The first car to break the 600 mph barrier has been sold at the RM Sotheby’s Miami auction.
The Spirit of America Sonic I was built by Craig Breedlove, who drove it to a two-way average speed of 600.601 mph on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in 1965.
The 34-foot-long needle-nose car is built around the GE J79 engine from an F-4 Phantom II fighter jet that’s rated at 15,000 pounds of thrust.
Breedlove’s wife Lee also used it to set a women’s land speed record of 308.506 mph during the trip.
Breedlove never drove it again and in 1975 donated it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, where it has been kept ever since.
The museum recently decided to auction some of the historic cars that don’t have direct ties to the speedway to fund a foundation to support the facility, including the Chevrolet Corvette SS Project XP-64 and a Ford GT40 that raced in the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Sonic I crossed the block at the auction on Thursday night and sold for $1,325,000, though the new owner likely won’t ever get to take it for a spin, let alone at 600 mph.
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RARE 1957 CHEVROLET CORVETTE SS PROJECT XP-64 SOLD FOR RECORD $7.7 MILLION
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1954 MERCEDES-BENZ RACE CAR SOLD FOR $53 MILLION
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After watching his record get beat twice by Gary Gabelich at 622.407 in 1970 and Richard Noble at 633.47 mph in 1983, Breedlove returned to Bonneville with the Spirit of America Formula Shell LSRV. The car was more powerful than the Sonic I and Breedlove drove it to 675 mph on one pass, but crashed and damaged it beyond repair, ending his last record attempt. A year later, Andy Green would drive the ThrustSSC to 763.035 and become the first and only person so far to break the sound barrier in a car.
Ford is tipping its hat to the Spirt of America with a special edition version of the Mustang GTD, which holds the American lap record at the Nürburgring, but has a top speed of just 202 mph.