Front on, the vehicle could be mistaken for a nifty sports car, and from the rear it looks like something out of a low-budget science fiction show, all jutting Thunderbirds fins. But the side view is the crucial one – a puzzling mishmash of tubes and wires and water tanks.
This is Inspiration, a steam-powered car built in the UK – in a wooden workshop in the New Forest, Hampshire, to be precise – believed by its designers to be capable of smashing the oldest land speed record.
In August, on the Bonneville salt flats of Utah in the US, superheated steam will rush through almost two miles of the car’s tubing and propel the vehicle at 175mph, a speed that would smash the steam car record of 128mph, established more than a century ago.
All in all, it is a very British kind of project, a mixture of eccentric dreams and clever, patient engineering: a combination of the hi-tech (it has taken brilliant technical knowhow to design tubing able to withstand the sort of heat and pressure that will be generated) and the homespun (an ordinary camping gas valve turns out to be a vital component in the ignition system).
You know, the crew at The Guardian are pretty lucky. They often get to write long, interesting pieces like this. And there really are a heckuva lot of folks out here – who really enjoy their writing and what they write about. Which is basically anything!
RTFA. Gearheads especially.
