WORLD’S FASTEST CAR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 167, 18 July 1939, Page 11

WORLD’S FASTEST CAR

JOHN COBB TO ATTEMPT RECORD AIMING AT 360 MILES AN HOUR (Special to “Chronicle.”) LONDON. June 7. While thousands gaze daily at the fastest car on earth (Captain George Eyston’s “Thunderbolt”) in the British Pavilion at New York W’orld’s Fair, a challenge is being secretly prepared by a fellow-Briton in a small engineering shop at Byfleet, in the quiet countryside of the South of England. It is the car with which John Cobb, London fur-broker and racing motorist in his spare time, will challenge the 357.5 miles per hour world record set up by Eyston in September, 1938, just 24 hours after Cobb, the first man to exceed 350 miles per hour, had beaten the previous record. Cobb told a reporter that he believes British engineers will ultimately build a car which will enable men Lo travel seven miles a minute, 420 miles an hour, the equivalent of the distance between London and Edinburgh, in 56 minutes. The car he will take to Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, U.S.A., next August will be a David to Eyston’s Goliath. It will weigh only three tons against the 6i tons of “thunderbolt.” Many believe this makes a car dangerous to handle, but Cobb thinks that it is a small, lightweight car which will break the world's record. The basic principle of Cobb's challenger is a twisted single-backbone chassis With two Napier Lion engines slur.‘g back-to-back and aslant, one engine driving the front axle, the other the rear axle. A 2500 horse-power car, it is being “tuned” to develop an extra 30u h.p.—and with this under its bonnet Cobb, 39-year-old bachelor and genial giant of six feet two inches, expects to streak over the Salt Flats at 3GO , miles per hour