If you have huge coin and huge, ummm, courages, perhaps you should purchase the late Steve Fossett’s LSR car. This ride was originally owned and built by Craig Breedlove at the same time that Richard Noble and his team were running the ThrustSSC machine that currently holds the all-out land speed record. Fossett had major changes made to the machine after taking ownership.
By reading this story from Speedhunters you’ll learn about the car’s history after Fossett took ownership, but most of the car’s headlines were under Breedlove’s ownership, and the majority were not positive. Emotionally, Breedlove was the underdog compared to the Noble’s ThrustSSC effort, which the whole of Great Britian got into in some form or another. Breedlove was never able to get that type of publicity in the USA and attempts to drum it up were not very successful. Breedlove was going to start the car live on TV during the “Regis and Kathie Lee Show,” but after multiple attempts on camera, could not get the car to fire. That was a high-profile calamity.
On the “track” the car was able to run in the upper reaches of the 600 mph range, but it was not match for the mighty ThrustSSC. After eating up an engine and suffering a mild crash, Breedlove mothballed the project due to lack of funding. That was 1997. Fossett bought it in 2006 and had it essentially rebuilt from the ground up, addressing some of the supposed faults of the original design. Then Fossett was killed in a plane crash and the car was never run.
We really hope whomever ends up with this piece, gets out there and hammers the car to see if it has the snot to take the record back. Breedlove said it could go 800 with its single GE J79 motor, and after the rebuild, others are saying 1,000 mph is possible. It’s all talk until someone tries. And Richard Noble is also trying.
