Sam Speed

"I didn't think I had to do this but I have no choice. I will NOT have anybody, faster than me, on my highway!"

- Sam Speed, "Chaos Control Freaks"

Samuel Fair, nicknamed Sam Speed (サム・スピード), is a character from the anime series Sonic X and its comic series published by Archie Comics. He is Christopher Thorndyke's maternal uncle (the younger brother of Linsey Thorndyke ) and the leader of the Speed Team, a special unit of the Station Square police force that uses high-speed race cars. He shares a rivalry with Sonic in speed.

Personality
Sam loves anything to do with speed, almost to the point of obsession with it. He claims that when he was a baby, he was the only one in town to have a 5-speed manual transmission in his baby carriage. Other references to his mania are when he raced with a doctor to the delivery room when Chris was born, when he goes to the supermarket, no matter how many items he had, he'd always use the express checkout and always making his dog run for a walk (all four of these statements are exclusively found in the English version of the anime only). Other times, he claims that he does everything; and he means everything fast, claiming that he falls in love and out of love fast, and that he forgets things fast and remembers them faster.

A running gag in the original Japanese version of the show involves Sam having a different nickname in each of his appearances, some examples being "Highway Star", "Sonic Boom", and "Love Express". In the English version, his only nickname was "Speed King".

Despite some sources claiming a bitter rivalry between Sonic and Sam, as Sam wants to prove that he's faster, during episodes 33, and 34 of Sonic X, Sam Speed, as the newly appointed chauffeur for the President, defends Sonic after he is accused of high treason based on Shadow the Hedgehog's actions.

He ends up retiring after Sonic and his friends return home, saying that without Sonic he "doesn't have any more competition."

Trivia

 * Sam's nickname "Speed King" may be a reference to NHRA drag racing legend Kenny Bernstein, who is known as "the King of Speed" but was also referred to as "Highway Star" once.