Reading one of my favourite car blogs today, I saw this entry which managed to distract me from UFC100 — a post on Hemmings that linked to these pictures of the five thousand pound steam turbine “Barber-Nichols Steamin’ Demon” (currently for sale for a half million), an Aztec 7 kit car converted to break the steam-power land speed record, which it did at 145.607 mph on August 19, 1985 at Bonneville. Definitely NOT what Fiberfab expected when they originally designed this traditionally VW-based kit car! The previous record, set in a Stanley Steamer, had long held the record at 127.656 mph, set in 1906. A British team is currently working on a car to shatter this record, but this has got to be one of the longest-standing records held by a kit car.
Update: Click here for a little more info from the Fiberfab.org website!
Thanks for the link. This really is a great piece of fiberfab/kitcar history. Keep up the good work
I chuckled a little at the comment:
“Definitely NOT what Fiberfab expected when they originally designed this traditionally VW-based kit car!”
While that is of course true, the fact is, this car was built at Fiberfab, by Fiberfab. From what I remember though, the car was never finished, but the engine was installed at least, and it was painted yellow. I seem to remember having a vintage picture of it from those days of it on a dry lake bed, which might imply that it was at least running, unless that was just a publicity picture. There was quite a bit of argument over which way to go on some of the detail of the car, and it ended up languishing outside in the back lot. Where it went from there, I never heard.