The 1939 Land Speed Record holder, John Cobb’s Railton-Mobil Special, was powered by two Napier Lion aircraft engines arranged in tandem and produced so much heat that the driver sat in a cockpit cooled by a primitive air-conditioning system fed from the car’s slipstream—making it arguably the first vehicle to use ram-air cooling, a technique that wouldn’t become common in road cars for another 40 years.
Car Fact #11 — June 27, 2026
