This car was built in 1905 only to break the standing land speed record. 

In 1904, The Darracq Company’s engineer Paul Ribeyrolles designed a light chassis racing car with a powerful 11 litre engine. The car he created was to beat Gobron-Brillié’s ( a French car manufacturer) record that was earlier set by a driver named Louis Rigolly at 168 km/hr. And Ribeyrolles succeeded in doing that by edging past the 170 km/hr barrier.

Not content with this result the Darracq Co. now designed a more powerful car with an all new V8 engine that could produce about 200 hp and in the cold winter of 1905 set a new world record of clocking 175 km/hr. Soon after in 1906, the car was shipped to the USA to participate in the 1906 Daytona-Ormond speed trials and set another new land speed record of 198 km/hr.