Dylan Phillips and the Fastest Wheelbarrow on Earth

“Is it like, y'know, riding a bike?”

“Um, it’s more like pushing a wheelbarrow. Except the wheelbarrow is trying to kill you.”

Dylan Phillips is the third land speed record holder I have been fortunate enough to interview, following road-car speed legend Andy Wallace and sound-barrier breaker Andy Green. Dylan, though, stands apart: he constructed a certifiable machine for straight-line speed entirely on his own.

The fastest wheelbarrow on Earth

In a workshop tucked away in remote Pembrokeshire, the softly spoken 38-year-old Welshman attached a 7bhp Honda SJ100 ‘Bali’ scooter engine to an unsuspecting Haemmerlin wheelbarrow. The result was a garden implement able to charge along the RAF Elvington runway at a certified average of 52.58mph. Please observe a moment of silence for the fastest wheelbarrow on Earth.

Photography: Huckleberry Mountain

“I didn’t expect this to blow up like it did,” Dylan admits. “There are so many things going on in the news, you just don’t expect messing about with a wheelbarrow to get any traction.”

What prompted it all? “I’ve always had an interest in machinery, things that work, but it’s taken a long time to find that little niche,” he shrugs. “To almost feel comfortable enough in being uncool to just do this stuff.” Top Gear readers will surely see that this is anything but uncool.

“Like all the best and worst plans, it started in the pub. I had this idea of strapping a scooter engine onto a wheelbarrow and just sort of having a laugh with it. It hadn’t even crossed my mind there were world records for this sort of thing. After I built it, there was another late night pub discussion wondering if there was a Guinness World Record.”

Building a record-breaking speed barrow

To enter an officially certified speed trial, the barrow needed rebuilding to meet NORA 92 standards. That meant a kill switch, paint marks on the fasteners to show if anything was coming loose, and even a hydraulic damper on the steering bars to ward off a potentially fatal tank slapper – or perhaps a barrow basher.

“It still does get a wobble on,” Dylan grimaces. “If you built a bike with this frame geometry it would be the worst looking bike in the world. You’d have a front wheel two feet out in front of the forks. So yeah, the steering damper helps a bit, but the issue is slowing down.”

That is especially significant because the go-kart wheels mounted either side of the hand-built ‘trolley’, in which Dylan kneels, have no brakes at all. Only the driven front wheel still uses its scooter brake.

Dylan says braking is the principal weakness to resolve for MkII. Steering also needs work, although that is nearly impossible while he is forced to keep his elbows tucked in like a ski jumper. Above 50mph, the barrow begins acting as a wing and attempts to lift off. Weight distribution is another slightly alarming issue: the barrel suspended in the skids is not the fuel tank, but an old fire extinguisher packed with wet sand to provide stabilising ballast.

Dylan Phillips’ next-generation wheelbarrow

The next speed barrow will position its engine down there – “mid-engined, y’see” – with a chain driving the front wheel and brakes fitted to all three wheels. Dylan is justifiably pleased that it is not merely a racer shaped vaguely like a wheelbarrow. It is 100 per cent garden centre. “If you pulled the engine off and uncoupled the back you could use it on a building site.”

His homemade creations extend well beyond the barrow. Around the workshop sit a motorcycle straight from Mad Max, powered by the enormous engine from a 1952 cement mixer; another project recovering Chinese-bike parts pulled from a riverbed; and ‘Project Dear Oh Deere’ – a ride-on lawnmower combined with the 110bhp V-twin from a Honda Firestorm superbike.

There is a charitable purpose behind it too. Dylan’s monthly workshop open evenings collect money for the DPJ Foundation, a mental-health charity supporting Wales’ agricultural sector. Having funded and proven the concept himself, he now hopes sponsors will back the next build. A new barrow has already been supplied.

He is going to need it. Within days of our meeting with Dylan, news arrived from the United States that the target had moved. An Iowan called John Loghry reached 55mph in his own homemade motor barrow, raising money for Vietnam veterans.

The Welsh answer is expected to produce a formidable 28bhp and be geared for more than 70mph. The transatlantic charity speed-barrow contest is under way.