Stephen Laing
“While we may think this vehicle is typical of how a streamlined car should look today, it was genuinely revolutionary in the 1950s.
Nicknamed the ‘Roaring Raindrop’, its shape was based on a cross-section of an aircraft wing, which meant that, once the car reached over 200mph, downward pressure would keep it firmly on the ground.
Like many manufacturers then, MG wanted to prove that the technology that powered their sports cars could be transferred into something a little racier.
It was one of the marketing techniques of the time. They weren’t trying to break the land speed record, they were simply attempting to use the engine and some of the parts of the new MGA to construct something that could go really fast.
It was great PR for the technical know-how of the people in the Abingdon factory who built some of the greatest sports cars in the world at that time.
This car first appeared in 1957 and was put through its paces on the salt flats at Bonneville in Utah, where a ‘speed week’ is held each August. They looked around for a driver and chose Stirling Moss, building a cockpit around him.
For the driver, the car is a little like being in a goldfish bowl with a small perspex canopy over his head and he is essentially lying down with his feet pointing forward and the engine sitting behind him.
Moss managed to reach over 245mph, which was a phenomenal speed when you consider that they were using basically a super-charged version of their regular, middle-of-the-road sports car engine. But they thought they could do better.
A couple of years later, they tweaked the car a bit more and this time employed the services of Phil Hill, the American who went on to be the 1961 F1 world champion.
They went back to Bonneville in August 1959 and he achieved nearly 255mph. I had the pleasure of talking to Phil and he told me that the trouble with the canopy was that all the fumes used to rise up so that when you were rushing along you were half-suffocated.
Consciousness could be a real problem and not one you want when you’re trying to travel in a straight line at 250mph.
We really wanted to do an exhibition about record-breakers in the year of the London Olympics. We have the fastest steam-driven car alongside the fastest diesel car, which was made by JCB in 2006.
Obviously, the latter is yellow and it uses two engines that they normally put in their big digger things. It managed to do 350mph.
We also have the world’s smallest production car, which is 1 sq metre. You may remember Jeremy Clarkson and John Humphrys driving it around the corridors of TV Centre in an episode of Top Gear.”
Stephen Laing is the curator of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon, Warwickshire
Motoring Record Breakers runs until 2 September
“While we may think this vehicle is typical of how a streamlined car should look today, it was genuinely revolutionary in the 1950s.
Nicknamed the ‘Roaring Raindrop’, its shape was based on a cross-section of an aircraft wing, which meant that, once the car reached over 200mph, downward pressure would keep it firmly on the ground.
Like many manufacturers then, MG wanted to prove that the technology that powered their sports cars could be transferred into something a little racier.
It was one of the marketing techniques of the time. They weren’t trying to break the land speed record, they were simply attempting to use the engine and some of the parts of the new MGA to construct something that could go really fast.
It was great PR for the technical know-how of the people in the Abingdon factory who built some of the greatest sports cars in the world at that time.
This car first appeared in 1957 and was put through its paces on the salt flats at Bonneville in Utah, where a ‘speed week’ is held each August. They looked around for a driver and chose Stirling Moss, building a cockpit around him.
For the driver, the car is a little like being in a goldfish bowl with a small perspex canopy over his head and he is essentially lying down with his feet pointing forward and the engine sitting behind him.
Moss managed to reach over 245mph, which was a phenomenal speed when you consider that they were using basically a super-charged version of their regular, middle-of-the-road sports car engine. But they thought they could do better.
A couple of years later, they tweaked the car a bit more and this time employed the services of Phil Hill, the American who went on to be the 1961 F1 world champion.
They went back to Bonneville in August 1959 and he achieved nearly 255mph. I had the pleasure of talking to Phil and he told me that the trouble with the canopy was that all the fumes used to rise up so that when you were rushing along you were half-suffocated.
Consciousness could be a real problem and not one you want when you’re trying to travel in a straight line at 250mph.
We really wanted to do an exhibition about record-breakers in the year of the London Olympics. We have the fastest steam-driven car alongside the fastest diesel car, which was made by JCB in 2006.
Obviously, the latter is yellow and it uses two engines that they normally put in their big digger things. It managed to do 350mph.
We also have the world’s smallest production car, which is 1 sq metre. You may remember Jeremy Clarkson and John Humphrys driving it around the corridors of TV Centre in an episode of Top Gear.”
Stephen Laing is the curator of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon, Warwickshire
Motoring Record Breakers runs until 2 September
