DATE: Monday, October 20, 1997              TAG: 9710180055

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

RACE CAR DESIGNERS WATCHED WISTFULLY AS SPEED RECORD WAS SET

STUFFED ON A DUSTY shelf at Opel Parts & Service on South Military Highway in Chesapeake, a few crinkled brown papers gather a little less dust than the sundry automobile parts around them.

Every now and again, and a few times in the past week, the pen and ink drawings were removed, smoothed out, and pondered over.

The drawings are Tom and Tobie Thevenin's 14-year-old plans to shatter the world land speed record for a class of engine-driven cars. What might have been. . . a Thevenin-designed racer streaking across the salt flats at 300 mph.

``It was a competitive thing,'' said Tom Thevenin, 67, who has designed and built race cars for clients across the country for 30 years.

Business partner and brother Tobie, 57, added, ``You're trying to break that record.''

The overall land speed record was broken Wednesday. With a huge tail of desert dust, British engineer Richard Noble's rocket car shattered the record with an adjusted speed of 763 mph.

Driven by a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, Noble's rocket car burst the speed of sound twice during the racing trials on the hard dusty surface of a Nevada desert.

Fifty years and a day after Chuck Yeager became the first human to break the sound barrier in an experimental jet plane, the rocket car Thrust SSC became the first land vehicle to reach that speed.

``You've got a fine line to keep that on the ground,'' said Tom Thevenin. The rocket car is less a car, he added, and ``more of a projectile.''

The brothers have followed the record attempts closely, and they compare their design with the Thrust SSC - and it is a close cousin.

The Thevenin design called for a rocket-straight, 2-foot wide by 20-foot shell with two vertical fins at the tail.

Powered by a single, four-cylinder engine with dual overhead cams and four valves for each cylinder, it could reach a top speed of between 250 and 300 mph, the brothers estimated.

The car would have competed against wheel-driven cars for a land-speed record, which at the time was about 260 mph.

The brothers worked with engineers of aerodynamics and tested their models in a wind tunnel.

They split the duties. ``He's the artist, sketch designer, and visionary,'' said Tobie, nodding across the cluttered parts store to his brother. ``I can put it into metal.''

In 1983 and again in 1986, the brothers trekked to Germany to the headquarters of Opel automobiles and made their pitch for sponsorship.

They needed four, $10,000 engines and seed money to start the project.

The racing department and several engineers were interested, Tobie said, but the marketing department rejected the idea.

Undaunted, the brothers still design and build race cars. They just haven't had the chance to race under the hot Nevada sun for a world record.

The joy of the design lies with the competition, Tom said. ``Basically, (you're) outsmarting the next guy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot

Tobie, left, and Tom Thevenin had hoped their car, which was never

built, would compete for the world land speed record in its class.

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