After The Record
To celebrate the record, Campbell drove CN7 through the streets of the South Australian capital, Adelaide, to a presentation at city hall before a crowd of in excess of 200,000 people. CN7 was then displayed widely in Australia and the UK after her return in November 1964.
In June 1966, CN7 was demonstrated at RAF Debden in Essex, with a stand in driver, Peter Bolton. He crashed the car during a medium speed run, causing damage to her bodywork and front suspension. The car was patched up and Campbell ran her at a much lower speed than he intended. Campbell continued with his plans for the rocket-powered car Bluebird CMN-8 with a view to raising the LSR towards Mach 1. In January 1967, he was killed in his water-speed record jet hydroplane Bluebird K7.
CN7 was eventually restored in 1969, but has never run again in anger. In 1969, Campbell's widow, Tonia Bern-Campbell negotiated a deal with Lynn Garrison, President of Craig Breedlove and Associates, that would see Craig Breedlove run Bluebird on Bonneville's Salt Flats. This concept was cancelled when the parallel Spirit of America supersonic car project failed to find support.
It became a permanent exhibit at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, England in 1972, and is still on display there.
In January 2012, Adrian Newey, F1 racing car designer for Red Bull, and previously Williams GP and McLaren praised Bluebird CN7 in Racecar Engineering Magazine
“ | I think in terms of one of the biggest advances made, although it was not strictly speaking a racing car, was Bluebird. Arguably for its time it was the most advanced vehicle.’ The Bluebird Proteus CN7 was the car that Donald Campbell used to set a record of 403.1mph in July, 1964, the last outright land speed record car that was wheel driven. It was a revolutionary car that featured an advanced aluminium honeycomb chassis, featured fully independent suspension and four-wheel drive. It also had a head-up display for Campbell. ‘It was the first car to properly recognise, and use, ground effects,’ says Newey. ‘The installation of the jet turbines is a nightmare, and it was constructed using a monocoque working with a lot of lightweight structures. It was built in a way that you build an aircraft, but at the time motor racing teams weren’t doing that.’ The car featured a Bristol-Siddeley Proteus gas turbine engine that developed over 4,000bhp. It was a two-spool, reverse flow gas turbine engine that was specially modified to have a drive shaft at each end of the engine, to separate fixed ratio gearboxes on each axle. It was designed to do 500mph, but surface conditions, brought about by adverse weather in 1963 and 1964, meant that its fastest recorded time was nearly 100mph short of its hypothetical capability. It is interesting to note that, should an exact replica be built today, and it did achieve its potential, it would beat the existing record of 470.444mph set by Don Vesco’s Vesco Turbinator in 2001, and still be the fastest wheel-driven car today. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Bluebird-Proteus CN7
Famous quotes containing the word record:
“The house seems heavier
Now that they have gone away.
In fact it emptied in record time.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)