10x7inch (250x175mm) photo of the enormous twin engined THUNDERBOLT land speed record car under construction.
The location is the Bean works, the car having been built by the somewhat obscure British car-maker to the order and design of it's driver G E T Eyston. Eyston can be seen as the bespectacled figure in overalls leaning over the top of the car .He was a leading racer at Brooklands in the early and mid 1930s, a close rival of Kaye Don, John Cobb and Malcolm Campbell - all of whom were fellow land speed record exponants.
THUNDERBOLT used twin Rolls Royce R Type aero engines which had been developed for the Schnieder Trophy winning Supermarine S6 aircraft and had also been used by Henry Segrave to gain the water speed record and Malcolm Campbell to take the land speed record.
The car featured 8 huge wheels and the engines ,which totalled 73 litres in capacity and produced over 4700bhp sat side by side . Their power was cmbined through a huge custom made gearbox and passed to the twin rear wheels. In 1937 The car acheved a new land speed record of 312mph, returning later to up this further to 345mph. In 1938 this was beaten by John Cobb's Napier Railton and Eyston returned to the Bonneville Salt Flats to regain his record at 357, the car having undergone radical revision of it's aerodynmaics by this point. This record was remained unbeaten untill the folliowing year when Cobb again went quicker. Thunderbolt was then sent to New Zealand for a major trade Expo and with the outbreak of war, left stored there in a building that was destroyed in a fire (apparently arson...). The cars charred remains buried in a local rubbish dump where they apparently remain to this day!
