Art Arfons and His Green Monster (video)

Hi guys. I’ve made a short video about Art Arfons and his Green Monster jet car that I thought you LSR fans might enjoy—something that I hope conveys Art’s ultimate coolness. I've posted it on my website, samuelhawley-dot-com (click on "land speed record"). It's also on YouTube. Sorry, I can't post links.

Happy New Year!

Sam Hawley
(author of SPEED DUEL: The Inside Story
of the Land Speed Record in the Sixties)

The pursuit of the land speed record in the 60s was a great story, with Art Arfons constructing his Green Monster himself from stock parts and scrap (including the General Electric J79 jet engine which was bought in a right royal mess and reconstructed by Art himself) coming up against Craig Breedlove, a guy with a lot of ambition and some very good corporate backing, very different approaches but the fact is that the cars (the Green Monster and Spirit Of America Sonic 1 which also used the J79) were well matched on speed, though it could be argued that whilst Sonic 1 reached it's potential quite quickly, the Green Monster never got to show what it was truely capable of as Art pretty much destroyed it in an attempt on the LSR when a stock part (a greased bearing I believe) failed due to it going way beyond its design limits, throwing the car into a violent roll at very high speed which amazingly Art survived with only relatively minor injuries.

Very nice.