JCB Hydromax Hits 406mph, Smashes Hydrogen Speed Record

Not too long ago, Car Throttle was on the tarmac at a windy RAF base in Lincolnshire to find out about the JCB Hydromax, a car built with the express purpose of setting a new hydrogen-fuelled land speed record.

Fast forward a couple of months, and that very same car has achieved a two-way average speed of 406.320mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with Wing Commander Andy Green at the controls, officially breaking the record it was designed to beat, and raising a new bar for alternative-fuelled speed records in the process.

A purpose-built streamliner based on the design of the Dieselmax with which JCB set the diesel land speed record 20 years ago this month, the Hydromax uses a pair of modified 4.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engines, closely related to the ones the construction equipment manufacturer uses in its existing hydrogen combustion diggers, producing a total of 1,600bhp and 2,600lb ft of torque.

Frankly, the record for hydrogen combustion cars was never really in any question providing the run went smoothly and without any technical hitches. It was previously set in 2004 by the BMW H2R, a one-off V12-powered streamliner, which managed a 185.5mph two way average. Even during our visit in the early testing phase, the Hydromax was getting close to that figure on the taxiways at RAF Wittering.

The 406mph record, though, also smashes the benchmark set by hydrogen fuel cell EVs, set at 303.9mph by the Buckeye Bullet 2 streamliner in 2009, also at Bonneville. Perhaps most importantly for JCB, it comfortably smashes the 350mph managed by the Dieselmax in 2006.

JCB chairman Anthony Bamford said: “Twenty years ago we came to Bonneville with JCB Dieselmax and showed what British engineering could do with diesel power. Today we have done it again — this time with engines powered by hydrogen. This record was set by production-based engines, the same engines powering JCB diggers right now. That is the point of JCB Hydromax: it shows hydrogen works, and it works today at the highest level with zero emissions.”

The record is yet another to add to the tally of Andy Green, who still remains the outright land speed record holder, and the only person in history to have broken the sound barrier on land, with the 763mph set by the ThrustSSC jet car in 1997. He also piloted the JCB Dieselmax to its diesel land speed record in 2006, a benchmark that still stands to this day.

Green said: “Bonneville is the spiritual home of the world land speed record, and JCB Hydromax has just written itself into that history. The car was terrific — stable, strong and fast. Setting a world land speed record with hydrogen power, twenty years after Dieselmax, is a huge privilege. This record is a huge achievement by a world class team and superb technology.”

With priorities shifting and budgets tightening, land speed records aren’t something we hear much about these days. Hopefully, the Hydromax’s benchmark will be a catalyst for a new era of alternatively-fuelled record attempts, but it feels as though it’s going to take something special to best this particular benchmark.