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Rosco McGlashan (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:10
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  This episode is about a lifelong quest to be the fastest Aussie on Earth.
• 0:33
  Roscoe McGlashan is a bit of a legend.
• 0:36
  Very proud of his West Australian roots, and that's in fact where we find him for this chat, at the Perth workshop where his very dedicated team are helping to shape what is effectively a rocket on wheels, a horizontal-looking missile called Aussie Invader 5R.
• 0:54
  designed to do 1,000 mile an hour.
• 0:57
  That's 1,600 kilometres an hour and never leave terra firma.
• 1:02
  It's an incredible feat of engineering that in many ways is groundbreaking because it asks a huge amount of the componentry.
• 1:11
  Some clever people have worked on this project, but really only a land speed record attempt will confirm the simulations and if it can withstand the rigours of going where no human being on Earth has gone before.
• 1:24
  In automotive and racing terms, it's a bit like being the first to summit Mount Everest.
• 1:30
  Roscoe is a straight shooter.
• 1:31
  As awkward as they come, and even at 70 years of age, his insatiable desire to just go fast burns like a never-ending supply of that special rocket fuel mix he needs.
• 1:43
  McLashen discovered his love of machines and speed very early on in life, and it became an obsession.
• 1:50
  Well, Rusty, it's a pretty long story, mate.
• 1:53
  I'm just, in saying this, I've just celebrated my 35th birthday twice.
• 1:57
  So until last week, I looked back, I was like, go on, buddy, 70.
• 2:02
  And I've got no perception of time, mate.
• 2:07
  But anyway, going back to my young days, so yeah, I suppose to start from the beginning, I had a born-up in Perth in Western Australia, one of the suburbs, and mum and dad had a bit of a fierce relationship, and they were on and off and what have you, so I ended up in a home in Perth.
• 2:25
  At the school we went to next door, we weren't allowed to kick the footy or play cricket or do anything, all the other guys did.
• 2:32
  So me and my best mate, we started playing our own game.
• 2:36
  We'd come and we'd sit down in the dormitory with our backs to the wall and we'd listen to motorcycles, trucks or cars go past us.
• 2:43
  And I would say, oh, that's a such and such truck.
• 2:49
  and we're taken with cars and motorcycles and stuff like that at young age.
• 2:53
  So at 10 years of age, I was given a job to keep me busy.
• 2:59
  So I had a job on Saturdays and Sundays cleaning boats here, cleaning at the end of the local shipyard because I'd little bit like to climb inside and clean
• 3:09
  what have you, saved up some money and yeah, I was doing pretty good.
• 3:15
  And then at age 12, I started high school and I started high school and I was only there for a week, I've got to tell you, but I think I was, I knew me gazenters and yeah, I knew me gazenters, yeah, I thought I was clever enough to sort of leave.
• 3:32
  So I had my own car at that time and I'd driven it to school, but I used to have to hide it
• 3:38
  And so I was there for a week and I came out one day and there's the headmaster, Lynn, on the foot of my car.
• 3:45
  And he said, McClashon, you little arsehole.
• 3:47
  He said, I might have known this would be yours.
• 3:51
  He said, what are you doing with the car at your age?
• 3:52
  And whatever.
• 3:53
  I said, well, sir, I've worked for it and I've bought it and I've paid 40 quid for it.
• 3:58
  And he said, I'll tell you what to do.
• 3:59
  He said, get your arse in that car.
• 4:00
  And he said, if I ever see you in it again, you're going to find yourself in jail.
• 4:04
  So anyway, and he said, besides, that's my parking spot you're in.
• 4:10
  Anyway, so I headed off into the sunset at age 12 and, yeah, ended up out there about 500 miles out of Perth and pulled up somewhere.
• 4:18
  Didn't know where I was going, pulled up and saw some boys put in a...
• 4:22
  putting a tin roof on a big wheat bin and went over and asked if they wanted to get the job done and put the age up to 16 of course and went working but the ambition was always to set a land speed record and at the same time I left school, I should have mentioned at the same time I left school, Donald Campbell came across here in 1963.
• 4:44
  and was running at Lake Eyre, as you may or may not recall, Lake Eyre.
• 4:48
  And anyway, he was having a lot of troubles with weather and different things.
• 4:52
  And anyway, I said to my mates at school, I said, bloody ponds.
• 4:56
  I said, Jesus, what are they doing?
• 4:57
  I said, my car's going to go a heap faster than that.
• 5:00
  And obviously they all laughed at me at 12 years of age.
• 5:03
  They all laughed at me.
• 5:04
  And the bottom line is I've been on the trail of the land speed record ever since.
• 5:09
  I love it.
• 5:09
  And, yeah, so it's been one hell of an apprenticeship, Rusty.
• 5:14
  I've done everything in – well, not everything, but just about everything you can possibly do for a backyard guy in motor racing.
• 5:20
  I've driven rocket funny cars.
• 5:21
  I've driven rocket go-karts.
• 5:23
  I've V8 motorcycles.
• 5:24
  I've driven it.
• 5:25
  speedway vehicles, motorcycles, the works.
• 5:28
  And yeah, anything that had wheels could go fast, I've had a go at it.
• 5:33
  But the land speed thing has always been my ambition.
• 5:35
  And to me, I've treated the land speed record as an apprenticeship and yeah, to go fast.
• 5:40
  Let's talk about some of those other vehicles as we go in the discussion here.
• 5:43
  I want to come back to that first car.
• 5:45
  What was it?
• 5:46
  What was your first car?
• 5:47
  It was a, I've got to get the year right, it was a 50 Ford Custom Line.
• 5:53
  And I still marvel at it these days.
• 5:55
  I think we've gone, Mr. Fultz, sorry for me, I paid 40 quid for it.
• 5:58
  And I paid 40 quid for it.
• 6:00
  And I think even in those days, it must've been worth a lot more than that, but I really can't recall.
• 6:04
  But yeah, it was a good vehicle.
• 6:07
  And I ended up doing a lot of things with that car.
• 6:09
  I drove across the Nullarbor when the Nullarbor was shut.
• 6:11
  And yeah, I had a lot of fun.
• 6:14
  You pointed out your birthday there before.
• 6:16
  You're like a 25-year-old trapped in a 70-year-old's body, I reckon.
• 6:20
  That's probably the best way to sum you up.
• 6:21
  You guys really are, Roscoe, like mountain climbers.
• 6:26
  You're pioneers in so many ways.
• 6:28
  And I'm really glad that you brought up the likes of Donald Campbell before and even Sir Malcolm Campbell.
• 6:34
  Were those guys among those that you looked up to in this quest to be the fastest on land?
• 6:41
  I've got to be honest, mate.
• 6:43
  No, they're not.
• 6:44
  I always looked at guys, yeah, I always look at Malcolm Campbell, Donald Campbell, obviously Malcolm Campbell, don't get me wrong, absolute legend.
• 6:51
  So Malcolm Campbell, absolute legend, and obviously he was a pioneer.
• 6:54
  When you talk about pioneers, he was a pioneer at the time.
• 6:57
  Yeah, I look at perhaps Donald and,
• 7:00
  guys like that, money guys that could go out.
• 7:03
  And a lot like Paul Newman, I suppose, if you've got the money, you can go and do it.
• 7:07
  So there's always been three ingredients to settle landscape reformers, the desire.
• 7:11
  You need a heap of desire, you need a heap of dough, and you need the skill.
• 7:17
  And we've got two of those ingredients, but we've never ever had any money.
• 7:20
  But as I was saying, my experience
• 7:23
  my heroes in the land speed thing and the land speed of all chasers are people like Craig Breedlove who's a good friend of mine.
• 7:31
  Craig's still talking about putting another car together, 800 mile an hour car together, and he's 76 I think he is now.
• 7:38
  And yeah, Art Arfons is a legend, the junkyard genie.
• 7:41
  You'll see Akron, Ohio, he was a guy that would walk into a junkyard and say, I'll have the
• 7:49
  come on with a bucket load of shit and put a card together and go fast, free fast.
• 7:53
  And yeah, just an amazing guy and there's a lot of incredible stories with stuff that Art did and these are the sort of guys that inspire me.
• 8:01
  But sadly, I think the thing for us is like people who say on the Landspeed Record, who really cares these days?
• 8:06
  You can do that on a computer or whatever.
• 8:09
  whether what we're doing is right, wrong or indifferent.
• 8:12
  It's something where, just as I say, it's my lifetime work, my life's work to achieve the impossible.
• 8:18
  And we already say we've achieved the impossible.
• 8:20
  We built a car here in this shed, in my own shed, and we went 638 mile an hour in that back in 2002, which is faster than any car gone in the world.
• 8:33
  But we can only do it one way.
• 8:34
  We had seven kilometres of water on the track.
• 8:36
  We couldn't back it up.
• 8:37
  And, but yeah, I say to people, we've already achieved the impossible and we're now out there to achieve the unthinkable with this new car.
• 8:45
  We want to talk about the new car in more detail as we go here in the podcast.
• 8:49
  Can we pinpoint a couple of key machines along the way for you?
• 8:53
  I want to, one that I did a little bit of homework on and you might correct me if I don't have this quite right.
• 8:59
  Let's start with, was it called Crazy Horse?
• 9:02
  The Chevy V8 powered motorbike, no clutch.
• 9:04
  Is that true?
• 9:05
  Yeah, well where that came from Greg, yeah, that was a, I sort of got around the tracks for a long time
• 9:20
  joined Warwander as their manager in Brisbane.
• 9:23
  So I left Perth and went across there running their new automatic shop they set up there.
• 9:27
  And in the throes of being over there, I met one of Brisbane's legends, a guy called Wally Pushki, a Gold Coast gutsman they call him, and his lovely crew, fantastic crew.
• 9:36
  And anyway, yeah, I got to ask him if I could hand the crew on the bike.
• 9:41
  And anyway, so we go down to Surfers Paradise, and this is the most amazing
• 9:54
  It was something unbelievable.
• 9:55
  And anyway, the thing with it is no clutch whatever.
• 10:00
  And anyway, but the exciting thing with surface paradise was that when they had a good machine on, it was a really good ploy for the track to sort of stall for time, you could open the gates halfway in the middle of the track, and the pits were sort of halfway down a quarter mile.
• 10:16
  Pits were there and then the good came out, like American imports and stuff like that,
• 10:33
  That was really good.
• 10:34
  But the good thing with the V8 bike was you could start in the pits and it had a light of 30 mile an hour.
• 10:40
  So you start in the pits and you're running out of the way and you turn the thing out, turn it down towards the bridge towards the start line, get everyone away and just grab the throttle and blaze the tyre all the way down to the bridge.
• 11:00
  the engine there'd be someone down there waiting with the dolly to go onto the back wheel pull it around push it into stage put the stand out in the back and then um we had a guy bobby allsop he's absolutely absolutely true for him not with us any longer but he built like arnold sports and this guy and he had the job of starting the bike so back in those days we didn't have aircraft starters or stuff like that so we had a bloody common old bloody ford or something custom line or something flywheel with a starter in a crime
• 11:30
  harmonic balancer that you plug the signal into metal and harmonic balancer and they actually hit it and hit the switch.
• 11:37
  This thing was spin up and probably as soon as you hit the revs, it would go up 6,000, 7,000 RPM.
• 11:41
  And poor old Bob would pull this thing out and he's fighting the biggest guy I've ever seen this thing bloody doing this and had a disc brake on the firewall to stop the firewall, but he couldn't activate that until he put it in the back of the truck and he wrestled the thing back in the back of the truck, put it back in there.
• 12:01
  master of this, he'd rock it off the stand, back tyre would come past him like a speedway bike and back tyre would be kissing Armacar on the left hand side and this thing would go out and around and just when you're not, you couldn't see anything, just the whole place is fogged out in rubber and when you're chasing him, most of these runs are at night time so when you're chasing him, you couldn't see anything, you couldn't go too fast in the start there because you wouldn't know where he was, there's rubber everywhere.
• 12:24
  And anyway, just an amazing, amazing vehicle.
• 12:28
  And the thing about Wally is he ended up doing 91.2 on it, which, you know, was faster by 170 miles an hour back then.
• 12:36
  But the bottom line was he's still got half a mile to get there.
• 12:40
  I ran a little bit better ET on it, but, yeah, I wasn't as brave, so I was running a lot straighter line.
• 12:45
  So, yeah.
• 12:46
  Yeah, but it was an amazing machine.
• 12:48
  As I say, to me, it was the most amazing vehicle that ever raced the racetracks in Australia.
• 12:54
  And then you build a rocket-powered bike.
• 12:58
  Is it true they tried to kind of ban it from Australian tracks back then?
• 13:03
  Is that right?
• 13:04
  Yeah, I probably should go back to the stage if I can.
• 13:07
  I really got...
• 13:25
  We slide down the track, I'm only 70 miles out, the bike will be chasing it.
• 13:29
  And a couple of times, smashed my helmet, ripped my hair off with it and a few things like that.
• 13:34
  And anyway, yeah, I thought, I want to make something that goes a lot faster, but it's a lot safer.
• 13:40
  So a couple of guys I was talking to, they said, well, what are you thinking?
• 13:43
  I said, a rocket bike.
• 13:44
  They said, a bloody rocket bike.
• 13:47
  And they'd never heard of one.
• 13:49
  They'd never heard of one.
• 13:49
  Anyway, so at the time I was doing a bit of, you know, I was looking at the rockets and stuff, the rocket funny cars and dragsters in America were running.
• 13:57
  Anyway, so I started building my own rocket.
• 13:59
  I built my own rocket engine.
• 14:00
  Well, this thing had two rockets on it and built them up.
• 14:02
  And anyway, set up a test brig in Perth here somewhere and tried running a monoproxide.
• 14:09
  So these were known as a monopropellant.
• 14:11
  So they ran the oxidiser with 90% hydrogen peroxide.
• 14:15
  And so in other words, that ran by itself.
• 14:17
  If you glue that into the engine through a catalyst, it self ignited, decomposed, made a heap of power.
• 14:24
  So that's what the rocket cars did at this time.
• 14:26
  But I had all the NHRA rules and everything on making them, but no one could ever give you a design or an engine.
• 14:31
  So I did my best to make up an engine.
• 14:33
  And anyway, to run the bike, I thought I've got to really make this impressive.
• 14:39
  It's got to put on a good show.
• 14:40
  I can't be sort of taken down the track when no one's seen a rocket.
• 14:44
  around and say, oh, this didn't work because of that.
• 14:47
  So I caught up with a good mate of mine.
• 14:48
  I was flying out to California to meet an absolute legend, fearless Fred Goski, who drove a rocket punny car for the Detroit Moldbacks, actually, as it turned out, the Chicago Patrol.
• 15:01
  And I didn't know that at the time.
• 15:03
  But anyway, here's me.
• 15:04
  So I rocked up at the back of the car.
• 15:16
  You carried it as hand luggage, did you?
• 15:19
  Yeah, done that quite a few times back in the Fords and back in the old days.
• 15:22
  Bottom line was, yeah, no one knows what they were or whatever and so it was no big deal.
• 15:26
  But anyway, I walked up at this Fred Goski's place.
• 15:28
  It was one of the first gated communities in California and met with Fred and anyway, around his house, I'll never forget this, the day I died, there's 36, I counted it, 36 barrels of rocket fuel stored from his front door all the way around the house, around the back.
• 15:43
  Wow.
• 15:44
  And I said, well, they're empty barrels, they're FMC barrels.
• 15:48
  Fred, they're empty.
• 15:50
  He said, no, they're all four.
• 15:50
  He said, I bought them all.
• 15:52
  And he said, plus I've got another shop and I've got a heap of rocket fuel down there.
• 15:54
  I thought, God almighty.
• 15:57
  And anyway, long story there, but bottom line was I showed him a rocket engine.
• 16:02
  So the next day I got out and I found a couple of beers that night and held my rocket engine.
• 16:05
  He said, mate, you've done a good job.
• 16:07
  He said, before we pull it apart, he said, how many screens do you have in your cattle?
• 16:20
  He said, what do you expect to do with two screens?
• 16:22
  I said, well, how many do you run?
• 16:24
  He said, a hundred.
• 16:24
  I said, you're joking.
• 16:27
  This stuff was 15 bucks a square inch, or where it was in Perth.
• 16:31
  I thought, oh God, that's the end of the rocket there.
• 16:33
  But anyway, bottom line was we found it was wrong with the engine, but while we were there talking, there's the rocket go-kart that I ran was hanging on the roof of his shed.
• 16:41
  And anyway, I said to a friend, I said, how about we get that down and give it a run?
• 16:46
  He said, mate, he said, as long as your ass points to the ground, he said, that thing's never coming down from the roof.
• 16:51
  So two days later, we had it down on the ground, blew the tyres up, blew the tyres up.
• 16:55
  We took it out to a place called Calico Boico in Northern California and ran it.
• 17:00
  And the thing I've got to say is,
• 17:18
  and that's my tug.
• 17:20
  And anyway, so we got this thing down, blew the tires up, 90 psi, little go-kart tires, and I was about to climb in the signal.
• 17:28
  I had to use this fire suit.
• 17:29
  I never knew I was gonna be having to drive, but plus the drivers, everything you got for those rocket cars is Teflon lined.
• 17:36
  So you've got Teflon lines inside the fire, you know, gloves, goggles, the whole thing's Teflon lined.
• 17:43
  So I got all his gear on there, so he's a pretty big guy, so I'm sitting there like a Michelin man sitting in this go-kart.
• 17:49
  I got the green light, he said, just take your time, don't worry about trying to buddy E-T or anything, just wait for the tree, comes down, take off when you're right.
• 17:57
  Light goes green, I'm sitting there, I actually nailed it, hit the throttle.
• 18:01
  And I had never shit myself so much in my life.
• 18:06
  The thing before I left the line, the thing that left me in line that really burnt my arse and probably made me so mad was that I had to buy a barrel of rocket fuel.
• 18:14
  And back then it was something like $350, which is a lot of money.
• 18:18
  I think it was 60 gallons, 60 gallons, 350 bucks.
• 18:23
  And I had to buy that.
• 18:24
  So anyway, before I even ran it, so I learned how to purge it and all the stuff I had to do with the rocket.
• 18:30
  But anyway, yeah, Fred said to me, I'll give you 10% power.
• 18:34
  I said, 10% power?
• 18:35
  I said, what's the point of running the bloody thing with 10% power?
• 18:38
  And he said, you're getting 10% power.
• 18:41
  He said, you shouldn't even be in this thing.
• 18:42
  I've told you the story.
• 18:43
  You shouldn't be in this thing.
• 18:44
  He said, there's two guys been killed in these previously.
• 18:46
  He said, the tyres explode when they go too fast and they go in the arm and go and you're dead.
• 18:50
  He said, 10% power.
• 18:52
  Anyway, what a spiel of it.
• 18:53
  Jesus.
• 18:54
  So then he walks away.
• 18:55
  Light goes green.
• 18:56
  I hit the throttle.
• 18:57
  Holy shit.
• 18:58
  All I saw him standing at half track was out the corner of my eye.
• 19:02
  So I passed in there quick and low, but I don't know anything in my life.
• 19:06
  Went past, had two parachutes on it.
• 19:08
  Anyway, put both chutes out, turned it around right at the end of the braking area, hit all the dumps on there, had a nose-up dump on the front of the car, had all sorts of dumps in there, three different dumps on there.
• 19:24
  I dumped everything.
• 19:30
  He said, you put two parachutes out, you've done the nitrogen, you've done that.
• 19:34
  It's going to take us an hour now to turn this thing around again.
• 19:37
  My heart's still on this.
• 19:42
  You broke a record with that go-kart.
• 19:44
  It sounded like an amazing machine.
• 19:46
  And the pictures I've seen were you literally, Roscoe, almost lying down in it, surrounded, weren't you, by what you needed to power that thing?
• 19:56
  Yeah, you're sort of lying in the middle of the hole of the guts of the rocket.
• 19:58
  So, yeah, you've got a nitrogen tank on one side and you've got a hydrogen prop side tank on the other.
• 20:03
  And they come together and the nitrogen goes on top of the hydrogen prop side and you've got to think
• 20:10
  the more pressure you put on top of that oxidizer or that propellant.
• 20:15
  And to push it in the engine, so the more pressure you put on there.
• 20:18
  So as I say, we started off with the 10% of 300 psi on this tank.
• 20:24
  We could have gone to 3000.
• 20:30
  So in other words, if you stood on a task and looked the weight, you know, that's the way to go, it goes straight up.
• 20:36
  So yeah, very powerful machine.
• 20:38
  But yeah, we ended up running at 253 mile an hour.
• 20:41
  I'm not too good on my kilometres, 253 mile an hour and 5.97 second ET.
• 20:47
  That is insane, mate, from a go-kart.
• 20:50
  Would you say 253 mile an hour?
• 20:51
  What are we talking then?
• 20:52
  We're talking 400 and something k's, is that right?
• 20:55
  Yeah, I must have got a minute, yeah.
• 21:00
  But as I say, they do it in a blur, just in absolute blur, just absolutely mind-boggling.
• 21:05
  And I've got to say this, before I even went to America, I've got a couple of my heroes and my greatest Australian hero is a guy called Ken Warby, who everyone should know.
• 21:16
  Yes.
• 21:17
  The fastest man in water in the world.
• 21:18
  And I end up driving for Ken, driving jet funny cars and jet drags and stuff like that.
• 21:23
  And later, he's always been a mate of mine.
• 21:25
  But before I went to America to do this trip,
• 21:28
  I had my rocket engine in the bag, as I said, in the airways bag.
• 21:31
  And yeah, I stopped heading in with Ken.
• 21:33
  And he said, why in God's name are you going to America to screw around with rockets?
• 21:38
  I said, Ken, I want to be the fastest guy ever to go down the quarter mile.
• 21:43
  He said, why?
• 21:44
  I said, because that's drag ratio.
• 21:45
  I said, it's whatever.
• 21:46
  I want to be the fastest.
• 21:47
  At least about a sailboat in such and such mile out of the drag trip.
• 21:50
  No one's ever got that fast.
• 21:52
  He said, well, who gives a shit?
• 21:54
  I said, I do, I do for a start.
• 21:57
  He said, no, that's not where it's at.
• 21:58
  He said, drag racing, you put on a show.
• 22:01
  He said, you're a showman.
• 22:02
  So it doesn't matter what you're doing, and a lot of the top-field guys in there wouldn't agree, but the bottom line is, if you want to get paid in drag racing, you've got to put on a show.
• 22:10
  And he said to me, why don't you drive one of my jets?
• 22:13
  I said, oh, yeah, there you go, baby.
• 22:15
  And he always had an American guy come over and drive you too and drive the other car and said, oh, mate, I...
• 22:21
  Yeah, it's rockets to me mate.
• 22:24
  Anyway, so when I came back and after learning about the price of the screen, I thought it was no wonder what I'm about, 400 screens to put this rocket to make it work.
• 22:32
  But at the same time, a very good friend of mine was Dennis Siramus, who was the boss of Andra in Brisbane.
• 22:39
  For people that are listening that may not know, Andra of course, the governing body of drag racing in Australia.
• 22:45
  And I was back in Perth, but I contacted Dennis and said, mate, I said,
• 22:50
  we want to run the single, I want to take it down the local track and give it a run.
• 22:54
  And because I bought the go-kart engine back, I actually ended up buying the go-kart.
• 22:57
  I bought it back and I was going to put the go-kart engine in a bike, which was way too powerful, but they didn't know that.
• 23:03
  But he said to me, mate, anyway, so I had the letter hanging on my wall for 1,000 years.
• 23:07
  Andrew was telling me all about how dangerous rockets are and they do this and they do that and whatever.
• 23:19
  and whatever, and then at the end of the letter, I always laugh at the end of the letter, it said, besides, there's no one in our organisation that knows anything about rockets.
• 23:27
  It was a great letter.
• 23:29
  So anyhow, that hung there, but then the bike got hung up, and I think I covered up one down, it fit a madness, and took it all down the tip.
• 23:46
  The Guinness World Record for the fastest boat in the world is held by the jet-powered hydroplane Spirit of Australia, which reached an estimated speed of 344.86 mph.
• 23:58
  Bet the seagulls threw up their chips when that thing went past.
• 24:02
  I want to get to, if I can, Roscoe, Aussie Invader.
• 24:07
  When you think about the different iterations, the different cars that you've built along the way, the different versions, this has been a 50-year project, hasn't it?
• 24:17
  What was the genesis for it?
• 24:19
  What was the point where you thought, right, I'm going to build Aussie Invader 1, and what was that first mission all about?
• 24:26
  Well, then again, as I say, I took the advice from Ken Warby and started looking at jets.
• 24:31
  I started having a couple of drives in jets and, yeah, I did pretty good.
• 24:34
  I first couple on my licensing pass, I actually broke a couple of records at the old Canberra track, run a couple of speed records and stuff like that.
• 24:43
  But the thing is to have my own car, I did a deal with Ken that I'd owned my own car.
• 24:48
  I couldn't afford to buy one.
• 24:50
  But if I went across to Chicago and helped build, helped put the chassis and that together for one of the cars, I'd qualify to do that.
• 24:56
  So I went across to Chicago.
• 24:59
  I was still pretty young.
• 25:00
  I was still, I don't know what it was, early 20s, I suppose, and moved into a sleazy motel in South Chicago and worked with a guy called Romeo Palamedes, who, Romeo Palamedes,
• 25:16
  Jet Dragster chassis builder.
• 25:18
  And at that time, the Yanks had built many, many, many dragsters and Romeo had the name at the time, it was the best.
• 25:23
  So I went and worked with Romeo and, yeah, we put the car together and, yeah, two years later, I ended up owning that car.
• 25:31
  But absolutely, absolutely mind-boggling car that, you know, you put it in the beautiful thing about the Aussie 1 car, Aussie 1 and Aussie 4, which I built later, I had the J34 Westinghouse thing.
• 25:48
  turbines, so they get the temperature.
• 25:50
  Like, you know, jet people, I was in a jet the other day with someone jet fighter.
• 25:55
  Anyway, the bottom line was they go for a start in a Hornet or something like that, and obviously your EGT, your exhaust gas temperature, it's got to go, got to reach a peak.
• 26:04
  You can't exceed that where you put the engine in the bin.
• 26:07
  I said to this guy the other day, I said to Dragsters, we used to do a 10,000 degree start every time we ran it.
• 26:14
  and they put out what we call the jet business, the MOOC.
• 26:17
  Yeah, there's a microwave.
• 26:19
  They're sitting in a car with the engine behind it, and holy shit, that's got to blow.
• 26:23
  That's got to blow.
• 26:23
  And you look at the temperature gauge of the scale, but once you get the airflow going through it, you can see the temperature come back, and we ran these about 650 degrees, something like that, but 6,500 degrees, but yeah, they were something else.
• 26:38
  Roscoe, that's amazing.
• 26:39
  So you just detailed a bit about the engine there and how much you love those particular engines.
• 26:44
  What about the rest of it?
• 26:45
  What was it some of the learnings from your time in America as far as the chassis build was concerned for Aussie Invader 1?
• 26:51
  How did that come together, the car?
• 26:54
  Well, Aussie 1, as I say, that was built by Romeo and that was Ken Warby's car.
• 26:58
  So we owned that car.
• 26:59
  So that was Aussie 1.
• 27:01
  But we progressed from there.
• 27:02
  I thought, well, we'll get a two-car team happening.
• 27:06
  Yeah, Aussie 2 was our first land speed car.
• 27:09
  It was our first land speed car and that sort of had a square front on it that we built and that's when we set the Aussie land speed record in.
• 27:15
  But in the meantime, I was making the land speed thing was just costing a lot of time and every cent we had to sort of keep it going, which it still is with Aussie 5.
• 27:25
  But I thought to myself, well, we're building another dragster, so Aussie 4 became a...
• 27:31
  the jet rags that we raced in Australia.
• 27:34
  And yeah, so we ran the two cars side by side, covered a lot of tracks and what have you.
• 27:38
  But both Aussie 1 and Aussie 4 were basically the same cars, same power, same speed.
• 27:44
  I want to touch back on Aussie 2 if we can please, because you brought it up there a moment ago about the 1994 Australian land speed record.
• 27:52
  That was a very special day, Roscoe.
• 27:55
  What are your, how vivid are the recollections from that moment?
• 27:58
  Well, that to me was only two years ago, mate.
• 28:00
  So, yeah.
• 28:04
  No, that was, yeah, I still look back on that.
• 28:07
  And even when we did that then, like the same questions people ask me every day, when are you going to be running more?
• 28:13
  When we built Aussie, when we built Aussie 2, it was an amazing story.
• 28:17
  What we wanted to do was put a car together and there was no information anywhere how we built a land-speed car.
• 28:25
  how you got Lansby cars.
• 28:26
  So I got on very good with Art Arpons, who I mentioned once before, an Akron, a high-end.
• 28:31
  And I went with Art Arpons, it was even an expensive exercise back then to ring someone, because you know, I had to go down the phone and use a super-glue phone to ring America and stuff like that.
• 28:41
  But anyway, but yeah, I ended up ringing Art, and I said, Art, I said, can you just tell me, mate, we're making a start on this Lansby car, and I just want to know, can you just tell me how did
• 28:56
  book here says it's 22 foot 6 long and it's 8 foot 6 wide.
• 29:01
  How did you come up with those numbers?
• 29:03
  And he said, oh that's the size that a tray on the
• 29:08
  So I thought, well, that's a good place to start.
• 29:10
  That's a good place to start, Rusty.
• 29:12
  So anyway, so I laid, this is a classic, laid four bits of chromoly tube out on the ground and on my home shop here, laid them out and said, oh, listen, got a plastic seat.
• 29:23
  I cut the legs off the seat.
• 29:25
  Said, all right, this is where we'll sit.
• 29:26
  The engine's got to be here.
• 29:28
  We'll do this, we'll do that.
• 29:29
  Anyway, so to get a perspective of the car, I couldn't even afford any more chrome molly.
• 29:33
  So we've got a couple of old packing boxes and put them up against the rails when we wanted to tie them on there and set the frame rails up.
• 29:46
  years ago, 25 years ago, the TVs, all the TV networks were fighting with each other to get news.
• 29:52
  So someone heard a whisper in Channel 7 that we were building a Landspeed car in Mullalu.
• 29:58
  So next thing the word went around, so I had four TV channels at the front of my house.
• 30:02
  It was bloody embarrassing, I'll tell you, because they had four bits of tube and they all come to see the Landspeed car.
• 30:09
  Anyway, so I came in there and I put on the bravest face I could and I said, what we're going to do, we're going to get an Australian-built engine
• 30:27
  Anyway, they all said, oh, thanks very much.
• 30:28
  I don't even know if the stuff went on there.
• 30:30
  I can't even remember.
• 30:31
  But anyway, one of the Channel 7 guys left something in the shed and I went out the car and they went out to the back of his car to get back to him.
• 30:41
  And he said to his mate, he had his back to us, he said, that guy's got to be the greatest wanker on earth.
• 30:47
  But the naysayers have never worried you, Roscoe, ever, have they?
• 30:52
  Ever.
• 30:54
  No, no, no, there's still plenty of them around, mate.
• 30:57
  And, but anyway, building that car was absolutely, absolutely,
• 31:09
  of mine is using a jet engine.
• 31:11
  Well, the hardest thing was getting our hands on the jet engine.
• 31:13
  So we knew what we wanted.
• 31:14
  We come up with some drawings of how the engine mounts worked and everything like that.
• 31:18
  We put the chassis together, being borrowed and still did everything we could do and stole everything we could do to build the chassis, bought the chassis, built a brilliant job of the chassis, engine mounts in there, but we still didn't have an engine.
• 31:29
  So in the meantime, I'm running my Aussie one car round.
• 31:32
  I'm doing a lot of shows at all the air bases around the country.
• 31:34
  And anyway, I ended up making a really good friend at 77 Squadron in Williamtown.
• 31:42
  And I said to him, Neil, I've got to have an ATAR engine, an Australian-built ATAR engine.
• 31:48
  And he said, mate, you'll never see one.
• 31:50
  You'll never see one.
• 31:51
  He said, we've got 17 aircraft that have been cannibalised to keep the other ones going.
• 31:55
  And he said, well, you'll never get an engine.
• 31:56
  I said, well, we've got the chassis together back in Perth.
• 32:01
  for all the troops, fired the car up and everything like that.
• 32:04
  And I'm really impressed with it.
• 32:05
  I had a lot of friends.
• 32:07
  And anyway, but he said to me, no, you'll never see an ATAR engine, mate.
• 32:10
  And I said, well, I've got it.
• 32:12
  I said, we're back in Perth.
• 32:13
  I said, we're going to set the land speed record.
• 32:15
  It's something we're doing for Australia.
• 32:16
  It's not an ego trip for me and the team.
• 32:18
  It's just something that's my wife's work.
• 32:20
  We're going to do it.
• 32:21
  But we need this ATAR engine.
• 32:22
  He said, mate, he said, I don't mean to do something.
• 32:30
  Anyway, this went on and on and on and probably, I can't remember how long it went on, probably a year, but still we're progressing, making more fuel tanks and everything for the car and whatever.
• 32:38
  And I come home on one Friday night and anyway, the mister said, oh, Neil's just running out.
• 32:45
  He's just, you've been ringing.
• 32:47
  So I rang him up and he said, Roscoe, get your ass on a plane tonight.
• 32:50
  St Mary's Auctions, he said, I'll put poor engines through the system.
• 32:56
  but they're late entry, no one knows what they are.
• 32:58
  They're late entry, they've just hit the floor down there.
• 33:01
  It's a big auction, get your bum across here.
• 33:03
  So yeah, I got on the airplane, couldn't afford an airplane ticket, but somehow I got to St Mary's and I was crying.
• 33:10
  I was walking around this auction all day and everything I had on the ground, beautiful hot day, but everything they had out on display, everything I could have bought, everything was on the shop, just gauges, bloody controls, bloody all sorts of nuts and bolts.
• 33:26
  I couldn't thought to buy anything.
• 33:28
  So I'm looking at these engines right at the end of the day and they're in four big steel cocoons.
• 33:33
  So the core engine comes in this big steel cocoon.
• 33:38
  These four engines had the lid lifted up on them and my friend from Air Force Neil said I'll send down four guys down to show you which engine to buy and show you the logs on the engine, which one you want.
• 33:50
  So the bottom line was these were listed, as I said, the four last listings of the day.
• 33:54
  And the Refuge told me the one you want is the second one in line, which is for example, 357 number 357.
• 33:59
  So anyway.
• 34:02
  the auctioneer was getting pushed around on a big stand, the guys pushed him around.
• 34:07
  And anyway, he got the first engine there and the auctioneer says, oh, these are late entries.
• 34:13
  He said, I don't know what they are, some sort of engine.
• 34:17
  What sort of engine, anyone want to open a bin on them?
• 34:21
  And I thought, well, I sit back and I wonder what's going on here?
• 34:23
  And anyway, so the guys climbed all over him.
• 34:33
  Anyway, so bidding started on them, and from memory, I can't remember what they meant for, but I think they got to something like four grand.
• 34:38
  And the auctioneer says, stuff it.
• 34:40
  He says, it's too late in the day.
• 34:41
  Too late in the day, he said, the cocoon's worth more than $4,000.
• 34:45
  And he went to the guy, he said, the guy, we're out of here.
• 34:48
  So he started getting pushed away, and it took a minute for the penny to drop.
• 34:52
  I go, hey, mate, I got on an airplane at midnight last night to come across here and bid on one of these items.
• 34:58
  Because you're not happy with the four,
• 35:02
  You can't throw them all in.
• 35:04
  He said, which one do you want?
• 35:05
  I said, that sucker, number two in line.
• 35:07
  He said, what would you bid for it?
• 35:08
  $500.
• 35:08
  Sold.
• 35:09
  Next one, $500.
• 35:11
  $500.
• 35:13
  I bought the four of them for $500 each.
• 35:15
  Unbelievable.
• 35:16
  But it gets back again to the desire.
• 35:18
  As I say, I've been chasing these things forever.
• 35:21
  You know, the bottom line was as soon as I got them, I thought, where in God's name am I going to find $2,000?
• 35:25
  So I rang the missus up and said, sweetheart, can you put your good dress on and go out and send me?
• 35:34
  We said, mate, you don't need that, whatever.
• 35:36
  And the good engine went back to Willetown.
• 35:38
  We put the Arthur burner on and we ran it, flew it back to Perth, and then we rolled it into the car.
• 35:43
  And one of the most amazing things to this day was we set the whole car up to take the engine out, the whole thing.
• 35:48
  We put the engine in the car, just to line it all up.
• 35:51
  And obviously a jet engine or a rocket's got to have one degree nose down.
• 35:55
  So it's actually pushing the nose down.
• 35:56
  We're trying to set that up and jig that up.
• 35:59
  We thought, what's going on here?
• 36:00
  We couldn't get the engine angle to go one degree.
• 36:04
  And then we looked at it and then we found out the engine wasn't straight.
• 36:08
  So in other words, instead of being dead straight, they had a kick in the middle of it.
• 36:13
  And I rang up my contacts back at the one in town and said, are these things bent?
• 36:18
  Do they ever bend in the middle of them?
• 36:20
  I said, no, they're not bent, they're straight.
• 36:22
  I said, well, there's something going on here.
• 36:23
  There's just, an engine can't be bent.
• 36:27
  It can't be bent, but I said, you put a straight edge on the front of the engine, front of the engine there and put a straight edge on the back, it's like that.
• 36:35
  And I can't remember how many degrees, but I told them all the guts of it.
• 36:37
  I said, oh, they had all the engineers go out and look at all the engines and stuff like that.
• 36:41
  But anyway, they come back to me about a week later and said, holy shit, these things are bent in the middle.
• 36:45
  So junction section behind the turbine had a 30 mil shorter top in the junction section anyway.
• 36:50
  But no one even knew that.
• 36:51
  That's the thing that amazed me.
• 36:53
  Amazed me was that we had to change a couple of bits on the remounting of the car, so obviously to get the arson.
• 37:02
  But yeah, we did a lot of tricks to it.
• 37:04
  These engines have so many parts on them, gun dips, approach controls, they have different things on them.
• 37:10
  The crap we took off that engine, you could do woodaway to half the weight of the engine.
• 37:14
  It's just a big pile of stuff we take off the engine.
• 37:16
  Then one of the other things we did, we met one of the cleverest
• 37:23
  Absolute trooper, absolute legend.
• 37:25
  And they got Tony to come down and have him and send him.
• 37:28
  We said, mate, we really want to hot rock this thing.
• 37:30
  We've got a standard.
• 37:32
  I thought they put out something like nearly 14,000 pounds of thrust.
• 37:36
  But we said, we want to get this up to 18,000 pounds.
• 37:39
  And mate, he said, I don't think we're going to be.
• 37:42
  So I said, well, what are our options?
• 37:43
  He said, well, obviously, we tip a lot more fuel in the engine.
• 37:45
  We get the engine running a lot hotter.
• 37:48
  We put a lot more fuel in the afterburner.
• 37:51
  We can over speed it, so we can set the over speed so it goes up revs higher, and you've taken the weight off it, and what else you've done?
• 37:58
  We had a different pressurised fuel system that delivered maximum pressure on that fuel control.
• 38:03
  So anyway, we took it up to the PSE boat and shamed it down, and I think the best we got out was 17,000 something pounds, but I've been from 14,000 to 17,200 I think it was pounds.
• 38:14
  But that was a jet engine mate, and now we're in the rocket business, so it's a bit trickier.
• 38:18
  We'll talk about the rocket stuff in a second, but I just want to finish that chapter because it was such a special car with two things.
• 38:25
  Firstly, the numbers.
• 38:27
  The Australian record, which I think still stands.
• 38:31
  You'll tell me if I haven't got that right.
• 38:33
  500 mile an hour, 802.6 k's an hour.
• 38:37
  Is that correct?
• 38:38
  Yeah, that's correct.
• 38:39
  Just amazing.
• 38:40
  What did that feel like?
• 38:41
  What does that sensation feel like, Roscoe?
• 38:44
  That's a good question.
• 38:45
  It really is for anyone in motor racing would find this hard to appreciate, but what you're doing, you're driving your car over the curved earth.
• 38:55
  So we're at a place called Laguerna, so a huge big salt pan, absolutely amazing place if you ever get the opportunity to see it.
• 39:02
  South Australia, it's about 400km north-west of the city of Adelaide, I think, isn't it?
• 39:06
  That's it, yeah, out that way and Iron Knobs is the nearest town, you sort of come in on a dirt track for, I don't know, 100km and
• 39:28
  concrete and it's bloody that's awesome anyway uh yeah first time we went there we're absolutely lying away but um what's it what's it feel like on your body and things like that roscoe and and you know controlling the machine at that sort of speed well the g the g i think i think the maximum g i think we went on that was 3g which to us like drag racing uh you know in the jets we go 5g 5g and when you put
• 39:55
  we put the chutes out, we go negative eight.
• 39:58
  So in drag racing, we've done up the three inch belts, they have the big Simpson three inch bloody belts.
• 40:02
  You couldn't read them.
• 40:02
  You just done it that tight in them.
• 40:04
  And as soon as I popped those chutes, that stretch that much, I just about whacked my helmet on the steering wheel.
• 40:10
  I just, and then they go back and they'd be normal again.
• 40:13
  Like Jesus, you know, you couldn't understand how they said belts to do it.
• 40:16
  But bottom line is the dragster was quite a wild ride and nothing, nothing compared with a rocket car or a top fuel car or anything like that, but it's got a pretty wild ride.
• 40:25
  But to get into it, so the landscape car only would go probably 3G at the most.
• 40:30
  But the big thing with driving the car is so you're on this white player, white salt lake, with a black line put down it and a marker barrel every kilometre.
• 40:41
  knowing where you are.
• 40:42
  So a big number on the track because obviously if you miss the finish line and you keep the power on, you'd end up in Woomera or somewhere.
• 40:49
  Yeah.
• 40:50
  But the thing is you sit your bum in the car, car starts up, crew back away, take off and I'm on comms with them all the way.
• 40:57
  But the bottom line is you're looking over the curve to your earth.
• 41:01
  So when you run in the car or when I'm sitting in the car, I can see three barrels and I can just hit the top of the fifth one and you see the curve to your earth go that way and you see it go that way.
• 41:11
  Those locks in the ball.
• 41:12
  And then when you run the car, when you run it, and when I first started running, first few runs I knew, I came out and like, holy shit, my neck hurts.
• 41:20
  And then we look at the onboard vision, we had a camera looking there, let me bum out of the seat, we got my helmet pressed up hard against the top of the roll coat subconsciously, trying to look over the hills, make sure there's no emus, or even though you've got spotters, but no emus or kangaroos or something in the track.
• 41:35
  You know, it's really like driving your road car over hill pretty fast, and no one's over the hill, and same scenario.
• 41:42
  So that's all the way, you're going over the curvature, and even the spectators, we say to people, it's not really a spectator,
• 41:53
  excursions where there's some brilliant vision around somewhere.
• 41:55
  I think it might be on a website or whatever, but they brought studio cameras out.
• 41:59
  They set things up.
• 41:59
  They have big platforms up.
• 42:01
  Some of the best vision that's ever been seen in the land speed business.
• 42:04
  But the amazing thing even with those guys was they set the cameras up at a predetermined spot and they'd hear me on the radio.
• 42:10
  Okay, you've got to start clearance.
• 42:12
  Aussie Invaders rolling.
• 42:13
  So I'd like to work and be heading back southbound, for example.
• 42:18
  The camera's looking over their eyes and they said, well, where is he?
• 42:20
  Where is he?
• 42:21
  Where is he?
• 42:22
  I can't see it.
• 42:23
  And then someone's like, oh, there's a plume on the horizon there.
• 42:25
  They say a plume.
• 42:27
  Next thing turns into a black dot.
• 42:28
  There's a bigger black dot.
• 42:29
  Next, bigger, and then, next thing's gone.
• 42:31
  Holy shit.
• 42:33
  That fast.
• 42:34
  That's fast, yeah.
• 42:36
  So as I say, because of the curve, you can't see it.
• 42:39
  So I'm down here running fast and then they're here sort of thing.
• 42:42
  Anyway.
• 42:43
  I love the analogy of it being like over the top of a ball, mate.
• 42:46
  That's a great description.
• 42:48
  Hey, just before we move on to the current project, because I know that's a big mission and it's one that's consumed you for some time now.
• 42:58
  Can we complete...
• 42:59
  if you're comfortable with it, by talking about you went back and endeavoured to better that mark, to chase a new record in Invader 2.
• 43:09
  And in many ways, mate, am I right in saying that you're lucky to be here to tell the story today?
• 43:13
  Oh, in my motor racing history, I've had a lot of thrills and spills.
• 43:19
  And this was –
• 43:22
  In fact, the hardest thing for anyone looking at it from the outside is when you're doing something without any money.
• 43:27
  And we went across there with the arse out of our pants.
• 43:28
  We had a camp there.
• 43:31
  We put it over the radio, a radio message.
• 43:33
  No one can come out.
• 43:34
  You can't use a dunny.
• 43:35
  We can't give you a drink of water.
• 43:36
  We can't do anything for you.
• 43:37
  Watch it on TV.
• 43:39
  If you come out and you tread on a broken bottle and you cut your foot or a snake bites you or you have a heart attack or something and you take our team away, our medical team away, we're a flying doctor, we're screwed.
• 43:51
  Still lots of people came out.
• 43:52
  But yeah, bottom line was we ran it and ran it.
• 43:56
  And we actually ran that car, let me get right, we ran it to 528 mile an hour on that first run one way and then came back the other way a bit slower.
• 44:07
  Bottom line was we couldn't afford to stay here a day longer.
• 44:10
  So we went and that was possibly the biggest disappointment in my whole career.
• 44:15
  We could have set, I believe we could have set a world land speed record on that trip.
• 44:19
  But...
• 44:20
  They had a team, they were all volunteers.
• 44:22
  Their wives are back home.
• 44:23
  They're homesick.
• 44:24
  They want to get home.
• 44:25
  An engineer, a worldwide-renowned engineer, John Ackroyd, came across to help us out.
• 44:29
  He was there, an absolute legend.
• 44:31
  Hard to help us out, but, yeah, he had to get back to the UK.
• 44:34
  And his advice to the team was a very good guy, but we sat down and he said, I suggest we pack it up and we come back another day.
• 44:40
  And I remember looking at John with a tear in my eye and saying, John, we can't afford to come back another day, mate.
• 44:46
  We can't do it.
• 44:47
  The weather's here, the car's here, I believe the car's got it, we can't do it.
• 44:51
  Anyway, being a democracy, we all took a vote on it and probably three guys said, let's say and do it, and everyone else wanted to go.
• 44:58
  They said, we'll do it, we'll come back next year.
• 45:00
  Anyway, never got the weather again.
• 45:02
  The following year it rained, I think that was, I can't remember what it was.
• 45:05
  Anyway, following year it rained, the track was rained out.
• 45:08
  Next year it was looking really bad weather-wise and we went through all the trouble then of setting up a village.
• 45:13
  We donated a set of bands, band bodies, we set a whole
• 45:19
  I think there's something like 14 of these vans, put windows in them, wired them up, did the whole thing, then trained them, doing that.
• 45:25
  That was a mission itself.
• 45:28
  We took all these across with the help of a company called GKR trucking here in Perth.
• 45:32
  We took these things across to a dry knob and then brought them in 180 kilometres for the road trains, which we weren't allowed to do.
• 45:40
  But anyway, not the GKR side, but our side.
• 45:42
  We're over height, we're overweight, we're over width.
• 45:52
  I was down with the forklift, so I'm going through the place that high.
• 45:56
  Mermotes chased us out in the back of South Australia somewhere and we got off the track.
• 46:01
  Anyway, setting that up was absolutely awesome, but to do that, to do all that, Rusty, was people could not understand just how much effort went into doing that.
• 46:12
  And then to turn around and say, oh, now let's pack up and come back to the studio.
• 46:21
  And by the time we'd done that, when we were ready to run the record, the Poms had gone out, gone the 763 mile hour.
• 46:28
  All we were out to break at that time was the Richard Noble record, anyone's 633 mile hour.
• 46:33
  Anyway, 633 mile hour.
• 46:35
  So all we had to do is fix the bit.
• 46:36
  So bottom line was we went out a bit later and went 638.
• 46:40
  We went 638 mile hour one way pass.
• 46:46
  But then pulled the pin and had to go back.
• 46:49
  Came back the year, the third year later when the weather was right, ran the car, track was ratchet, it was soft, it was bloody, everything was wrong.
• 46:58
  Everything was against us.
• 46:59
  Huge effort to get there as I say.
• 47:05
  do it so I decided to run the car we had all sorts of problems with the car we were getting bogged with all sorts of stuff was happening we were running off course I said well we've got to have a run I've got to run it really fast on a southbound run and see how fast we can go and the car just so you understand how it happened the front track of the car is narrow a little bit narrower than the back and what actually happened is the front wheels punched through the salt and as I say we were going to run the car and the front track of
• 47:31
  through the salt, a lot of downforce in front of the car, broke through the salt, then one of the rear wheels dropped into that track and the car just tram-lined.
• 47:39
  And I was looking at the timing here, possibly two mile away,
• 47:43
  I couldn't put a chute out at that stage because it just would have torn off the car.
• 47:48
  So I just had to wait for the airspeed to slow us down and things get closer and closer.
• 47:51
  And then shit, here we go, bang, hit the chute, it held, hit down the chute, and then ran out of the timing gear and destroyed that car.
• 47:58
  And the noise it made, I thought I was dead.
• 48:00
  It just made one hell of a bang.
• 48:02
  So I've got a really neat vision of it somewhere.
• 48:04
  If you, I think it's on their website also again, where we ingested a timing marker, went through the engine, killed this engine, big black plume out the back of the engine.
• 48:13
  and the noise that made my head, it's just absolutely mind-boggling.
• 48:15
  I got out of the car, that's sure I'm still alive.
• 48:19
  Which I couldn't believe, but I walked around in the front of the car and I was absolutely amazed.
• 48:22
  But laid this one piece of composite body up in the car that had never been done before for a Landspeed car, to my knowledge.
• 48:29
  And anyway, well, I just expect to see
• 48:34
  had a bit of a crack on one side, where it punched one side in, but it had come out again.
• 48:37
  It's just the memory you brought it out again, and the engine was destroyed.
• 48:42
  But yeah, it was a really good car, but anyway.
• 48:50
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with land speed record legend Roscoe McGlashan.
• 48:56
  Make sure you head back to the library and check out part two where we focus on his latest project, the mind-blowingly fast Aussie Invader 5R.
• 49:05
  What Roscoe needs for the mission, when it might happen, and where in the world he could possibly run this rocket-powered car.
• 49:22
  Listener.