A rare beauty, isn't she? Muscular, too, with enough horsepower to knock your socks off.

Record breaking patriotic hero diced with death

nostalgia pic. Captain Malcolm Campbell, later Sir Malcolm Campbell, with his car Bluebird, probably in January 1931 when it was put on public display before setting a new land speed record at Daytona Beach in February 1931. This was a print in the Express and Star picture archive at Queen Street, Wolverhampton. The caption pasted to the back is ripped with parts missing but where visible reads: 'These are the first p... (no doubt photos/pictures)... completed the new car in which Capt. Malcolm Campbell will... land speed record at Daytona.... An unusual view of the new car showing C... wheel.' The date of the print is missing, but it was pre war. It was republished in 1963 as it has a datestamp of August 12, 1963, and the caption from then read: 'Worm's eye view of the most famous of all the pre-war partnerships - Malcolm Campbell and his Bluebird.' Note the sign: âCoachbuilders J. Gurney Nutting & Co Ltd.â It had the copyright stamp of Fox Photos of 6 Tudor Street, London EC4. Cars. Speed records. Library code: nostalgia 2024.

Just the sort of thing you need if you're going to go for a world land speed record.

In the 1920s and 1930s national heroes were the breed who sought glory by pushing the boundaries on land, water, and in the air, and famously among their number was Sir Malcolm Campbell.

The cars were monsters built around aero engines, and disaster was just one slip, slice of bad luck, or twist of fate, away.

Campbell - March 11 will be the 140th anniversary of his birth - first set the world land speed record thanks to Wolverhampton wheels. His Sunbeam 350hp took him to 146.16mph in September 1924 at Pendine Sands, Wales, and the following July broke the 150mph barrier.

Having squeezed the last drop of speed out of his Sunbeam, which he gave the name Bluebird, Campbell decided he needed a new car. Wolverhampton's Sunbeam works would thereafter become a rival in the ding-dong battle to go faster and yet faster.

Thanks to some rare pictures in our archive we can chart Campbell's journey as new Bluebirds strove to push the boundaries of achievement in an epic battle for supremacy, fuelled by prestige and patriotism.

Records came and went, and for Sunbeam the finest hour came with The Slug, an anything but sluggish motor. With 200mph in the sights of the contenders, Sir Henry Segrave took The Slug to 203.79mph in March 1927.

As part of his hunt for a favourable course, Campbell travelled in 1929 to Verneuk Pan, a dried-up lake-bed 400 miles north of Cape Town. It proved a fruitless expedition. Worse, while there he was given the news that Segrave had reached 231.44mph in the Golden Arrow at Daytona Beach.

Bluebird under tow during the ill-fated trip to Verneuk Pan in 1929.

There was morale-sapping news too that Sunbeam was building a twin-engined giant called the Silver Bullet. It was taken to Daytona in 1930 but in the event was a disappointment.

By the time Campbell publicly unveiled his latest Bluebird in January 1931, the scene was set for an era of unbroken dominance. After Silver Bullet, cash-strapped Sunbeam had withdrawn from the challenge. Rivals Parry Thomas, Frank Lockhart, and Ray Keech, had all been killed. Sir Henry Segrave had turned his attention to water records and was killed on Lake Windermere in June 1930.

The new Bluebird was more beautiful than ever. The engine was a Napier supercharged unit developed for the 1929 Schneider Cup plane, giving 1,450bhp at 3,600rpm.

To improve adhesion she carried more than half a ton of lead ballast, and her rear springing was deliberately out of balance, giving her a faintly drunken aspect at rest.

In February 1931 she hit 246mph at Daytona. The record was Campbell's once more, and he was knighted on his return.

Yet there was now a tempting target to drive him on - 300mph. There were new changes to Bluebird, and new records were set. For his final assault he chose a new engine, a Rolls-Royce "R" developing 2,350bhp at 3,200rpm.

A new Bluebird faces the cameras in January 1935 - the year she became the first car to exceed 300mph.

Bluebird was redesigned, and in her ultimate form as seen in our 1935 picture was over 28ft and was reckoned to be more beautiful than ever, with an innovative feature of twin rear wheels. She reached 276.82mph at Daytona, but by now it was the limitations of the beach itself keeping her short of the magic 300mph. The answer was the limitless expanse of the Bonneville Salt Lake flats in Utah.

On September 3, 1931, Sir Malcolm reached 301.13mph. He had done it. In a span of 11 years, Campbell had set nine land speed records, taking it from 146.16 mph (235.22 km/h) to 301.129 mph (484.620 km/h).

And while, with his ambition achieved, he metaphotorically hung up his driving gloves, he looked for something else to do. Which, as it turned out, was setting world water speed records in boats which also bore the Bluebird name.

Sir Malcolm Campbell diced with death and had many close shaves. Many who aspired to set new records in the 1920s and 1930s paid with their lives. Rather unusually, Sir Malcolm survived, and died in 1948.

His son Donald caught the bug but was not so fortunate. He was killed on Coniston Water in January 1967 while attempting to take the water speed record over 300mph.