Ed had a place in his shop that wasn't being rented out--although it had been at one time. The mechanic who had worked there had left it in a horrible state. There was grease on the floor about two inches thick and the room was dark. It resembled a dungeon. Still, we needed a place to build this 40-foot-long monster, and this was obviously it; so I spent all my off-duty time from the fire department--15 or 16 days a month--getting the place in shape to start building the car. I scraped up the grease, painted the floor, walls and benches and everything that didn't move, and installed new lights.
Then, one day, when I had taken a few minutes off to get a haircut, I ran into an old drive-in buddy from high school days, Mike Freebairn. Mike was flying F-86s for the Air National Guard, and he asked me what I was doing. "I'm building a jet car," I told him.
"You're building what?" he asked.
I said, "Really, I'm building this jet race car, and I'm going to break the world's land speed record. I found a J-35 engine and we're gonna go very fast."
He asked me if I had ever thought of using a J-47. Then it all came out--the plans, the car, the fact that the J-35 was the only jet I could find, and that it seemed fine to me.
"Well," Mike said, "the 47 is from an F-86 fighter. It puts out 5,000 pounds of thrust, compared to 3,500 for the 35, which is from an old navy jet, and the 47 is a much better engine. It only weighs about sixty pounds more, and it's almost exactly the same size. It's really a more advanced engine, Craig."
"Yes, but the 35 will do everything I need, so why add the extra thrust if I don't need it? I've read a lot about the 35, and it's a pretty reliable engine."
Mike pointed out that the 47 was even more reliable, and added, "It's newer than the 35, Craig, and they didn't bring it out just to have something to do. It's really much better than the 35. Just figure how much less of the total engine power you would have to use to go the same speed. You wouldn't have to operate at 100 percent power with the 47, and that's an advantage--less strain on the engine."
He had some pretty good points, and he was the first person I had ever talked with who had firsthand knowledge of jet engine performance. He had flown planes with both types of engines.
We went to lunch, and I began to get sold on the J-47. Then came the question, "Where do I find one?"
Mike was sure that the government had just sold a bunch of them as surplus and said that he would check through the Air National Guard. "In the meantime," he said, "come on out to the guard and meet some of the guys. I'm sure you're going to need some help on the engine anyway, and they would probably love to get in on it."
I did meet some of the guys and they were really excited about helping--so excited, in fact, that for starters they found the name of the company that had bought the engine. We went over to talk with the man at the surplus outlet and learned that he had been getting about $500 each out of them for scrap metal and that he had only one left. It was on loan to the Northrop Institute of Technology, but he could get it back anytime. The kids were using it as a training engine to take apart and put back together. This was great. We could actually look at the engine disassembled. For $500 I could buy a J-47 that I could see, part by part--no pig in a poke deal this one!
We went over to Northrop and talked with the instructor, who was delighted to help us. He said that the engine was completely disassembled and that the class would be glad to put it back together and run it for us. It would be an honor to be a part of the jet car program. Things were really rolling. Everybody I had talked with had been so helpful and enthusiastic that there was now little doubt in my mind that success was only a short step away.
Two days later the instructor from Northrop called and told me to come over. The class was ready to assemble the engine. I think I hung up the phone before I was in the coupe and on the way over, but I'm not sure. It may have been dangling from the table. When I got there, they were waiting for me.
All too few drivers care about such mundane things as what goes under the hood of their race car--or, in this case, what hangs on the back. They're mostly interested in how fast it will go. But I have always wanted to know everything about my cars, every nut and bolt that goes into them. So of course I wanted to see everything about "my" jet engine, too, and I was right there with the class, watching and asking the instructor questions.
I had called Bob Johnson, one of the jet engine experts from the air guard, and he arrived just about the time the class was ready to start; so I started picking his brain for some of the more specialized techniques. I was getting a short course on jet engines.
When the engine was assembled, they mounted it on the test stand and fired it up. What a tremendous sound! It started as a low hum and then rose to a high-pitched whine that made goose pimples pop out all over me. The whine changed to a roar, and I just fell back against the wall and yelled, "Wow." It was the sound of power, the sound of the land speed record!
Bob was impressed, too, but suggested that we take it over to his workshop and recheck it. "The kids may have missed something," he told me quietly.
We borrowed one of Ed's trucks and hauled the 47 out of Northrop, after promising to put one of the institute's decals someplace on the new car before it ran. It was there.
We found a few places where the kids had missed a safety wire or two, but generally they had done a pretty good job. I think it must have been a labor of love for them. I certainly considered them a part of the new team.
Anyway, I hauled the engine back to Ed's garage and went back to the drawing board, literally.
Things were moving so fast that I had forgotten one major item. I was working on some frame designs at the station one night when it hit me. "My God, I don't have any tires," I shouted. A couple of the fellows looked up from their reading, but they didn't say anything. They had gotten used to "the nutty kid" by then.
Tires were one of the most important items on the car, and I hadn't even thought about how I was going to get them. On all the previous cars I had worked on, tires were just an off-the-shelf item. But for an LSR car and the speeds that went with it, tires had to be designed and built by one of the major companies. There were only two companies that had any experience in LSR tires, Goodyear and Firestone. It would have to be one of them.
At that time Firestone was sponsoring Dr. Nathan Ostich in a jet car; so I figured Goodyear would be the one to contact. They were sponsoring Mickey, but they didn't have a jet car and I thought they might want to stay in the jet ball park and compete with Firestone. At least, this is what I told them in my letter.
This was all about as far from the neighborhood tire store approach as I could get. Here I was dealing directly with the world's largest rubber company. "Might as well start at the top," I told myself.
I wrote to Goodyear on March 23, 1960. I remember the date well. It was my twenty-third birthday, and I had stayed late at the fire station, composing the letter. Marge had asked me to be home early because the kids had a surprise for me, but I had forgotten.
When I got home, she didn't say too much. I think she had just gotten so fed up with racing that nothing much mattered anymore. She had helped the kids bake a cake for me, and they had been waiting two hours. I felt like the biggest heel in the world and I wished I could chuck the whole racing bit, but I knew I never could. I thought, "If she can just hold on until I break the land speed record, we can all go away for a while and finally get to know one another." But I knew that I had to break the record first, and I prayed that things at home would get better after I had done it.
After that night she didn't even ask when I went out if I was going racing or to Ed's place. She didn't care. The whole thing was preying on my mind a lot, but I still had commitments to Ed to race the car locally. At that point I certainly couldn't afford to let him down--that might mean the end of the whole jet car program. So I raced a little and spent the rest of my off-duty time working on the jet car plans.
About a week later I got a call from Akron saying that one of the Goodyear racing tire engineers would be on the West Coast in two weeks and would stop by to see me. I really had to get moving. The plans had to be completed and I would need a model of the car and professional drawings and blueprints, and, well, just everything. So the car became almost a 24-hour-a-day project. Fortunately, I was able to spend some time working on the plans while on duty at the fire department, but even that didn't give me all the time I needed. The solution was simple: I would give up my sleeping time.
Art Russell, another buddy from my high school days, was working as a professional model builder for Revell Toy Company. He was the perfect one to help me with the first model of the car, but would he do it? Sure he will, I told myself. Nobody has turned me down yet. When I called him and explained the whole thing in detail, he said, "Yeah, it would be a gas." I was batting a thousand. I guess I realized for the first time how important friends are. Another benefit of growing up in southern California was that everybody was interested in racing, to one degree or another, and this really helped. As a matter of fact, it saved the whole project.
My next contact was to prove as valuable to me then and in later years as any I made. Mike told me to get in touch with a man named Walt Sheehan at Lockheed Aircraft. Mike had met Walt on an air guard project at Lockheed, and they had become friends. Walt had designed the air intake ducts for the Lockheed F-104 and could help with the same thing for the car, Mike thought.
Walt was very apprehensive when I contacted him, but he told me to come anyway. He didn't say, "I'll listen to your silly schemes since you're a friend of Mike's," but that's what he meant. He was polite when I showed him the first drawings, but he started to get a little more interested when I told him the car had been designed with negative lift and incorporated some fairly sophisticated aerodynamic principles. Suddenly he didn't view the whole thing as a screw-ball plan by some kooky hot-rodder. He realized that I meant business and that a lot of thought had gone into the program.
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| The air intake ducts were formed in Craig's living room. Each was 10 feet long and weighed about 300 lbs. |
Walt agreed to help with the design of the air intake ducts more as a challenge than anything else. This was a tremendous load off my mind. The ducts were one of the most important design considerations on the whole car. Fantastic amounts of air at enormous pressures were inhaled by the engine, and the ducts had to be (1) strong enough to hold up and (2) designed properly to get enough air in without significantly increasing the drag factor of the car.
Next stop was to see Bill Moore, a commercial artist and a good one. Bill was another of the fellows who had hung around with me at the drive-in; we had been friends since the fourth grade, so his name was the first to pop into mind when I thought of artwork to show Goodyear. I went over to his office and told him the whole story, and then I spread out my drawings. He looked at them and said, "What you want me to do is give you some finished artwork on the car, is that right?" He was right. He smiled and said, "Leave the drawings; I'll get started on it tomorrow. By the way," he added, "I assume you want the car to be blue, like everything else you've had." He was right again.
Nobody had gotten any money out of the project yet. All these people agreed to help out of friendship and speculation--mostly the former. True, I promised them all a real job once we had acquired a major sponsor and broke the record, but they would probably have done it without that.
Bill completed the drawings. They were tremendous. Man, what a great feeling I had when I actually saw the car for the first time--a full-color, highly professional rendering of my design. It made me feel great. I had done the original drawings, but they were just pen and ink. Here was something with highlights and color and, well, pizazz. It was the car!
Over at Art's house, we started on the model. I helped Art with some of the basic shaping and sanding (shades of the Sky Kings days) and he completed it. When the model was finished and painted and rubbed out, I just stood and looked at it, in much the same way I had looked at my kids when I saw them for the first time at the hospital. A new era of racing had been born in me. I reached down and picked the model up and rubbed my fingers over the smooth contours. I knew I was holding the new world's land speed record in my hands. I tried to count the thousands of manhours that had gone into the project just to get to that point, but I couldn't. Little did I realize that I was just getting started and that the big work still lay ahead of me.
By the time the Goodyear man got there, we had a great presentation worked out--complete with artwork, blueprints, drawings, and the model. Walt Devinney, the engineer, arrived from Akron, and we put on a show that included everything but a seal act and four choruses of "Danny Boy" on tenor sax. As a matter of fact, we considered both but decided that we would save them for the big brass. We didn't need the extra acts anyway. He took one look at everything, politely listened to the pitch, and said, "Yes, I like it all. It looks great, and I'm going to recommend that Goodyear build tires for it."
I just sank into a chair and breathed the greatest sigh of relief yet. I didn't stay in the chair long, though, because I knew I had to keep pitching. The $10,000 wasn't going to last long, and I needed a major sponsor badly. I popped right up and said, "Great. We're going to make you proud of this car. Now will you ask the company if they can give us some financial assistance, too. We really need some funding. I think it would be a valuable asset to Goodyear's racing program."
This kind of startled him. Here was this brash kid who had asked for tires from his giant company-and then had the nerve to ask for money, too. But he pondered the request for a while and said, "I'll ask. That's all I can do."
It didn't take long to get a reply from Akron. Goodyear agreed to build tires for the car but said they didn't feel that they could put money into the project beyond that. It was a slight disappointment, but not too great. The tires were the important thing, and besides, with a name like Goodyear to toss around, other sponsors shouldn't be too hard to find. It should at least get somebody's attention.
I had the engine, the garage, $10,000 from Ed, a tire sponsor, an entourage of talent-laden friends. The project was really rolling. I felt that the logical step was to quit my job at the fire department and devote full time to the project. There were all these things to do and so many people had put so much faith in me that I felt it was up to me to produce. The only way I could do that was to give the car all my time. That's when things at home really started to fall apart.
That night I told Marge I had quit my job and was going to devote full time to the jet car. She said, "Well, if you're going to do it, it'll be without the kids and me."
I had suspected that that would be her answer, but when she said it, the words went through me like a knife. I said, "Listen to reason, Marge. I really want you and the kids with me. This is the biggest opportunity of my life. It's the time you should be here. We're gonna make it big now, honey."
She said, "You're out of your mind, doing this crazy thing. You know, you're nuts. I want out of this maniac plot."
I knew she meant it and I pleaded with her to reconsider, but it was too late. It had been over for a long time, but this was the last straw.
I didn't know where to go. I felt alone and dejected; so I called my dad. I hadn't seen too much of him in the past few months because I had been so busy. I had helped him with the down payment on his house a couple of years before--it had only been a couple of hundred dollars, but I had been saving it for a super-charger and he had said half of the house was mine. "Dad," I said, "I'm getting a divorce because of this jet car and I don't have anyplace to go. Can I come and live with you?"
He said, "Come on, Craig. You're always welcome here."
My dad was a special effects man at Sam Goldwyn Studios and my situation sounded to him like the plot from one of the science fiction movies he was working on. Here I was, involved with a 40-foot monster and my wife was walking out on me because I loved it more than I did her. I think he said yes because it would probably be good for his career to live with a real-life. science fiction star.
The plot thickened. Goodyear's engineer called and said, "I know we told you we would supply tires, but there's this austerity program and we are just not going to be able to do it. We're sorry, kid, but we can't do it right now. We're cutting way back on our racing budget." That was that. Strike two.
By the time I got to the garage I was pretty upset. Ed Perkins was there waiting for me. It was unbelievable, but he put his arm around me and said, "Craig, I know I told you I would give you the $10,000 you need to get the car started, but business has been bad and I can't do it. You can keep the engine and you know you have my best wishes. I just can't put any more money in the car, son."
That was about it. I figured that racing, like baseball, was a three strike business, and I had had all three of them. The only trouble is that I felt that I had gone down with the bat on my shoulder. There hadn't even been anything I could swing at.
It was July 31, 1960. 1 had quit my job, my wife was divorcing me, I had lost my tire sponsor and my $10,000--and the place to build the car, too. I was sitting here with a jet engine and nothing to do with it.
I went to my dad. I told him that my luck was down again and he could help me. All I wanted to do was knock the back out of the garage, extend it 20 feet, pour a concrete slab for a new addition, chop down the cherry tree (I didn't have the heart to say anything funny about George Washington), take down the badminton court and the barbecue grill, and move the back fence. I told him I would pay for the materials, do the work myself, and would build a better fence. As an added inducement, I told him he could fire the gardener, and I would take care of the lawn.
He muttered something about nobody believing it if they saw it in one of his movies and said, "Okay, go ahead."
I had enough friends around so that I could get the supplies on credit and, as always, my buddies came to my aid and helped me with the backyard project. It was a three-ring circus, but everything was done in six weeks. We had a 40-foot-long garage and a new redwood fence, and I had even built a little shed out back to keep the gardening tools in. I never got around to using them, but at least they were in out of the rain and weeds.
I was living on unemployment compensation at the time. That's a story in itself. The only way I could get payment fast enough was to come up with a good reason for quitting my job--otherwise the procedure would take an eternity. So I told the unemployment bureau that I had quit my job at the fire department because I had had to drive the fire truck and the rescue truck and it scared me. I got my payments.
My next break occurred when two friends, Jim and Lucy Johnson, dropped by to see me one day. They offered to lend me the $10,000 1 needed. Lucy was very wealthy, but I couldn't just take the money. "Tell you what I'll do," I said. "I have this lot in Palm Springs that I managed to save from the divorce settlement and it's worth ten grand. I'll sell it to you." They agreed and I was back in business.
They gave me $3,500 and said they would give me the rest later. They couldn't let me have it all at once; it had something to do with taxes. But the $3,500 would at least get me out of debt, help me with my child-support payments, and get me back to work on the jet car.
Whatever the tax problem was, it had completely tied up their money, and things started to get tough for me again almost at once. The first $3,500 was gone, and it seemed that everything was turning sour again. I had started building the car, the garage was full of junk, the money was running out--and, at that point, my dad flipped and said it would be better if I just got out of the house. He couldn't take it anymore. The studio had started to seem more like real life than his life at home.
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| The first jet car takes shape in the Breedlove garage |
The frame of the car was partially built and the engine was in it. Things had really started taking shape. What could I do now? You just don't move into an apartment with a 40-foot-long monstrosity behind you and say, "Oh, by the way, this comes, too."
During the six months that the garage-building and jet car program had been driving my dad to distraction, I had been dating Lee Roberts, a car-hop at a drive-in just down the street from the house. Lee was divorced and had two kids of her own; so we had a lot in common. I guess we both felt pretty lonely and bitter about marriage at first, when we started going out after she got off work. I had been working extra hard to help take my own problems off my mind, and the diversion helped a lot. On days when my children were allowed to visit me, we took them and Lee's two to the beach.
So, when my dad asked me to move, Lee was the first person I thought of. My mom and step-dad had moved all the way out to Malibu to get away from the city, and I needed somebody to turn to. I went over to the drive-in and waited for Lee to get off work. We drove out to Manhattan Beach to watch the surf, and I told her that I had this run-in with my dad and that he had thrown me out. She said that her uncle, with whom she and her kids lived, had an extra room and that she was sure he would rent it to me and wouldn't be too upset if he didn't get his rent right away. Lee knew how desperate my money situation was and probably went home and told her uncle that she would pay my rent if I couldn't. At any rate, I took the room and continued to work on the car in the garage back of dad's house--that was part of the deal with him when I left.
I saw Lee a lot more often after that. My dad got married shortly afterward and his wife had a fit over my working on the car, even if I was outside the house. There was a lot of noise, with weird people running around all of the time; so I really couldn't blame her. We talked it over and I asked my dad if he would trade me his half of the house for the lot I "had" in Palm Springs, which he could sell for $10,000. Dad said it sounded like a good deal. Then I went to Jim and Lucy and said, "Look, you were going to buy my lot for $10,000 but so far you've only paid me $3,500 and you can't pay me any more. I'm broke, my dad threw me out, and he's going to sell the house. I don't have anyplace and Lee is in this apartment, and..."
At this point I was starting to turn blue from the long list of tragedies that had befallen me; so I was glad when Jim said, "Wait, Craig, I know. And we're sorry, but it's this tax thing."
I knew that Jim really had the hots for my coupe; so I said, "What I was going to ask is, would you take the coupe for the $3,500 and give me back the lot for my father, so I'll have a place to build this race car?"
Jim and Lucy said yes and gave me the lot.
It was like giving them my right arm when I handed them the keys to the coupe. I'd had it since I was 13, but it was all I had left. I felt like John Wayne giving away his horse. Boy, would I have made a crumby cowboy.
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| Craig in the role of welder as the jet car goes together in his garage |
I moved into Lee's uncle's house, and shortly afterward Lee and I got married. It became quite a life. We had air ducts in the living room, and the whole place had been turned into a shop. There were jet engine parts all over the backyard and all types of steel tubing and frames in the driveway. The neighbors were going out of their trees--especially the ones who lived in the apartment house next door. They complained to the landlord, who was a man named Mr. Tuchen. One day Mr. Tuchen came down to talk to me and saw the horrible maze of stuff, with guys going in and out in trucks. It was terrible.
"What's this? What's this? What are you doing? What's this?" he asked.
I said, "This is my hobby, Mr. Tuchen. I'm a hot-rodder, and this is my hobby."
He almost came apart at this. "This is no hobby; it's a business," he screamed.
