At the break of dawn on Aug 22, 2006, Wing Commander Andy Green of the British Royal Air Force gently dropped his vehicle into first gear and started his run across the wide, white Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, in the United States, the place where people go to test the very limits of land speed.

An hour or so later he finished his second run with an average speed of 528.99 km/h. With these results, Green and his vehicle, the JCB Dieselmax, crushed the previous record for a diesel-powered car by more than 160 km/h. The following day, Green broke his own record, steering the JCB Dieselmax to a stunning 563.30 km/h run.

Green, who set the first-ever supersonic world land-speed record at 1,227.985 km/h in the ThrustSSC on Oct 15, 1997, was thrilled to make another run at the record books.

“I’m so pleased that we got the car to 560 km/h,” says Green. “That was always our ultimate goal. And that was with a slow start to the second run.

“There is much more to come,” he adds. “The car is pulling like a train, and we still haven’t used the sixth gear!”

The JCB Dieselmax programme is the vision of Sir Anthony Bamford, JCB’s chairman. He wanted to showcase the extreme performance of the JCB444 diesel engine, which normally powers the company’s backhoe loaders and Loadall telescopic handlers. The engine is supplied with SKF Sealing Solutions’ premium seal designs.

To power the stunning 9-metre-long JCB Dieselmax car, two JCB444 diesel engines have been developed to produce 552 kW (750 HP) each, which is five times the power needed to drive a JCB backhoe loader. This makes the JCB444 the world’s most powerful diesel engine per litre.

Leading the project, code-named H1, was Tim Leverton, JCB Group engineering director, who put together a world-class design team with extensive experience in Formula One and Le Mans car racing, as well as advanced diesel technology and transmissions.

“The JCB444 has been acknowledged as a remarkable piece of engineering, and this programme to build the world’s fastest diesel-powered automobile is precisely the sort of technical challenge that we should rise to,” says Sir Anthony Bamford.

For more information about the cooperation between JCB and SKF, see the article “A diesel engine for a new era” in Evolution 1.2006.