But you need more than that to break the Land Speed Record, you need a little luck too, and what little the CN7 had was all bad. Finally, after 36,000 man hours of design work alone, by 1960 it was ready to run. It was shaken down at Goodwood, where it did 100mph with the engine essentially at idle, and was then shipped to Bonneville where Campbell’s father had been first to break the 300mph barrier a quarter of a century earlier.
Some say Campbell was spooked by the memory of his father, others that he was wound up by Mickey Thompson, his chief rival at the time, but he pressed on regardless until on one run using only 80 per cent power, a side wind caught the car. Lacking a rear stabiliser fin, Campbell lost control at a speed with low and high estimates of 325-375mph. The ensuing accident left Campbell with a fractured skull and a car believed to be all but written off.
Which, I expect, would have been enough for you and me. But not Campbell and his team. When it was stripped down the car was discovered to have withstood the accident remarkably well, though it would be 1963 before it had been rebuilt and was ready to run again, now with a vertical rear stabiliser. This time the location was Lake Eyre in Australia, chosen in part because it had not rained there for 20 years. But in 1963 it rained. And rained. And rained. The attempt was abandoned and Campbell returned home to baseless suggestions that he was no longer quite the same man as that which had crashed in 1960.
But he was back in 1964, but so was the rain. This time however, he did not quit. Only July 17th he went out there onto the lake bed and in damp conditions utterly unsuited to record breaking, became the first person to set a Land Speed Record beyond 400mph.