Aussie Invader 5R ready to test

[Rallye Sport]

Rosco McGlashan is back in the race to be the world's fastest man on wheels after a tax problem.

After nine years of blood, sweat and tears, a local WA daredevil has finished building a car he plans to eventually drive faster than the speed of sound.

Rosco McGlashan OAM has built the Aussie Invader 5R vehicle in Perth, with aims of setting a new supersonic land speed by reaching Mach 1.4, or more than 1600km/h.

The car has a single bi-propellant rocket motor producing an estimated 62,000 pounds of thrust, or about 200,000 horsepower.

McGlashan claims the 9.2-tonne car will be able to reach the staggering speed in just over 20 seconds - by which time it will burn 2.8 tonnes of propellant.

However, McGlashan and his team aren’t planning to break the record until 2020.

Building the car was stage one in a three-stage process.

Aussie Invader 5R.
Aussie Invader 5R.Picture: Max Read Photography
McGlashan and co will now move onto static engine ground tests in California’s Mojave desert.

“Successful tests of this engine will see us leap ahead with my team’s ambitions to build and drive the world’s fastest car,” McGlashan said.

The group has started a new fundraising campaign where people can upload a selfie along with their donation at supersonicselfie.com, with the picture being affixed to the car’s exterior for the record-seeking runs.

McGlashan has had a long and successful drag racing career and has previously broken the Australian land speed record.

He has also travelled at 1026km/h in his Aussie Invader III vehicle in 1996.

The current land speed record is 1228km/h, set by the British Thrust SSC (supersonic car) in October 1997.

Sam Jeremic. West Wheels 4-5 August 2018.

[Ford17]

You've got to admire the perseverance of these land speed racers; with McGlashan and Breedlove still both trying to set records later in their lives.

Rosco's Aussie Invader memorably appeared in a TV ad for the AU XR8 ute back in the day:

[Crazy Dazz]

Interesting that the current record has stood for 20 years

[FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0]

Just thought I'd update this thread to let anyone interested in knowing more about Aussie Invader know that it is appearing on an episode of Impossible Engineering on SBS viceland at the moment. May be available on SBS's demand service after it finishes airing.

I'd never heard of the campaign and/or car before, so this show was a great insight.

I also noted a sign at the front of the car which says: Ford All Day.

[DJR-351]

Old Rosco has been at it for years, we used to go and watch him race the Aussie Invader 1 Jet Car at the old Ravenswood WA drag strip in the mid 80's, he had the only one in Aus at the time, the yanks used to bring a few over and race him, the noise was out of this world, you could feel the shock wave as they moved up to the start line, scared the **** out of the girlfriend first time and she bolted



Before he got into the Jet cars he played around with a Rocket Powered Go-Kart in the US that reached 253 mph (407 km/h) over the 1/4 mile in 5.9 seconds! it's still the fastest Go-Kart in the world and is housed at the York Motor Museum east of Perth.

[DJR-351]

I forgot about his Rocket bike....apparently it was so fast that it was not allowed to be raced on Australian tracks, the Aussie authorities said you're a mad **** Rosco, no way are you racing that here lol....it didn't help that at the time the hydrogen peroxide rocket-fuel had extremely unpredictable characteristics either (i think the go cart ran on the same fuel)