Samuel Hawley - Ultimate Speed: The Fast Life and Extreme Cars of Racing Legend Craig Breedlove

by Craig Breedlove

THE QUEST FOR THE UNLIMITED LAND SPEED RECORD is just about the most exclusive sport in the world. Only eight people have succeeded in officially breaking the mark in the past eighty years. Im one of them. I set the ultimate record five times in the 1960s and was the first to drive 400, 500, and 600 miles an hour.

Why are there so few of us? Because traveling at jet airplane speeds on the ground is hard. It takes years of effort to design and build a record-breaker. Im talking total commitment. It will consume you, put you into debt, and turn your life upside down. And then, when youre finally ready to run, you have to bet everything on your machine and on your skill as a driver. Going into the measured mile, you literally have every bit of your skin in the game. If there is any flaw in your car, or in you, the land speed record will find it. And it will punish you for it. At 500-plus miles an hour, that can be very scary. Its almost a spiritual thing, those few seconds going through the clocks out on the desert, testing your machine and testing yourself. I guess you could call it the ultimate ethic. Setting this record can cost you your life.

This book tells the true story of my life. I first got to know the author, Samuel Hawley, back in 2009, when he interviewed me for an earlier book he was writing about the land speed record in the 1960s. Sam ended up writing a fantastic book, Speed Duel. It was the best thing Id ever read about my rivalry with Art Arfons for the land speed record. Several years later, when I started thinking again about getting my biography written, I asked Sam if hed like to do it. He said yes.

Im really pleased with the book Sam has written. Ultimate Speed is a great read. Its creditable, its accurate, its exciting, and the research behind it is phenomenal. In addition to conducting many hours worth of interviews with me over the phone and in person, Sam tracked down dozens of people whove been involved in my life, some of whom Id totally lost touch with. He has dug down deeper into my life than I could have imagined, and not just into my life, but into the whole Spirit of America story. Thats what I really like about this book, that it includes so many of the people who made Spirit of America happen and who have been so important to me.

So here it is: the story of my life, with all the highs and lows, warts and all. Better do up your seatbelts, because the ride is going to get bumpy.

A LEADEN SKY HUNG OVER the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, rain drizzling down on the two hundred square miles of white desert. It was November 15, 1965, extraordinarily late in the year for an attempt on the world land speed record, well into the off-season when the salt became flooded. A needle-nosed race car nevertheless sat out here on this chilly morning, sheltered from the weather by a red and white awning. Spirit of America was painted on its side and, on the ten-foot-high tailfin, sweeping backward, an American flag. And at the back: the business-end of a jet engine, capable of generating 15,000 pounds of thrust in full afterburner. That was something like 30,000 horsepower, nearly double the juice of the entire field in the Indianapolis 500 earlier that year.

The cars designer and driver, twenty-eight-year-old Californian Craig Breedlove, had been out here waiting since dawn. He hadnt eaten breakfast. He never did before a record attempt. He wanted to keep his stomach empty in case he crashed and had to be rushed to the hospital to be pieced back together. He wasnt thinking of food, however. He was focused on the weather and on what he had to do if it cleared. All he needed was an hour, just one hour, to beat the record set the week before by his archrival Art Arfons. One run down the course and one run back, completed within sixty minutes, the average of the two to exceed Arts 576 mph mark by at least 1 percent. Thats how the game of land speed racing was played.

Eight thirty. The drizzle subsided. The air grew still.

Craig turned to Spirit of America crew chief Nye Frank. Lets get it running.

The crew got the battle-scarred racer positioned and ready. They had been here on the salt, off and on, for nearly four weeks, and it showed. Craigs name, painted beneath the cockpit, had been mostly cut away during repair work after the air duct was damaged. Bent body panels had been punched with louvers to relieve the aerodynamic pressure that had alternately sucked them up and squashed them down from the frame. Stabilizing vanes had been welded over the rear wheels and larger fins installed at the center after it was discovered that the front wheels were lifting up off the ground at high speed, that the car was in effect doing a wheelie. That experience had been terrifying.

Craig climbed into the cockpit. Helmet on. Harness on. Air mask snapped into place. Canopy lowered and locked.

He signaled to Nye, twirling his index finger. Start the engine.

The start cart attached by an umbilical cord to the side of the racer began turning the compressor inside the J-79 jet engine, spinning it faster and faster. Craig threw a switch inside the cockpit. Ignition. Gasoline injected into the compressor hit the pilot light and combusted. The jet whined louder, the pitch steadily rising. Advance throttle. The whine rose to a howl.

The J-79 was running on its own now. The start cart was disconnected and towed out of the way. Craig turned off the ignition switch and further advanced the throttle. The howl rose to a shriek that he could feel in his bones.

Hands locked on the steering yoke. He gazed down the black line marking the center of the graded track, the end beyond sight beneath the curve of the Earth.

This was it. This was the opportunity he wanted. This was the hour he feared.

He released the brake. Spirit of America took off down the course.

In the 120-year history of land speed racing, no name looms larger than that of Craig Breedlove. He is the preeminent living legend in this, the worlds most dangerous sport. A Los Angeles hot-rodder with a high school education, meager resources, a superlative work ethic, and tremendous ambition, he burst onto the scene in the early 1960s with a three-wheeled racer he dubbed