Wingfoot Express

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.

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 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 400 miles per hour (640 km/h).

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 400 mph (640 km/h) and Nathan Ostich's revolutionary jet-powered Flying Caduceus to only 360 mph (580 km/h), but that their design should hit 480 mph (770 km/h), 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.

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