Sport: Bluebird

Bluebird, the world’s most powerful automobile, and its driver, Capt. Malcolm Campbell, arrived in the U. S. last week. Capt. Campbell had already driven Bluebird 214.7 m. p. h. He wanted to try at Daytona to break the world’s record of 231.362 m. p. h. made there by the late Sir Henry Segrave in his Golden Arrow. Capt. Campbell was having a little trouble with the town of Daytona and the American Automobile Association about expenses for electric timing devices and payment of officials at the trials, not because he could not afford to put up the money himself but because he felt it unfair for him to pay his own judges.

Capt. Campbell, quiet, reticent, with regular teeth and a narrow, Mephistophelian face, has spent $100,000 on alterations in Bluebird. It has the same long chassis he drove at Daytona three years ago (TIME, Feb. 27, 1928) but its new 12-cylinder Napier aeroplane engine has been equipped with superchargers that up its horsepower from 920 to 1,450. The Golden Arrow had only 900 h. p. Blue bird’s chassis clears the ground by five inches and the wind resistance has been reduced by changes in streamlining. Fins like a plane’s elevators will hold down the rear wheels. It needs three miles to work up to full speed and three miles to stop. By way of training to drive it Capt. Campbell has not had a drink for six months. Said he: “There is no kick in driving 200 miles an hour. You are too keyed up. . . . It’s not on the books for me to breathe my last behind the wheel of a motor car. . . . I’ve been so near to being snuffed out . . . always pulled through. . . . I’m a fatalist. . . . When my time comes, it comes, and it doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing. It’s in the book.”