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A British engineer has broken the world land speed record for a wind-powered car.
Well, we say ‘car’. ‘Massive carbon fibre land yacht’ would be closer to the mark.
Greenbird, designed and driven by Richard Jenkins from Hampshire, has just been clocked at 126.1mph on the dry bed of the Ivanpah Lake in Nevada, breaking the previous record of 116mph set by Bob Schumacher (no relation, sadly) in 1999.
"It's great, “ Mr Jenkins told the BBC. “It's one of those things that you spend so long trying to do that when it actually happens, it's almost too easy."
Jenkins has spent 10 years designing Greenbird, a 600kg ‘high performance sailboat’ built completely of carbon fibre and featuring F1-style wings that provide 400kg of downforce at over 100mph. Unlike many wind-powered vehicles that use flexible sails, Greenbird features a solid, carbon-fibre sail.
Now that the land speed record has been successfully captured, Jenkins is planning on heading to the ice… to see if he can go even faster in a second Greenbird vehicle equipped with blades instead of wheels. “There’s still some debate as to whether ice or land will be faster,” he says.
Will be entertaining finding out…
And you'll remember Clarkson, Hammond and May talking about the wind powered record on the show last year.
Open Car Bar
What do you think?
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Cookie commented on this article
at 05:43 pm on 30 March 2009
Good effort... :)
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Afaque commented on this article
at 11:14 pm on 30 March 2009
haha, they managed to do it!!
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Afaque commented on this article
at 11:14 pm on 30 March 2009
haha, they managed to do it!!
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120Y commented on this article
at 07:42 pm on 31 March 2009
what does it need the downforce for? isnt it supposed to go in a straight line?
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Horsepowerrrrrr commented on this article
at 05:23 am on 01 April 2009
Imagine if you had a spoiler as big and as high as that mast/fin....
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