Ernest Eldridge: fearless thrill-seeker from land speed record's golden age

Born in July 1897 into Hampstead wealth and comfort, Eldridge had burst onto the speed scene in 1922 – the year in which he stepped from an aeroplane crash and also reportedly lost tens of thousands on the turn of a card – aboard a 1907 Isotta Fraschini, its chassis stretched to accommodate a six-cylinder 20.5-litre Maybach airship engine.

It was not fast enough for his liking.

So he bought for £25 the remains of the 1908 Fiat that, according to previous owner Captain John Duff, was “inclined to roguery”; its engine had blown up monumentally, almost decapitating the aforementioned.

Despite a capricious nature and lack of formal training, Eldridge was a talented engineer: the prototype garagiste in his Vauxhall Bridge Road workshop.

An extra 18 inches – using material reckoned supplied by the London General Omnibus Company – were spliced, this time to make space for a 21.7-litre Fiat A1.2 ‘six’ tweaked – four plugs per cylinder instead of two and compression raised by 0.5 to 5:1 – to give 350 horsepower at 1800rpm.

Substantial by any measure – 16ft 8in long and almost 4000lb – the flywheel alone weighed 175lb, while its clutch comprised more than 50 plates.

The beast was encouragingly quicker – though gallingly beaten at Brooklands in April by the Isotta-Maybach handed a 20sec handicap – and the fearless Eldridge drove it like he stole it.

Thus, to be denied by a technicality went against his grain.

He returned to the 4.5-mile straight on the Paris-Orléans road six days after his knock-back. How Mephistopheles had been adapted to comply in that time has never been satisfactorily explained.

But given that the 143.31mph mark to beat was that just set by French hero René Thomas in a V12 Delage, and given that hundreds of police had to be persuaded to patrol a road no longer officially closed, it’s clear that Eldridge – a Francophone who would spend much time in Paris after the opening of the nearby Montlhéry road circuit/speed bowl in October 1924 – was persuasive indeed. (His second wife was French, too. Not that he had divorced his first, English, spouse.)

With (the arguably braver) Donald Gedge, better accustomed to spindly GNs, hand-pumping fuel pressure from the passenger seat while also operating the oxygen bottle intended to generate more power, the bespectacled Eldridge – he was both younger and quicker than he looked – stepped once more unto the breach: a 145.89mph two-way average over the flying mile.

The last LSR set on a public road.

With more than a hint of devilment, he then parked the big red Fiat opposite Delage’s Paris showroom on the Champs-Élysées.

Eldridge, however, was much more than a speed nut with a sledgehammer: his next project would be a 1.5-litre built to the impending grand prix formula of 1926.

Mephistopheles would be sold after its honourable defeat in a £500 three-lap match race at Brooklands in July 1925 – Eldridge somehow steering low on the banking after holding a skid, so that the more modern and manageable Leyland-Thomas of JG Parry-Thomas might essay an overtake.

Eldridge’s low-slung new car featured an Amilcar chassis and supercharged DOHC conversion of Anzani’s side-valve ‘four’. He built two: a single- and a two-seater.

With no factory support, he had overstretched, bold attempts at the Italian and San Sebastián grands prix of September 1925 resulting in embarrassingly early retirements.

Undeterred, he sent both cars to the 1926 Indianapolis 500. They were no match for the specialist American track cars and again retired ignominiously.