Land Speed Record
After the First World War, Louis Coatalen built the Sunbeam 350HP, which was powered by a V12 Manitou engine.
On 18 May 1922, Guinness used the car to set new Land Speed Records at Brooklands: the Brooklands lap record at 121.54 mph, then the flying-start land speed records over a half-mile, kilometre, mile and two miles. The fastest record being 136.05 mph for the half-mile. These were the last land speed records to be set on a racetrack rather than a beach or salt flat.
The car was later sold to Malcolm Campbell, who named it "Blue Bird" and also used it to set Land Speed Records.
After his 1924 accident, Guinness withdrew from record-breaking as well as track competition. However when his Sunbeam co-driver Segrave took the 1,000HP car to Daytona in 1927, Guinness accompanied him.
Read more about this topic: Kenelm Lee Guinness
Famous quotes containing the words land, speed and/or record:
“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile—that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)