Podium Legends Collection # 1

Donald Campbell with Bluebird CN7 at Lake Eyre, May 1964

Donald Campbell stares thoughtfully into the South Australian salt flats at Lake Eyre, during the long months waiting for conditions to improve sufficiently for him and his team to run that beautiful Bluebird land speed record car waiting behind him, to a new world record. After almost 5 years of design, fundraising, engineering, the build, failed attempts, a near-fatal crash in 1962, and endless weather delays at Lake Eyre, as April turned into May into June 1964, conditions improved and finally, by mid-July a new record attempt was possible. Powered by a Rolls Royce Proteus jet aircraft engine, in Australia on 17th July 1964, Campbell took Bluebird to a 403.1 mph new record.

Campbell well deserved the praise he had sought for so long, and the man and his car on their return to England were displayed across the nation to universal acclaim. Yet it had not been an easy run to the world record on the road to such fame.

Following a very long build and development programme from late 1959 onwards, and then many difficult mechanical problems, Campbell and Bluebird’s first attempt ended with a 350mph crash at Bonneville salt flats in Utah in September 1962 which virtually wrote off the £1million car and put an end to Campbell’s immediate attempts. But with a rebuilt and revised Bluebird, and fresh funding, his 90 man crew and all the equipment set out for a new private site at Lake Eyre in South Australia early in 1962. What had been previously for decades a dry useful surface for record setting suddenly and disastrously, was flooded. After many further hitches, it was not until April 1964 that conditions, the car and the funding were finally all back together to set up the car for a new attempt – Donald Campbell, his vast team and all his supporters knew this could be the last chance for Bluebird. The test run in this image showed Campbell that the new world record was close - and within days, at 403.10 mph, they had it at last.

Donald Campbell was a man who epitomised the quest for speed, driven perhaps too far by his need to surpass his father’s achievements, and to such a degree that he paid the ultimate price, in his fatal accident on Coniston Water in England’s Lake District while attempting a new world water speed record on 4th January 1967.

Original image source copyright ©2022 The National Motor Museum Trust, Beaulieu, England