The first car to pass 100 km/h ran on batteries

The first official land speed record for a car was set on December 18, 1898, at Achères, near Paris, in a trial organized by the French magazine La France Automobile. Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat drove a Jeantaud electric car over a measured kilometer in 57 seconds, about 39 mph.

The count's challenger was Camille Jenatzy, a Belgian who had trained as an engineer. He had set up a factory to build electric carriages and trucks for the Paris market. His rival for customers was Jeantaud, and the two competed in publicity stunts to show whose vehicles were faster. Jenatzy was known as the Red Devil, for the color of his beard.

On January 17, 1899, at Achères, Jenatzy reached 41 mph. The count beat him the same day. Ten days later Jenatzy pushed the record to about 50 mph. On March 4 the count answered in a new Jeantaud with pointed ends at the front and back, a first rough attempt at streamlining, and reached about 57 mph.

Jenatzy then built a car for nothing but speed, the first designed for a land speed record. La Jamais Contente, the Never Contented, had a torpedo-shaped body of partinium, a light alloy of aluminum, tungsten and magnesium. Two electric motors drove the rear wheels by chains, and it ran on Michelin tires. The shape did less than it could have, because Jenatzy sat high up and the chassis underneath was left uncovered.

In the spring of 1899, at Achères, he drove it at 105.88 km/h, almost 66 mph. No car had gone faster than 100 km/h before. Every land speed record up to then, six in all, had been set by an electric car, and La Jamais Contente was the last of the six.

Its record lasted three years. In 1902 Léon Serpollet beat it at Nice in a steam car. La Jamais Contente is kept at the National Car and Tourism Museum in the château of Compiègne, in France.