Golden Arrow: Britain’s Silver Bullet

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Although the photograph was taken many decades before we were even born, we can still picture ourselves as a schoolboy sitting on that bus, passing something as utterly electrifying as Sir Henry Segrave’s mighty Golden Arrow land speed record car, parked casually along the kerb of a (London?) street on a dreary Monday afternoon journey home. Oh, the excitement! Meanwhile, the bus continues its dull route, leaving the thrill behind.

The Golden Arrow was not only the most advanced machine on earth at the time — for any motoring enthusiast, it looked more impressive than the Flying Scotsman steam train and a de Havilland aeroplane combined. Even today, it remains a sight scarcely comparable with anything else.

And it did exactly what it was built to do. By the late 1920s, Britain utterly dominated the land speed record. Drivers such as Henry Segrave, Malcolm Campbell and John Godfrey Parry-Thomas traded records with remarkable frequency, each new machine faster, louder and more outrageous than the last. Vast aero-engined monsters thundered along British beaches in pursuit of figures previously thought impossible.

Then, in April 1928, American driver Ray Keech spoiled the party. His ‘Spirit of Elkdom’ snatched the record at 334 km/h, albeit by less than a single kilometre per hour. Britain needed a response, and that response became the Golden Arrow. Clothed in a streamlined aluminium body by Thrupp & Maberly, based on designs by Jack Irving — a former engineer at Sunbeam — the Golden Arrow looked less like a motorcar than a projectile. Beneath its massive bonnet sat the familiar Napier Lion W12 aero engine, displacing 23.9 litres and producing some 925bhp. Ice-filled cooling boxes were concealed within the bodywork to improve engine cooling, while the cockpit even featured a telescopic sight to help the driver maintain a perfectly straight line.

On 11 March 1929, before a crowd said to number 120,000 at Daytona Beach, Segrave drove the Golden Arrow only once — and achieved exactly what Britain demanded: 372.46 km/h, reclaiming the world land speed record. Remarkably, that single glorious run was also the car’s last competitive appearance, as it has remained on display ever since. Have you ever seen it?

Words by Jeroen Booij; Picture source unknown

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