VGMagazine

In a foreshadowing of events at Bonneville he had a close run duel with John Cobb at the 1932 British Empire Trophy competition. Eyston was driving a sleeve valve Panhard-Levassor, and Cobb a Delage; Cobb took the trophy by one fifth of a second at the finish.
    Eyston then turned his attention to record breaking in a most unlikely way. On a return from Ascot, in top hat and tails, he ran Brooklands in the reverse direction to achieve 115 miles in the hour driving a Roll Royce from the Derby works. In less formal attire he went on to be the first man to take a 750cc car, an MG famously called the Magic Midget, beyond 120 miles per hour in 1932. He then reset his own record with a run of 130. To cement this speed record he went on to set the timed distance record by maintaining that speed for an hour.
    His engineering background drove his mechanical curiosity. In 1933 he constructed a diesel record car that used the chassis of a Chrysler and the 8.9 liter diesel from a London bus. He attained the average speed of 104.86 miles per hour through the flying Kilometer. These are just a few of his speed record achievements that garnered him the nickname of the Record Man in Britain and Europe.
    After his trip out to Bonneville in August of 1935 he brought his Rolls Royce aero-engined, front wheel drive, LSR appropriately named, Speed of the Wind and set the twenty-four hour record at 140.52 mile an hour. He then went back the next year and reset the record at 149.19 for the twenty-four hours, and continued on to set the 48 hour record at 136.34.
    Standing on the limitless expanse of Bonneville he, as did Campbell and Cobb, see the potential for setting outright speeds once only imagined. Returning to Britain the sponsors stepped up and he began construction of one of the truly amazing Land Speed cars, the Thunderbolt.
    In the decade prior LSRs, for the most part, had been aero-engines shoe-horned into simple truck like chassis with primitive suspensions and drivetrains. Their bodies had reflected the rudimentary explorations into aerodynamics; ranging from exaggerated tea-drops to minimal frontal area Schneider race-plane designs with wheels. Eyston and a friend from Peugeot completely rethought the concept.
   The design concept focused on four areas; directional stability, massive power, a drive train capable of getting it to the salt, and aerodynamics. To achieve directional stability Eyston engineered a fully independent suspension system for all eight wheels. Up front there were two separate suspension systems for the four wheels.

While making plans for a run the next morning the news came through. The triple A had miscalculated. His time through the traps on the second run was 12.08 seconds, which put his official two-way run at 301.129. On the wind-swept solitude of Bonneville, far from the adulation of the Daytona crowds and attendant press, it was but an anti-climax to one of the great motoring careers. In the adventurous days of the late thirties, it was to be a pinnacle soon revisited.

II

   By 1935 the Union Jack had firmly established itself as the standard carried by the fastest on Earth. Henry Segrave's diplomatic efforts to get the American and European Land Speed timing organizations to agree on a standard in 1926 opened the door for international recognition of records. Segrave undertook this effort so his run at Daytona's nineteen mile long beach would be recognized the world over. It was. When he took the Sunbeam 1000hp through the traps at a mean average of 202.998 his achievement gained him international accolade, and a knighthood. Campbell then moved from the wet sands of Pendine beach in Britain to the sun of Daytona, and set, and reset, the standard for all to aspire. With the record set at 300 in 1935, and Bonneville the venue, two Brits would transform the LSR into a close quarter competition.
    Though the Land Speed Record is generally thought of in terms of the world's most powerful cars, piloted by the man who would be thought of as the world's fastest, the Land Speed Record covers all classifications of displacement, time and distance. The two men who were about to step onto the salt of Bonneville were from the world of class records, and between them held a great many of them.
   It could be said that George Edward Thomas Eyston grew up at Brooklands. Many a weekend was spent with his father at this immense banked bowl of a track that was to be the site of many of his racing victories and record setting runs. With the onset of World War one he joined the Royal Artillery regiment and attained the rank of Captain and the Military Cross. At war's end he received his university degree and started an engineering firm. But, his weekends belonged to Brooklands. His first competition was in 1923 at the wheel of an Aston Martin. His first win was in the Aston at the 1923 Boulogne Motor Week. He went on to win the Brooklands Cup and Gold Vase in a Bugatti, and the British Empire Trophy in an MG.