World Land Speed Record

www.romar.org.uk

Fire service historian and author

Roger Mardon

www.romar.org.uk

Actually this is not the world's fastest fire engine. It is a 1999 Rover 75 Connoisseur (S967 YOL) built as part of the Surefire 1 project to provide fire cover for land speed record attempts. It was the support vehicle for the fire chase vehicle shown below and carried fire extinguishers, emergency glass-hammer and a computer system with dash-mounted touch screen for accessing details of special fire risks.

This 1998 MG ZT 190 2.5 litre V6 (S625 RNX) was modified to become 'Surefire 1' with a 100 litre skid-mounted pre-mix foam system in place of the rear seat. In October 2002 it attained an average speed of 112.49mph over several flying kilometre runs at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, Leicestershire, thus laying claim to being the fastest fire engine in the world. I seem to remember that there was once a similarly adapted Lamborghini at an Italian race circuit, so who knows?