In 1957 the MG Car Company arrived at the Bonneville Salt Flats with an unusually shaped vehicle and legendary racing driver Stirling Moss. The car was called the MG EX 181 and it was entered into the Class F land-speed series for cars with engines between 1.1 and 1.5 litres.
The EX 181’s unique body was hiding a 1.5 litre twin-cam, supercharged MGA engine that had been tuned to run on 86% methanol laced with nitrobenzene, acetone and sulphuric ether. The engine produced a whopping 290hp at 7,000rpm and on the 23rd of August 1957 Stirling Moss took it up to a top speed of 245.64mph (395.31 kmh), taking the land-speed record easily over the previous record holder who held it at 203mph.
MG wasn’t quite finished with the EX 181 and took the car back to Bonneville in 1959 with racing driver Phil Hill, the engine had been tuned slightly higher and now produced 300hp. Phil Hill took the car to a top speed of 254.91 mph (410.23 kmh), easily breaking MG’s own record from 2 years previously.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
The Jack Brabham Trophy Race was held at Brands Hatch in 1971, identical cars were piloted by the Formula 1 paddock’s team bosses, and there would be absolutely no love lost in the competitive battle around the British circuit. The bosses that lined up on the start grid were Frank Williams, Jack Brabham, Colin Chapman,…
Editor’s Note: This film was transcoded from VHS so it’s not perfect, there are also a couple of black screen sections where I assume the original ad breaks were – I suggest fast forwarding through them. The original Widowmaker Hill Climb took place on a hillside in Draper, Utah. It became a world famous event…
Armed Forces Rally in Land Rovers is a short film by the team at Patina that covers the Armed Forces Rally Team (AFRT), a racing outfit made up of serving British military personnel competing in lightly modified examples of the UK MOD-specification Land Rover Wolf. The Land Rover Wolf is essentially a Land Rover Defender…
The BMW 2002 proved to be a major milestone for the company as it worked to build itself up again after the Second World War. To catch a glimpse of the process BMW had been through during the 1940’s and 1950’s we need to remember that two vehicles that had played a major role in the company’s fight for survival were the little Italian designed Issetta bubble car, and the Volkswagen like BMW 700. Small, inexpensive cars that BMW was able to produce and sell in sufficient numbers to keep the company afloat.
Edd China’s Garage Revival is a new TV series that many of us have been wanting for years, each episode is entirely dedicated to Edd (formerly the co-star of Wheeler Dealers) working on cars – with his characteristically friendly way of showing you how to do a huge variety of jobs on a wide range of…
The Vincent Comet was one of the great single-cylinder motorcycles of its era with an advanced engine that’s also a stressed chassis member, cantilever rear suspension that was decades ahead of its time, a Girdraulic forks, and a steel backbone frame. The Vincent Comet The Vincent Comet was the sporting version of the Vincent Meteor, the latter of…
