The Pioneer 2M was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Group VII

land speed record The land speed record (or absolute land speed record) is the highest speed achieved by a person using a vehicle on land. There is no single body for validation and regulation; in practice the Category C ("Special Vehicles") flying start regula ...

car built in 1961 under the guidance of sportsman and engineer Ilya Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov. Based on the 1960 record car ''Pioneer 1'', the body was made of aluminum and the wheels of a

magnesium Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ta ...

alloy. It was powered by two

gas turbine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directi ...

engines (800 hp each at 50000 rpmInformation notice by the car in

Riga Motor Museum Riga Motor Museum ( lv, Rīgas motormuzejs) is the biggest antique vehicle museum in the Baltic countries, located in Riga, Latvia. The museum is a state agency operating under the Republic of Latvia Ministry of Transport. Since 1992, the museum ...

) placed on either side near the driver's seat. On 1 September 1963, Tikhomirov achieved a speed of 311.419 km/h (193.506 mph) for the measured kilometer at the

Baskunchak Lake Baskunchak (russian: Баскунчак; kk, Басқұншақ, translit=Basqunshaq) is a salt lake of 115 km² in Astrakhan Oblast, Russia, located at , about 270 km north of the Caspian Sea, and 53 km east of the Volga. Si ...

dry salt lake, setting a Group VIII record and making it the fastest car in the Soviet Union at the time. ''Pioneer 2M'' continued to set records in the Soviet Union until 1972.Soviet Cars
(retrieved 25 November 2015)

References

Gas turbine land speed record cars Soviet automobiles Cars introduced in 1963 1960s cars {{Classicpow-auto-stub