"I had three children by my twenty-first birthday," explains Breedlove, reflecting on the transformation of the LSR tableau from the domain of Euro high society to working class 'Merican motorheads like himself. "I was financially strapped. Even if you could afford the Merlins or what have you, the costs of developing the transmissions and the gear trains and so on and so forth was really prohibitive. When I saw the jet engine, I went, 'Oh boy--there's no way we can go wrong with that.' In '61 we located a J47 engine at Airmotive Surplus down on Alameda Street in L.A," he continues. "They had a whole batch of 'em coming in that were Korean War vintage. The engines were being scrapped out for $500. I had a sponsor, Ed Perkins, who had an aircraft fastener company. I talked Ed out of 500 bucks and that became the first engine for the Spirit of America."

ADVERTISEMENT

But the prodigious-yet-cost effective horsepower that aerospace technology provided to the salt flat racers did not come without a price: And in 1962 drag racer-cum-jet setter Glenn Leasher paid it--in full. While driving the J47 powered "Infinity" at maximum velocity, the jet car veers off course. Glen corrects at full burner and the stress and torque loads the suspension, precipitating a possible wheel or axle failure; the motor explodes and scatters its remains--as well as Leasher's--across the measured mile of Bonneville potash.

Regardless of Leasher's fate, however, the fuse of the paradigm shift had been lit. Taking bald exception to the stateside jet set, however, was the progeny of Sir Malcolm hisself, Donald Campbell. Piloting a turbine-engined, axle-driven variation of his old man's "Bluebird" streamliner, Campbell rigorously maintained that any "proper" heir to the LSR throne would not be thrust driven like the abominations Breedlove and Arfons were disgracing the salt flats with; By 1960, Campbell sunk over three million dollars of other people's money to ensure that the stateside vulgarities never triumphed. And this was just startup lucre; by 1963, after a spectacular 500 foot hurtle across Bonneville, the venture capital had doubled. As Bluebird was humpty-dumptied back together, Campbell sought a new venue for his mission. He took aim in Lake Eyre, Australia.

Meanwhile, Breedlove petitioned the FIA to sanction his impending incursion on the LSR but the FIA sniffed its nose and harrumphed at Breedlove's request, noting that the Spirit of America a) is not wheel-driven; and b) it only has three wheels, therefore it is a motorcycle, not an automobile. Craig shrugged his shoulders and shrewdly summoned the FIA's kid brother, the FIM (Federation Internationale de l'Motorcycle), seeking its approval and timing resources. The FIM is down with the SOA's request, under this criteria: Breedlove's cigar-shaped streamliner fits the description of their "Unlimited Sidecar" category (!), and they will happily sanction the record runs if Craig adds thirty kiloliters of ballast to one side of the vehicle, as to mimic a sidecar sans passenger (!!). Done. Spirit of America cranks out a two-way average of 407.45 in the summer of '63 to reclaim the LSR. Breedlove is officially the first man to travel at over 400 mph on land--all accomplished in a "motorbike" with a sidecar. Brilliant.

Amidst the controversy and hullabaloo over the SOA, Campbell continued to sojourn in his "Bluebird," albeit with mixed results. His Australian expedition was hammered by monsoons, weather conditions that enabled Breedlove to score the LSR uncontested back in the States. Indeed, the weather in Australia was so disheartening that Campbell's benefactors began to view this whole land speed record thing as a multi-million dollar boondoggle and yanked their sponsorship. Finally, on Friday, July 17, 1964, Campbell goes 403.1--twice--with a backup pass so brutal that it ripped the wheel from out of his hands. Both Campbell and the FIA claimed the de facto record runs went down in Australia, that this was the "real" LSR. Latter day pop psychologists would refer to this way of thinking as "denial," for history remembers Breedlove's run not as a bogosity on a tricycle, but as triumphant; it remembers Campbell's run as valiant as Paul Bunyan, but unfortunately a day late and a few quid short. There indeed had been a changing of the guard in the 1960s at the salt flats, as it became not only the domain of new technologies with godawful gobs of horsepower, it also became distinctly American.

Equally important, Breedlove had trumped the FIA, who were now sucking hind teat as far as sanctioning prestige goes. With its ego bruised, the FIA swallowed its pride and allowed jet technology into its competition, opening the floodgates for folks like Arfons, "the junkyard genius of the jet set," the man who set out to conquer the LSR in a contraption that featured a '37 Ford truck axle, depression era Packard steering and a top secret fighter plane engine. Arfons and his ilk were now legitimate.