An Unexpected Turn in the Road

In July of 1995 I was camping on Mt. Rainier with my family - wife, two daughters, and mother-in-law - in the Cougar Rock campground just above the Longmire Lodge on the southeast side of the mountain for a few days. I woke up early and decided to hoof it down the trail to the lodge below and get a cup of coffee and read the newspaper.

While sipping slowly at a table as other families were enjoying their breakfast, I turned the pages of the newspaper to find a large spread on the front of the sport section about an auto show in the Tacoma Dome featuring a jet powered car that was intending to go for breaking the existing land speed record of 633 mph set by Richard Noble of the U.K. in 1983. Two guys, Gary & Rick, had built a custom vehicle around a long jet turbine engine made by General Electric back in the '50s. T\As I read through the article, I learned that their car, the American Eagle One, had appeared at this auto show recently and their project was based in Edgewood; a small town not far from where I worked and lived.

Having been a B-52 crew chief in the Air Force out of high school, I was intrigued when I read that they were inviting volunteers to drop by and see if they could help out the project. It wasn't long after returning from the camping trip that I went to the shop where the car was. I met Gary, a tall and intense looking guy that was about my age. He was the driver since he'd had experience driving jet funny cars at drag race events around the globe. The car was a fairly sleek looking vehicle, but I could tell from my experience with aircraft that the canopy wasn't designed to handle the speeds they were claiming to achieve; it wasn't aerodynamic, or strong, enough to withstand the pressures created by the airflow.

I became a "grunt" - coming to work parties on the weekends occasionally, and doing whatever needed to be done to get things ready for an event. It was at these work parties that I met two of the crew who would later become good friends; Ed Shadle and Keith Zanghi. Keith had helped to design the steering suspension on the car and was a former drag racer himself. Ed was just retiring from IBM as a technician of 30 years and was the Project Manager. Ed promoted and booked the car for giving Jay Leno of the Tonight Show on NBC a ride. The car had been designed with a passenger seat behind the driver and just in front of the engine.

Over the two years time with this project, it gradually became clear to Keith, Ed, and myself that Gary and Rick didn't really want to go for the record with the car, they just wanted to make money with it to help pay their bills and have a little fun with it. Ed had successfully gotten the car to be on display in the New York International Auto Show and while there, managed to get an appearance on the LIVE with Regis and Kathy Lee Show by doing an engine start and run up on the downtown streets just outside the studio. However, after the trip was over, it was discovered that money had been used to pay allimony and this was the straw that "broke the camel's back" for Ed & Keith. Along with other circumstances which occurred that made it clear the owners weren't serious about this, the British had come over to the U.S. with a twin jet powered vehicle - the ThrustSSC - and, in our own backyard, successfully set a new record; shattering the old one and becoming the first ever supersonic car by going 763 mph or mach 1.02. This was in October of 1997.

It was at this point that Ed & Keith discussed and agreed to go into a partnership together to create their own land speed project. Thier biggest issue facing them was how they were going to afford the very expensive research & development of designing and building a car capable of going faster than the speed of sound. It took a trip to the east coast to find a solution.