The Green Monster: Art Arfons Builds Speed From Surplus
Some People Needed Engineering Departments. Art Needed a Good Scrap Dealer.
Craig Breedlove was building sleek machines that looked as though the future had arrived early.
Art Arfons went shopping for junk.
That pretty well explains the difference.
Arfons had already spent years building racing machinery around whatever powerful hardware he could get his hands on. Allison aircraft engines, jet engines, truck parts and old airplane pieces were all acceptable raw material if they could be persuaded to help something move faster.
Then Art decided to chase the world land-speed record.
Now he needed a serious engine.
Six Hundred Dollars Bought the Important Part
A Florida scrap dealer had a damaged J79 that had suffered foreign-object damage and been written off as scrap. That made it considerably less useful to the military.
It made it affordable to Art Arfons.
He bought the engine for about $600 and took it home.
Getting the repair information proved harder.
General Electric was not interested in providing factory support, and the government was not especially eager to help either. Art now owned one of the most powerful American jet engines available and almost none of the material normally supplied before somebody attempts to rebuild one.
So he rebuilt it without them.
Factory Support Consisted Mostly of Art
Modern racing programs like technical partnerships, engineering departments and factory data. Arfons had damaged compressor blades, a complicated military jet engine and the opportunity to stare at the pieces until they started making sense.
Balance had to be maintained. The fuel system had to work. The afterburner had to function. Then the whole collection had to be tested without turning several acres of Ohio into an aviation incident.
Art figured it out.
The $600 scrap engine ran.
Now he needed something underneath it.
The Rest of the Car Followed the Same Purchasing Policy
Calling the Green Monster a car almost gives the wrong impression. Most builders design the vehicle first and then select parts that fit inside the drawing.
Arfons already had a J79.
The remaining job was to provide enough machinery to keep the jet slightly above the ground and pointed toward the far end of Bonneville.
A truck axle joined the project. Packard steering pieces joined the project. An instrument panel from one of Art’s old airplanes joined the project. Used parts, government surplus and useful hardware around the property were all eligible for promotion to land-speed duty.
The engineering standard was refreshingly uncomplicated.
If it was strong enough, available and Art could make it work, it had just become a 500-mph car part.
Aerodynamics Got the Arfons Version Too
Breedlove’s Spirit of America looked like something NASA might have misplaced.
The Green Monster looked like evidence from an argument between a farmer and the United States Air Force.
Arfons did not hide the J79 inside graceful bodywork. The giant intake sat in the open where anybody looking at the car could identify the main attraction. Body panels appeared where Art considered them useful and mostly stayed away from places where he did not.
Two narrow cockpit areas sat beside the engine. A tailfin went behind it.
There.
Land-speed car.
It was not pretty in the traditional sense. At 500 mph, pretty has a very short viewing window anyway.
The Green Monster Wasn’t Especially Green
The name came from earlier Arfons racing machines that had worn green paint. Art and his brother Walt had been using the Green Monster name for years, so the land-speed car inherited it.
The paint eventually had other ideas.
Firestone became involved with Art’s record attempts and red entered the color scheme. The most famous Green Monster eventually became much easier to describe as red and blue.
Nobody changed the name.
Once a backyard-built jet car is threatening the world land-speed record, correcting the color in the title starts looking unnecessarily fussy.
Then the Scrap-Pile Car Set the World Record
In October 1964, Tom Green drove Walt Arfons’ Wingfoot Express to a world land-speed record of 413.20 mph.
Three days later, Art brought out the Green Monster.
434.022 mph.
World record.
The $600 damaged jet engine had officially become a very good purchase.
Craig Breedlove answered by taking Spirit of America beyond 500 mph and raising the record to 526.277. His parachutes then failed, and the car finished the run in a saltwater pond.
Art came back on October 27.
536.710 mph.
World record again.
Somewhere along the way, arguments about whether the truck axle and Packard steering were sophisticated enough had become difficult to hear over the J79.
The Monster Had More Left
The record fight continued into 1965. Breedlove returned with the four-wheel Spirit of America Sonic 1 and pushed the mark to 555.485 mph.
Five days later Art fired the Green Monster.
576.553 mph.
That was the third world land-speed record for the same backyard-built machine.
During the run, a tire failed at enormous speed. Art still brought the car back under control, which is worth remembering whenever the Green Monster gets dismissed as a crude collection of surplus parts.
Crude does not mean careless.
The thing had reached nearly 577 mph and returned its driver alive.
Eventually the Monster Collected Its Debt
Breedlove answered with 600.601 mph, and Art was not ready to quit. He returned in 1966 intending to cross 600 himself.
The Green Monster had been strengthened and modified for another assault on the record. During a high-speed run, a wheel-bearing failure sent the car out of control at roughly 600 mph.
It rolled and tumbled across the salt.
The Green Monster was destroyed.
Art survived.
At a speed where a failed bearing could turn a minor mechanical defect into a very short biography, Arfons climbed out alive. The wreck ended this Green Monster’s record-setting career.
The machine had survived military rejection, scrap status, backyard reconstruction and repeated trips beyond 500 mph.
A wheel bearing finally got the last word.
The Budget Makes the Story Better
The Green Monster fought machines backed by major sponsors and increasingly sophisticated engineering programs. Art’s entire car has been reported at less than $10,000 to build.
The $600 J79 was the purchase that made the whole thing possible.
Everything surrounding it followed the philosophy Arfons had used for years: quit worrying about what a part was built for and ask whether it can do the job sitting in front of you.
Truck axle? Fine.
Packard steering? Fine.
Old airplane instruments? Fine.
Damaged fighter-plane engine the manufacturer does not want to explain how to repair?
Now there is something worth building around.
Art Didn’t Build the Future
Breedlove’s machines looked like the future everyone expected 500-mph cars to have. Sleek shapes, carefully developed bodies and the appearance that a team of engineers had spent a long time deciding where everything belonged.
Art Arfons built something much more entertaining.
He bought a damaged J79 for about $600, rebuilt it without factory help, surrounded it with whatever useful machinery he could obtain and set the world land-speed record three times.
The Green Monster did not need to be elegant. It needed to be fast.
Five hundred seventy-six miles per hour later, criticizing Art’s parts selection required a fairly ambitious definition of failure.
Anybody can spend money on purpose-built machinery.
Art went shopping at the scrapyard.
The stopwatch never asked for receipts.