Auto Racing: A Dream of Speed

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In What Book? The painstakingly hand-crafted vehicle that carried Breedlove to his record was a bizarre contraption with three wheels and a tail fin jutting 10 ft. high. The thing was 35 ft. long and 11 ft. wide, weighed three tons. Its single front wheel could be steered only half a degree in either direction. To keep the car from taking off at high speeds, the cigar-shaped body was designed so that the terrific air pressure on the nose would hold it down ("negative lift," engineers call it). A small fin under the nose helped carve a path through the "air wake"—so strong at high speeds that it might otherwise rip the car apart.

At week's end record-book custodians were arguing over what book Breed-love's record belonged in. The Fédération Internationale de l' Automobile said no, Spirit is not an automobile, because it has only three wheels and none of them is driven directly by the engine. The Fédération Internationale Motocycliste said of course Spirit is not an automobile—it is a motorcycle and, hélas, a motorcycle that can beat any automobile. Breedlove only shrugged. He was finally going to take a vacation. "If someone breaks my record," he said, "I'll be right back." In the meantime, if Spirit of America was only history's fastest tricycle, that was all right with him. It was undeniably, he knew, the fastest something or other.