There are vehicles covered in gold, and there are vehicles with a light fiberglass body designed to set a land speed record. The second group is, in many ways, as extravagant a proposition as the first, at least from the point of view of the utility of the object; a test car is a selfish object, an end in itself, inaccessible and unintelligible to most. And, yet, it is formally stunning, each of its three-dimensional surfaces a triumphant result of formal evolution to pass the test of aerodynamics. In 1999, the British Steam Car Challenge was launched with the twofold aim of breaking the land speed record for steam powered vehicles as well as creating some excitement in the arena of alternate fuels. The car in the picture will attempt to break the 170 mph barrier in a few days in the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. It is 7.6 m. (30 ft.) long, 1.7 m. (5.6 ft.) wide and weights 3 tons, mostly due to the engine, since everything else is as light as it could be (a small sedan weights around 3,000 lb –1.36 tons; a Formula one car weights 1,300 lb. –0.6 tons). But beyond its metrics, it is a car that will be put in a museum once it has achieved its goal. And that opens up another discussion about the nature of objects, museums, the social value of design, the idea of beautiful form and its relation to function.
