Sometimes the most effective way to something is the simplest.
For years armchair heroes have been saying that Land Speed Record cars don't look like cars, they look like jet fighter aircraft with their wings chopped off - so that's exactly what a bunch of unpaid American and Canadian engineers and ex-military personnel did when they wanted to go chasing speed records.
They procured (and that term is used very carefully here!) an ex-US Air Force Lockheed F104 Starfighter, in this case one with a pedigree, having previously served as a chase plane for Nasa's X-15 research programme. They removed the wings and fitted a four-wheeled undercarriage with machined-aluminium disc wheels (no tyres ever made could withstand the centrifugal force generated at 700km/h!) and called it the North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger.
FLIGHTLESS BIRD
The result was a four-wheeled flightless bird weighing 6400kg, with a maximum power output of just less than 37 000kW. The number of wheels is important because the International Automobile Federation - the world governing body of motorsport - has a hang-up about three-wheeled cars.
Then they gave it to TV presenter Jessi Combs and let her loose on a dry lakebed in the Alvord Desert of Oregon.
The result was an official two-way average of 628.724km/h on 9 October, completely outclassing the previous mark of 492.8km/h, set by Lee Breedlove, wife of former land speed record holder Craig Breedlove, way back in 1965.
That makes Combs the world's fastest woman on four wheels by a considerable margin - at one point, according to the telemetry, she was travelling at more than 700km/h.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Now this shoestring outfit has its sights set on the overall women's land speed record of 819km/h, set in 1976 by Kitty O'Neill in the three-wheeled, rocket-powered SM1 Motivator - and then they plan to challenge the multibillion pound-funded Bloodhound project for the outright land speed record of 1217.6km/h!