Kenelm Lee Guinness - Land Speed Record

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.

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