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In 1956 the CIA had a problem.

Its U-2 spy plane could fly at extreme altitudes and carry state-of-the-art cameras, but the Russians proved they could track it on its very first flight. High-altitude reconnaissance had promise, but it came with the risk of being shot out of the sky.

The solution?

Quadruple the aircraft’s speed. The CIA turned to Lockheed’s Skunk Works in Burbank, Calif., and tasked it to deliver a plane that would evade detection—or simply outrun anything sent to shoot it down. The result was the A-12 spy plane.

"Don’t half-heartedly wound problems—kill them dead." —Clarence��"Kelly"��Johnson, Lockheed

Though the SR-71 version flown by the Air Force (shown) was declassified during President Johnson’s administration, the CIA’s A-12 remained classified till the ’90s. Car guys have often looked to the world of jets for the parts to go fast. But building hot rods to aerospace specs is not the one-way street you might think.

After all, the guys who work on classified defense contracts can be car guys too, and if they’re inspired by something they see on the race track—they’re not afraid to apply it to their day jobs. Lockheed’s supersonic spy planes seem to prove that point. Their hand-built titanium fuselages were fit with Pratt & Whitney’s most powerful turbines in order to push these 62-ton planes to three-times the speed of sound. More than 60 years after they first flew, these craft still hold the speed record for air-breathing aircraft.

Yet as powerful as these planes were they’d have never have gotten off the ground without the aid of two Buick Wildcat engines, which were paired together in portable “start carts” built by the race-car builders at Frank Kurtis Company in Glendale, California.

According to Arlen Kurtis, son of Frank Kurtis, Lockheed came to his dad in 1963 with the design for the AG-330 start cart. Arlen said the A-12’s first carts were built by Hamilton Standard, but that they were, “built by people with the idea that it’s never going to have to be worked on. And the poor guy that has to work on it has to disassemble half of it to do one simple thing. That’s why they came to my dad.”

Why Buick? It turns out they were chosen because of their single-speed Dynaflow transmissions. The super-soft coupling was critical to spinning the Pratt & Whitney J58 turbine engines up to 3,200¬4,500 rpm without breaking the coupler shaft.

Bet you didn't know: The top secret JP-7 jet fuel the Pratt & Whitney J58 engines burned was created by Shell Oil.

A pair of Pratt & Whitney J58/JT11D-20K turbojet engines propelled the SR-71 Blackbird and its A-12 and YF-12 forefathers to speeds of more than 2,200 mph. These engines weighed 6,000 pounds, measured 17-feet 10-inches in length and 4-feet 9 inches in diameter, and produced more than 32,000 pounds of thrust. Like Top Fuel and Funny Car engines, the J58s lacked a starter motor of their own, and had to be cranked over by an external source while on the runway.��

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��Note the zoomie headers. No need for mufflers on the Buicks when the J58 turbines they were firing up would just drown out the noise...��Frank Kurtis’s son Arlen told us Lockheed provided the engines and Dynaflow transmissions, and Kurtis built 30 carts in its Glendale, California, facility along side its quarter-midget cars. The twin 425-cid Buick Nailhead engines sat side-by-side in the AG-330 carts and the Dynaflow output shafts were tied together with an 11 ½-inch cogged Gilmer belt to a 90-degree drive that splined into the bottom of the Blackbirds’ turbines. Once the turbines were spinning, triethylborane fluid was injected into the J58s to ignite the JP-7 jet fuel. When Lockheed used up all the Buicks Kurtis could find, Arlen was commissioned to repower the carts with 330hp 454ci Chevy marine engines mated to TH350 transmissions rigged to start in Third gear.

Twin-Engine Inspiration?

When we learned the original Buick-powered carts were made in Glendale we noted that less than 4 miles away Tommy Ivo was building a twin-Buick-powered machine of his own. Was there a connection? Tommy Ivo said “no,” and Arlen Kurtis said, “I never met Tommy Ivo, Dad may have but Max Balchowsky who used to run the Old Yeller sports car was a pretty good Buick man, and Max helped me a bunch on things when I started rebuilding the engines for [Lockheed].”

Triple-Sonic Tires

The SR-71 Blackbirds used 27.5x7.5-16 BFGoodrich Silvertown tires that were impregnated with aluminum, inflated with 425-psi of nitrogen, and rated for 275 mph.

Garrett Turbo Connection

Garrett built the 3AG1100 air turbine to start the SR-71s inside their Beale Air Force Base hangers. The 3AG1100 is basically a 700hp compressed-air driven turbo that splined in to the J58 engines, just like the start carts did, and used compressed air stored in tanks under the hangers to spin them. ��

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