Mach my day!
Los Angeles Magazine, August, 1996 by Arthur St. Antoinele

RIO VISTA, a small river town on the sprawling Sacramento Delta, seems too Huck Finn to be the home of Craig Breedlove.

The Los Angeles native hopes to rewrite the record books later this month by becoming the first human to drive a car faster than Mach 1, the speed of sound, roughly 765 miles per hour. (When Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier in 1947, he had the good sense to do it in an airplane.) In fact, as I stand outside World Speed Record Team headquarters, the only signs of activity are a few dogs panting behind a chain-link fence and a bright orange tabby winding around my ankle.

"I see you've met Cisco" comes a voice from behind the fence. "I'm Marilyn, Craig's wife." A pretty, tanned woman opens the gate and invites me in. "When we first met Cisco here, he had just been hit by a car. We didn't think he had a chance, but the vet called that night and said, `This cat wants to live.' And sure enough, Cisco beat the odds."

It's fitting that Cisco wandered to this particular home, for Craig Breed-love is an authority on odds beating. Soon after buying his first car at age thirteen, he began probing the limits of speed--first in high-speed trials on the Mojave Desert and later on Utah's vast Bonneville Salt Flats. Eventually, this passion for velocity made him a national hero. At 26, piloting his self-designed Spirit of America "car"--essentially a three-wheeled bullet powered by a $500 military-surplus jet engine--Breedlove became the fastest man on earth by being the first to drive more than 400 mph. He then went on to be the first to top 500 miles per hour, and the first past 600. (His land-speed record of 600.601 mph stood for five years.)

He may be a bit rusty when he goes for Mach 1 later this month: The last time Breedlove drove a car at fighter-jet velocities, Lyndon Johnson was president and the Beatles wanted to hold your hand. After his record-setting 600-mph blast in November 1965, Breedlove packed his first two Spirit of America racers off to museums and parlayed his fame into a successful career in real estate.

Two events conspired to bring Breedlove's thoughts back to Bonneville. In 1979, his wife Peggy was killed in a car accident, the victim of a drunk driver. Breedlove took it hard and spent the next few years trying to cope with the loss. Then in 1983, Englishman Richard Noble set a new land-speed record of 633.468 mph, breaking a mark held since 1970 by Breedlove's friend, Californian Gary Gabelich. With the record wrested from American soil, Breedlove suddenly had the focus he needed. He cashed in his real estate holdings and turned his attention to building a new Spirit of America, one capable of breaking Noble's record--and, eventually, the sound barrier.

"The workshop is in back; the front is where we live," says Marilyn, showing me into the converted 1913 Lincoln auto show room. Dominating the loftlike space are weight-lifting and aerobics machines to help Craig prepare for the brutal g forces he'll endure during his speed runs. Suddenly the workshop door opens and the man of speed himself walks in.

Now 59, Breedlove is still lean and muscular, his features chiseled. In his hands is a crash helmet. "I just got this back from the painter," he says, handing me a light-weight air-force model adorned with a swirling American-flag motif. I aks the obvious first question. "What's it like to drive 600 miles per hour?"

"It's hairy," Breedlove says, shaking his head. "There's a common misconception that once you're above, say, 300 miles per hour, it must all seem the same--you just go into oblivion. But that's not so. As the speed increases, it gets tougher and tougher. I can feel the difference between 600 miles per hour and 603. Sitting still, my car may look substantial--it's 9,000 pounds. But when you start running at the velocities we're talking about, it's just a straw in a hurricane."

"So how do you drive at such speeds?"

"It's not so much a matter of skill as it is an acclimation thing. Experience has taught me to proceed in increments that I feel comfortable with. The worst thing you can do is go out and scare the shit out of yourself, because then you go backward emotionally. After a few runs, you do acclimate and develop a knowledge of the course. Then you `learn to balance the bicycle' and you don't have to think about it anymore."

Still, no matter how skilled the rider, sometimes the bicycle tips over. In 1964, after Breedlove had just completed a 539-mph run, the parachutes on his original Spirit of America failed. Barely slowing on the five-mile runoff, the car sliced through telephone poles, vaulted a ten-foot embankment at around 240 mph and landed nose down in a briny pond. Incredibly, Breedlove was able to swim to safety.

This time out, he will face a new set of worries. For one thing, as the car goes supersonic, the shock waves underneath could literally lift it off the ground, which would most surely be a disaster. "The only way to find out is to go run it," Breedlove says stoically.

We adjourn to the expansive workshop to see the new Spirit of America. In the final stages of assembly, surrounded by a crew of busy mechanics, the thing looks like a 47-foot-long missile with a seat bolted onto its nose. With the vehicle's aluminum skin removed for painting, I can clearly see the huge General Electric J-79 jet engine--the same type used in the F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft. When Breedlove presses the throttle pedal to the floor, he will have the equivalent of 45,000 horsepower--more than 100 times the output of a Porsche 911 Turbo--slamming his backside toward the horizon.

Breedlove designed the car himself, drawing on his experience and the knowledge he picked up in an early job as a structural-engineering technician at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. Then came the problem of paying to build the car. Breedlove's own reserves were only enough to start the multi-million-dollar project. A much-needed cash boost came when Coach star Craig T. Nelson, an amateur racer and Breedlove fan, stepped in and bought the film rights to Breedlove's story. A more substantial injection of funds followed last year, when Shell Oil, Breedlove's original 1960s benefactor, signed on as primary sponsor.

In his quest to be the first through Mach 1, Breedlove has more than the timing lights at Bonneville to beat: Current record holder Richard Noble is readying a new machine for Bonneville, the twin-engined Thrust SSC (Supersonic Car). "It's 54 feet long and weighs 20,000 pounds," says Breedlove. "Probably going to sink into the ground six inches," he adds with a smile.

"I worry a little bit," admits Marilyn Breedlove when asked about her husband's plans. "But Craig said to me, `You can't worry. If you do, you're setting yourself up.' He taught me to enjoy the process of the car being built. It is incredible what he's doing. It's very exciting."

In this era of air bags and Armed Response patrols, it would be easy to dismiss Craig Breedlove as a risk taker, a daredevil, even a fool. But in truth, Breedlove is a throwback--a roll-up-your-shirtsleeves, car-tinkering American cut from the same cool cloth as the right-stuff test pilots who helped put our country on the moon. "I do this land-speed stuff because it's interesting," he says. "It's rewarding to achieve your goal. And, I suppose, a certain part of my ego likes the recognition." His eyes scan the flanks of his jet-powered machine. "If we succeed, this car will go into the Smithsonian," he says.

Which is to say, when Craig Breedlove aims for the sound barrier later this month, he won't just be driving the Spirit of America. He'll be flying the Spirit of St. Louis.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Los Angeles Magazine, Inc.
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