With the desire for ever greater speeds came a need to find better terrains to test these vehicles. Borrowing from powerful propulsion technologies developed in aviation and rocket design (their shaping similarly inspired to the point of looking perhaps more like jet airplanes with their wings cropped off, lacking steering ability and traditional break systems), the 'land' on which such vehicles would speed on rapidly became indeed a rather conceptual proposition. While early record-setting vehicles were simply the most sophisticated in the automotive field at the time- sporting competing technologies like electrical, steam-powered, or combustion engines, and driven by the most competent drivers of the day-, such cars quickly proved insufficient given the growing ambitions of new drivers and engineers: beginning in the 1920s, new vehicles were being conceived specifically with the goal of breaking the land speed record, and quickly stopped looking like cars altogether.

In this chase for time, perfection is an elusive (if not somewhat absurd) goal. Unlike typical races, in which individuals compete against one another on a specific course, records are always understood to be temporary conditions- measures to be surpassed, in this case, often by the very same driver who had set the earlier mark. View a historical slideshow published in the journal PLACESįrom its modest folk beginnings in the late 1890s to the most recent attempts at over 760 mph (Black Rock Desert, NV, 1997), the chase for the land speed record has captured the public imagination.

Mickey Thompson emerging from Challenger I after a record-setting run on the flats, 1960.Ī Site Constructed: The Bonneville Salt Flats and the Land Speed Record, 1935-1970ĭownload the full article published in Landscape Journal

Bonneville salt flats land speed record