The Jensen left British shores in early 2023 with the plan of racing at that year’s Bonneville speed week. Following on from the ealier attempt in 2018 when we proved that we had serious potential.
The intervening years saw some major modifications, in terms of power, strength, reliability and aerodynamics. The car was transformed from a standard car with dreams above its station to a full blown thoroughbred land speed racing car.
2023 itself saw a very wet race course and some terrible conditions, we still managed to exceed our 2018 speed and won the SDRC (San Diego Roadster Club) top speed of the event award.
Later that same year we made our maiden runs at El Mirage dry lake in California.
Once again we started as rookies but we managed a couple of good runs on what was a very worn out surface.
Due to the awful weather at Bonneville and our obvious show of potential we made the decision, thanks in no small part to the generosity of our teammate Bruce, we left the car at his workshop for the winter.
2024 saw us once again making the 13 hour drive from California to Utah in the height of summer.
This was to be our most successful year. The course was significantly better than the year before.
We made some seriously fast runs and despite the usual amount of breakages we became long course qualified for the first time. No small feat, any Bonneville racer will agree this on its own is a major milestone.
We achieved a number of runs in the 180’s and solved some huge issues as the speeds and our experience level increased.
After our Bonneville success we took one more opportunity to run at El Mirage.
Despite some major obstacles we got a run in and once again went siginificantly faster than our previous attempts.
As our target was so close and we knew what was required to improve we decided that 2025 would be our last shot at Bonneville glory.
Once again Bruce offered to store the car and we headed out once more full of hope and expectation.
Unfortunately we lost sight of the design parameters we used to design the car. Lots, of high speed, high temperature runs and extreme pressure longevity was never factored into the design. As such 2025 saw an excessive number of mechanical and electrical failures that were completely unexpected. The relentless nature of this form of motor sport was taking its toll on the team and the car.
It would be remiss of us not to mention the wonderful friends we made in the USA and how much we are going to miss them all.
This year 2026 we returned the car.
It’s been quite a wrench putting an end to our USA racing adventures, but our time has come and the next chapter is still to be written in the history of this particular car.
Again with a lot of help from the team and some massive hindrance from the shippers the car has made it back home.
We now have a very small window of opportunity to prepare the car for our first serious race opportunity in the UK.
We will be running at Pendine Sands on both May 2nd and 3rd. It would be lovely if any of you could make it down there to meet us, we’d love to see you.
We are also booked in to The Enfield Pageant of Motoring on May 23rd and 24th. Please feel free to join us. We hope to share our adventures with as many people as possible and have been given permission to run the engine up a few times.
We are currently looking into attending the Mach 2 car show in Bristol on fathers day June 20th and 21st, although this is not confirmed at time of writing.
We have been invited to do some demonstration runs at the Classic Nostalgia event at Shelsey Walsh 18th and 19th July.
Closer to home we are definitely attending the Capel Car show on August 15th. Apparently we are getting the ‘star’ treatment and once again have been given permission to run up the engine.
We sincerely hope to see you at any of these events and will keep you up to date if we are going to be anywhere else.
