May 1960: Donald Campbell’s legendary Bluebird car

An automobile designed with a target speed of 500mph in mind 

Donald Campbell’s pursuit of speed records is the stuff of legend, and the vehicle that embodies his attempts on land is the Bluebird CN7. In the planning stages since 1956 – at which point Campbell was chasing records exclusively on the water – the CN7 was almost ready for action by the time it featured in the May 1960 issue of The Engineer.

The land speed record (LSR) stood at 394mph, set by John Cobb in the Railton Mobil Special. Campbell, in collaboration with his engineering partners Norris Brothers, planned to obliterate that number, and Bluebird was designed with a target of 500mph in mind. To achieve this, the CN7 would incorporate a host of groundbreaking technology.

The four-wheel-drive monocoque Bluebird was the first LSR contender to be powered by a gas turbine engine, a Bristol-Siddeley ‘Proteus’ 705 with an output of 4,250bhp. According to this magazine, “the use of a ‘Proteus’ dictated other important characteristics of the design; since it has, in effect, a ring of air intakes around the centre section,  a plenum chamber installation was virtually mandatory, so that the steel-tube-frame construction of the Norris-designed ‘Bluebird’ hydroplane was forsaken for an ‘egg-box’ design.”