This is the single greatest honor in the motor vehicle industry, intended to honor a career and/or lifetime achievement. To become a "Hall of Famer" the nominee must be either retired or deceased. Recipients must have significantly impacted the development of the automobile or the motor vehicle industry. Typically, four to eight individuals are inducted each year.
The human quest for speed on land is as old as the automobile itself. Since a Frenchman set the first recorded speed record in 1898 of just over 39 miles per hour, the race to the record books has been filled with some of the most charismatic and daring men of speed. Less than 50 men, in over a hundred years of trying, have ever held the land speed record. Englishman Malcolm Campbell dominated speed record attempts from 1924 to 1935, breaking the record nine times.
But in the modern era, where the internal combustion engine has given way to jets and rockets, the king of speed is Craig Breedlove.
Craig Breedlove has broken the land speed record an amazing five times and the first to officially break 400 mph, and the first to break 500 mph and 600 mph.
Born in a Los Angeles suburb in 1937, the son of parents who worked in the motion picture industry, Craig Breedlove himself looked as if he had come straight from Central Casting: with boyish good looks, charm, and a disarming smile, he was the prototypical Southern California kid. Hollywood could only have done better had his name been Speedlove.
Breedlove bought his first car when he was only 13, and at 16 drove it in speed trials at the dry lakes of the Mojave Desert. In his 1934 Ford hot rod with a supercharged V8 engine, the teenager clocked a timed speed of 154 mph, burning alcohol fuel. Four years later, in 1958, he drove a supercharged Oldsmobile-engined streamliner car to 236 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
After high school, Breedlove worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica as a technician in structural engineering, where he learned many of his design and engineering skills. But Breedlove’s need for speed would not be quenched. In 1959, at the age of 22, when most young men his age worried only about the next weekend, Breedlove bought a $500 military surplus jet engine, with a goal to design and create his first land speed record vehicle. Inspired by President Kennedy’s plea to “Ask what you can do for your Country,” Breedlove named his vehicle “Spirit of America” with the goal of bringing the land speed record back to America for the first time in 30 years.
With sponsorship funds from Shell Oil Co. and Goodyear, Breedlove finished his revolutionary new jet-car in 1962 and took it to Bonneville, expecting to break Englishman John Cobb\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s land speed record of 394 mph. The new car\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s handling problems prevented Craig from doing that, but his sponsors hung on.
The following year, in 1963, he returned to Bonneville with a steerable nose wheel and a high, vertical stabilizer on the car. With this improvement, he was able to set a new, two-way official speed record of 407 mph, to become the first ever to average over 400 mph.
His record, however, would not last long. The next year, American Tom Green drove 413 mph at Bonneville. Then the speed record began to fall several times within days. First, a drag racer from Ohio, Art Arfons, built a land speed car in his back yard called the \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Green Monster,\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" using a military surplus jet aircraft engine with an afterburner to reach a new record of 434 mph.
Breedlove countered a week later, with a new speed record of his own, at 468 mph. A few days later Breedlove broke the 500 mph barrier, with another new record of 526 mph.
The new record came at a high price, however. Breedlove lost both drag parachutes and wheel brakes. The Spirit of America sliced through a row of telephone poles at 400 mph and ended, nose down, in an 18-foot-deep salt brine pond. He had to swim out to save his life, but was miraculously not hurt. Again, the new record did not last long. Art Arfons responded by breaking that record with 536 mph.
Breedlove and Arfons again battled it out in 1965, trading records twice within days until Breedlove became the first human ever to drive faster than 600 mph on November 16, 1965 with a speed of 600.601 mph.
As a result of his success, his All-American persona, and by being featured on national television through Goodyear Tire commercials, Craig Breedlove became a household name and one of the most popular motorsports personalities in America.
After Breedlove broke the 600 mph barrier, the land speed record, traded so frequently in 1964 and 1965, would now hold for five years, until 1970.
