The Lure of Speed

I've recently gotten hooked on the wildly popular (among gearheads) BBC-produced show "Top Gear." One of the reasons why the show is so entertaining is the deliberate sense of drama and excitement that they manage to write/edit into each segment. Realizing that visual hyperbole is what drives the show doesn't detract much from its entertainment value. One of the more well-known dramatic sequences featured host James May driving the mythical Bugatti Veyron along the 5.5-mile level straight of Volkswagen's own closed test track in an effort to reach the car's top speed of 253mph (you can view the video on Top Gear's web site here). May waxes eloquent about the car's brutal, 16-cyclinder, quad turbocharged, 1,000hp engine and the impressive, 21st Century engineering that went into the $1.4 million supercar. In the segment's introduction, he says, "The Veyron is about pushing the outside of the envelope. It's about doing things that people said just were not possible." The segment hyped May's top speed attempt as something almost as dramatic as the first moon landing. Visceral. Perhaps bound to end in tragedy. Uncertain. A technological triumph.

Uh-huh. Well I've got news for Mr. May and the gaggle of producers at "Top Gear"--they're about 45 years too late.

The vehicle you see here went 255mph on a straight, level track twice--once in each direction--in order to claim a world speed record for vehicles in it's class. Oh, and the year was 1963. The following year, it broke it's own record by setting anew record in excess of 263mph. Based on the technology that went into the Veyron, you'd think that the engineering effort and money invested into such an effort over 40 years ago must have been astounding. Actually, not so much.

What makes this car, and others like it of the same era, so amazing is the ingenuity that went into them. This car was actually built in 1955 by a small racing shop in Southern California called Car Craft Machine. They used bits and pieces from a gaggle of disparate vehicles--along with the aluminum belly fuel tank from a P-51 Mustang fighter plane--that succeeded in setting multiple world speed records. And the engine was no 16-cylinder behemoth with four giant turbochargers, it was a 331ci Chrysler Hemi V-8 with a GMC supercharger bolted to the top. That amazes me.

Anyone who thinks James May was brave for his top speed attempt in the Veyron, should consider Don Johnson, the driver of this car during it's record-setting runs in '63 and '64, to be a justifiable hero. But I'll bet none of you have heard of this man who squeezed himself into a tiny aluminum teardrop and streaked across the salt flats at Bonneville, Utah so many years ago. I hadn't until now. Why did he do it? He and all the other speed freaks that would show up--and still do--at dry, flat lake beds in the Western United States each year in order to do one, single thing: push the outside envelope of their cars in order to see just how fast they can go. And there's absolutely nothing contrived about the drama involved in their efforts. It's the real deal.

This 1955 Johnson & Shipley B-Lakester, #48-B, is part of a private collection is listed for sale here on RacedandRallied.com.