First thing to say is that the bulk of the article is great and clearly shows that Mike Cook and team have done a great job on the car. When it came to Goodwood a few years back, Brian Palmer - who took care of SSC transportation worldwide - helped to unload it and was shocked at what a mess it was underneath.
It's when they try to explain the historical context that they get their knickers in a knot. In particular, there is a side bar where they claim "the straight scoop" from Chyrsler engine man Peter Dawson about why the engines were taken back after the runs leading to stories (according to Hot Rod) that they were either underweight and/or super secret. They say " After taking the record from Englishman John Cobb, the team was hoping he'd come back and make it a race, so they were planning to build more powerful hemis." They go on to say, "Unfortunately, Cobb never came after the record and the match up didn't happen."
For a start they didn't take the record from Cobb and it would have been difficult for him to make a race of it in 1965-66 given that he was killed in 1952 attempting the water speed record in his jet boat Crusader. I thought maybe they'd just got the name wrong but they repeat it earlier in the article and compound the error by saying they were after the "internal combustion engine speed record" which is also nonsense.
Granted it was a confusing time for the outright record because the jets had arrived by the time Goldenrod was ready to run. Cobb's record had stood since 1947 and was indeed set using internal combustion engines - albeit a pair of aero engines. By they way, in another article in the same issue of Hot Rod about this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed, they say Challenger was first over 400mph. Wrong again - that was Cobb in 1947 with a return run of 403 when he set the record. But then Breedlove, Tom Green and Arfons upped his record using jet cars (a category created by the FIA after the FIM had ratified Breedlove's record) while Donald Campbell had taken what was by then newly described as the wheel driven record with his turbine engined Bluebird. It was that 403.1mph wheel driven record which Goldenrod was after. Hot Rod don't have to take my word for it, just go back and read any of the articles they published themselves at the time. It's only latterly as others (Teague with a blown motor and Vesco with a turbine) have upped the wheeldriven record that the tag of fastest nornally aspirated car has been applied. That's not in anyway meant as a criticism. The car they produced all that time ago is still remarkable today. SSC and Dieselmax aero guru Ron Ayers cites Goldenrod as the logical start point for anybody designing a multi engined car. Quite an accolade in my book.
Robin
