The Wingfoot Express was Walt Arfons and Tom Green's jet-powered land speed record car, driven by Green to a record on October 2, 1964, after Walt suffered a heart attack just prior. The Express was powered by a Westinghouse J46 engine and hit the 413 mph record mark.
History
At a trade fair in Gary, Indiana in 1962, Arfons met Green, chief engineer for a torque wrench manufacturer. Although Green's only racing experience had been a year of stock car racing in New Mexico ten years previously, he was greatly interested in aerodynamics; this dovetailed perfectly with Arfons' interest in racing mechanics, and "Within ten minutes we were planning our assault on the world's land speed record" Green recalls.
Green shortly provided plans for a three-wheeled land speed record car, which had to be changed to four wheels to meet FIA rules; from there on there was little change until the car was finished. Green's emphasis was on reducing aerodynamic drag by lowering the drag coefficient and, especially, reducing frontal area by narrowing the track and using smaller wheels. His calculations indicated that the readily available surplus Westinghouse J46 jet engines would have more than enough power to drive the vehicle to over .
In order to find funding, Arfons and Green approached Goodyear, who were already funding Craig Breedlove's Spirit of America. In a presentation to 13 Goodyear executives Green emphasized his aerodynamic analyses, estimating that the wheel-driven Bluebird CN7 would be limited to and Nathan Ostich's revolutionary jet-powered Flying Caduceus to only , but that their design should hit , the target Breedlove was also going for. Although Spirit of America had a lower coefficient of drag, Green's design had a smaller frontal area and weighed slightly more than half as much. This, along with a thrust of 7,000 pounds force (31 kN) available from the J46 engine with afterburner, compared to only 4,400 pounds force (20 kN) available from Breedlove's J47 engine would make their design viable.
When the Flying Caduceus frustrated Ostich's team by refusing to go any faster than , Green's mastery of the subject was evident enough that Goodyear decided to fund his project in addition to Breedlove's; thus the name, Wingfoot Express, from Goodyear's trademark winged foot, inspired by a statue of Mercury. (In 1964 Bluebird CN7 demonstrated a final speed of over 440 mph, even when limited by poor surface conditions, invalidating Green's estimate.) However, although Spirit Of America had a $250,000 budget and Bluebird CN7 more than $2,000,000, Arfons and Green's car cost only $78,000.
Wingfoot Express' cockpit was located centrally, just behind the front axle, covered with an acrylic glass canopy from in front of the driver's feet to behind his head. The front wheels were mounted within the bodywork barely further apart than the width of the engine, while the rear wheels were on outriggers and exposed to the air. Green estimated that the aerodynamic drag of the exposed rear wheels cost the car , but since his calculations indicated that they already had much greater speed available than they needed, this was not viewed as a problem. A small fin rose vertically at the tip of the car's nose.