Steam Car team claims record run

The British Steam Car spouts off as it gets ready to make a run at a 103-year-old land speed record.

(Credit: The British Steam Car Challenge)

The Stanley Steamer may have finally been dethroned.

After holding onto its land speed record for 103 years, the homegrown Stanley automobile from the early days of motoring has been overtaken by a late-model import. The British Steam Car team said Tuesday that, earlier in the day, in the two runs required to be considered for the record, the Steam Car averaged 139.843 mph over a measured mile.

Charles Burnett III behind the wheel of the Steam Car.

(Credit: The British Steam Car Challenge)

Tuesday's achievement still awaits official confirmation from the certifying agency, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile.

The steam-powered mark to beat was 127 mph, set in 1906 by Fred Marriott, driving that Stanley Steamer at Daytona Beach, Fla. (According to the FIA, the overall World Land Speed Record is 763 mph, a supersonic speed reached in 1997 by a jet-powered car, the ThrustSSC.)

The British Steam Car, a project 10 years in the making, is no jet, but it does have its share of modern trappings, including carbon-fiber construction. The 3-ton, 25-foot-long vehicle has 12 boilers, and its steam gets superheated to 400 degrees Celsius before being injected into the turbine.

In each of its runs, the Steam Car, driven by Charles Burnett III, actually traveled more than 6 miles on a dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. On either side of the measured mile, it requires a 2.5-mile stretch for acceleration and deceleration. In going for the record, the vehicle had to make the second run within an hour of the first--the steam team says it made the turnaround Tuesday in 52 minutes.

The vehicle's peak speed in the first run was 136.103 mph, and in the second, 151.085 mph.

Photos: Steam Car team eyes record

[Trigeia]

Now that Green vehicles have become popular and gas prices are so high is there a chance that we will see steam cars in the future. [CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]

[make_or_break]

So...have you figured out how anyone following can SEE with all that steam? At least one thing's neat about this: you can say "eat my dust" with some level of conviction, even if it's really just water vapor and only fogs up the windshield of the poor sap in arrears rather than fouling up the fellow's teeth with all that nasty grit of days past...

[subslug]

"Shatters" the record? lol<br /><br />I'm not sure if 9 MPH really qualifies as anything shattering. To me it's laughable that in 100+ years and this is the best they can do. Even if you give them the 150 MPH return pass.<br />Label this one as a Time Waste.

[make_or_break]

I was thinking the same thing, but in all fairness it's not like there's been a lot of development with getting a steam powered car down the interstate in the intervening years.

[Dalkorian]

If it's so laughable to you subslug, why don't you do better yourself? It's easy to sit there in mommy's basement and criticize the efforts of others, but you don't know what you're talking about until you've tried it yourself.<br /><br />In the world of land speed records, 9 MPH *IS* Earth shattering. Typically those records are broken by only a few MPH, sometimes less than one.

[c|net Reader]

I agree that it doesn't amount to much, but the one thing to consider is that it was a 3 ton vehicle traveling so fast!