Craig Breedlove, legendary land-speed racer and the primary individual to interrupt the 600-mile-per-hour mark in a automobile, has died on the age of 86, in line with the Southern California Timing Association.
Breedlove was born in Los Angeles, California in 1937 and bought his first car at 16, when he piloted his supercharged 1934 Ford to a high pace of 154 mph on a dry lake within the Mojave desert. At the age of 20, he drove an Oldsmobile-powered streamliner to a high pace of 236 mph on the Bonneville salt flats.
In 1959, Breedlove bought a used jet engine for $500 (round $5,187 in 2023 cash) and used it to energy his first car constructed particularly to chase land-speed information. The now-famous car was dubbed “Spirit of America” and would go on to unsuccessfully try and beat Englishman John Cobb’s 394-mph document in 1962. After making some modifications, Breedlove returned in 1963 to set a brand new document of 407 mph, making him the primary American to carry a land pace document in additional than 30 years — a feat immortalized by a Beach Boys music.
The subsequent 12 months, Breedlove set a brand new document of 526 mph however practically died within the try when his car’s brakes and parachutes failed, leading to him hitting a sequence of phone poles at 400 mph and ending up nose-down in a virtually 20-foot deep brine pond. Breedlove was capable of escape the wreckage and swim to security. Almost unbelievably, he was unhurt.
In 1965, Breedlove grew to become the primary human being to journey at 600 mph on land within the substitute Spirit of America Sonic 1. His spouse, Lee Breedlove, additionally participated in land-speed racing, changing into the quickest girl on Earth in 1965 within the Sonic 1, hitting a high pace of 308 mph.
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Craig Breedlove by no means actually gave up on regaining his crown because the quickest man on Earth, spending a lot of his later years constructing a automobile to aim to beat the 763-mph set in 1997 by racer Andy Green.
Reports of Breedlove’s demise come from a number of sources, together with a number of organizations with which he was related, just like the Southern California Timing Association and the Bonneville 200 mph Club. Jalopnik was unable to substantiate these experiences straight; we’ll replace this text with any new data we obtain.
Source: jalopnik.com