campbell established the present record of 246.154 miles per hour at Daytona Beach. For six years he had been endeavouring to surpass his own achievements and those’ of others, and he at last succeeded in putting up formidable figures. What these record-breaking attempts mean in publicity may be gathered from the following account of Sir Malcolm Campbell’s successful effort as chronicled in an American paper, the headline being “Racing Death at 245 mi’ s an hour”: — “Here he comes! ” “There he goes!! ” A mile in 15 seconds —four miles a minute —245.73'3 miles an hour. Such is Campbelling. Faster than any human being ever travelled on land before, Ciptain Malcolm Campbell, British racing driver, scorched the sands to hang up that new automobile record at Daytona Beach, Florida, on February 5. But he was disappointed. The tall, soft-spoken Scotsman told the Associated Press that the unevenness of the beach held down the speed of his curious, 100,000-dollar land rocket, Bluebird, and — “The visibility was so poor that I could not do better. At no time during my runs could I see more than 300 or 350 yards because of the haze over the course.” In his first dash over the measured mile, after a running start of five and one-half miles, Captain Campbell was clocked at 246.575 miles an hour, we read, and at 244.897 in his second run. The new record surpasses by 14,371 miles an hour the mark set on the same course in 1929 by Sir Henry Segrave, who was killed not long afterward in a motor boat accident in England. Campbell wants to try for 300 miles an hour, he also told the Associated Press—- “ There is plenty more speed in my Bluebird, bift these trials are so beastlyexpensive. “Perhaps, if I can find some million aire who will help finance such an undertaking, I shall shoot for the 300mile mark within the next few years. There is nothing I should like better to do. I should say that at present it is my greatest ambition.” Many papers congratulate the captain on his feat, but some deplore risk- ’ g human life to set speed records that “mean othing.” “In the air speed is of practical use in shortening distances and saving time,” says the Knickerbocker Press of Albany, New York. “On land super-speed machines like that driven by Captain Campbell are of interest only as providing the swiftest known means of travelling from good health to the graveyard.” But “question its utility as we may,” observes the New York World, “as a sporting event it is in the first rank. ’ ’ Actually, the feat has a practical value to tire makers and automobile builders, we are told by the Washington Evening Star—“lt is not simply a sporting event to give glorv to an individual. Lessons of incalculable value have been learned from it, and the knowledge acquired will go into the manufacture of even better motor-cars for the use of the present generation.” To-day Britain holds the world’s land, water and air records, the aeroplane speed being 408 miles, the ear 246, the motor cycle 150, and motor boat 110. Where the speed record will end is, of course, a matter of mechanics—and nerve. On the philosophy of speed rivalry. Mr. Kaye Don (holder of the motor boat record and unsuccessful in lower Sir Malcolm Campbell’s land speed record) tells us that people frequently ask him, “What good is effected by all this mania for speed? What benefit to mankind, if any, does the motor-car, airplane, or speed boat record bring? Where does all this effort to beat the other fellow or to improve on the other fellow’s time get us?” To which he responds:— The answer, it seems to me, becomes fairly obvious if we go back into the history of speed records for the motorcar and speed boat, and, in a lesser degree, the airplane. In the early days of the motor-car, 20 to 25 miles an hour was considered quite a respectable speed, and even when, as a stimulus to the motor-car industry, tourist trophy road races were introduced, few professional winners could turn in a better average than 35 miles an hour. After racing tracks were constructed for motor-car events, it was considered something of a feat when cars raced at an average speed of 60 miles an hour.

Improvement in racing speeds came, of course, with the development and improvement of the racing car, but it can not be disputed that the speed car of yesterday is the stream-line stock car of to-day.

How many motor-car owners in America, for instance, do not, on inviting stretches of your splendid State roads, hit a speed of 60 miles or more? And how many average less than 45 miles an hour on long motor-car journeys? To-day there are few makers of motor cars who could not send a stock model out on a track to do better than 70 and, possibly, something nearer to 100 miles an hour. I recall a cartoon in an old number of London Opinion in which an old Cockney, sitting in an early-vintage runabout, was looking at a traffic sign which read, “Speed limit 25 miles per hour.” Scratching his Lead in perplexity, he was saying, “Strike me bloomin’ well pink; twenty-five! And this blawsted boiler o’ mine cawn’t do a yard more’n 18!” Getting up to that speed was his big diffieußv.

The main difficulty to-day seems to be getting down to any reasonable specc limit, Mr. Don continues, and then he leads up to his prophetic vision of grandpa loafing along with the speedometer at 100. Rolling over the American countryside in any good standard American car to-day one sees signs hero and there on the parkways near the big cities telling of speed limits of 40 miles an hour or so. Observing these, our chauffeur slows down to 50, with a comment to the effect that the speed officers permit a driver to “get away with 4J.”

The speed races of yesterday have been largely responsible for the development of the fast automobiles of to-day. It is more than possible that, with wide, one-way roads designed to eliminate headon collision hazards, and side roads for slow traffic, the racing car it to-day may be the family car of to-morrow, with the jolly old grandparents doddering along at 100 miles per hour or more and complaining at the speed of the new generation. The same condition applies to the development of the speedboats during the past two decades. Indeed, water speed has advanced to such a degree that we now have diminutive craft with outboard motors which go faster J han the largest Atlantic liners.—Accelerator, in the Otago Daily Times.