AVONMOUTH, England — The ambition to be the fastest man on four wheels — the divine madness of it, as enthusiasts see it — had modest beginnings in 1898, at a village on what were then the outskirts of Paris.
A Frenchman, Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat, driving what was little more than a streamlined horsecart with an electrically powered motor, achieved 39.2 miles an hour. Chroniclers in the Paris newspapers wondered if he had gone fou furieux, or raving mad, as the French put it when somebody fired by ambition or soaring imagination loses all grip on reality.
Image: An engine from a Typhoon jet fighter will be used in the seven-ton Bloodhound. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times
