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 Kellison J-4R was the brainchild of USAF pilot James Kellison, a man known for his exceptional intelligence, his deep love for cars, and his fascination with lightweight composites. In the 1950s the latest and greatest composite was fiberglass, a material that was a precursor to modern composites like carbon fiber, and that offered excellent…
The Moretti 750 Gran Sport Barchetta is an exceptionally rare sports car, just three were made with this body style, and it’s believed that this is the only one with a lightweight tubular steel chassis. Motorsport historians have pondered that the example you see here may very well be the same Moretti 750 that wore…
I have little doubt that OK-Supreme is one of the greatest motorcycle marque names in history, if not the best outright. The brand started out as many early motorcycle companies did – by designing and building bicycles in the late 1800s before beginning to experiment with installing engines into their frames to create “moto cycles”….
The Meyers Manx was the original fiberglass beach buggy, designed by Bruce Meyers in the early 1960s. This film tells the story of both Bruce Manx and his Meyers Manx, it’s a fascinating watch and it includes some great footage of Bruce as well as the early (and very successful) racing efforts in the Manx. The…
The BMW R nineT Urban G/S The BMW R nineT Urban G/S is a member in the R nineT model range designed to evoke the spirit and styling of the iconic 1980 BMW R80 G/S – the motorcycle that launched the modern adventure bike genre and rocketed to icon status when it won the 1981…
Rusty’s Magazine is a new motoring publication with a refreshingly egalitarian approach to cars – they don’t judge based on value, genre, class, or popularity, they simply feature what they like. Issues come out quarterly featuring individual cars from Miuras, to hot rods, and RWB Porsches, to Volvo Amazons. There’s also event coverage at annual…
