Pendine Sands, stretching for kilometres along the coast of southwest Wales, marks a motoring milestone on Monday with the return of a “Blue Bird” car that captured the world's attention a century ago.
On July 21 1925 Briton Malcolm Campbell became the first person to travel at more than 240km/h on land when he accelerated the mighty 260kW Sunbeam along the beach to 242.62km/h.
The car, with its 18l V12 Manitou aero engine, is now owned by the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu and will be fired up at Pendine in a static display without any run being scheduled.
Campbell's grandson Don Wales told Reuters the 1925 record triggered a mania for speed.
“Everybody wanted to hear about who's got the land speed record and it was sparked, I think, by this record that my grandfather achieved,” he said at a commemorative event in London, with the car on display outside. “He was surprised himself by the amount of media attention he was getting from effectively increasing his own record by four miles an hour, but it was that magic mark of 150.”
While modern sports cars can easily exceed 240km/h, and do so on race tracks and Germany's autobahns, the speed was sensational at the time. Campbell had hit 235.22km/h in September 1924 at the same location and in the same car. In 1935, by then knighted for his achievements, he became the first to exceed 482km/h on land at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
The record now stands at 1227,985km/h, set in 1997 by retired British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green who thundered across Nevada's Black Rock desert to break the sound barrier on land for the first time with the jet-powered Thrust SSC.
The record has stood still this century, though a Bloodhound project is still seeking the funds to hit the 1,609km/h mark with a jet engine and monopropellant rocket working together.
An Australian rocket-propelled “Aussie Invader 5R” project also needs millions.
Wales, from a family of record-breakers and whose late uncle Donald died in 1967 at speed on Coniston Water in his Bluebird K7 boat, doubted anything would happen soon.
“You look at the problems that Thrust SSC had getting enough money to do the sound barrier, which again is a magic figure that captures the imagination,” he said. “A thousand miles an hour — yes, it's a big figure, but it just doesn't seem to have the attraction at the moment.”
Wales, whose records were set in a steam-powered vehicle and on a lawnmower, cited the space race and even the ever-increasing popularity of Formula One as possible reasons for waning interest.
“I don't think the appetite is there anymore. At the moment there is no money in record-breaking,” he said. “The adage of 'if you want to make a small fortune from motorsport, start with a large one' is so true in record-breaking.”
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