Sam Speed

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 Lindsey Thorndyke ) and the leader of the Speed Team, a special unit of the Station Square Police Department (S.S.P.D.) that uses high-speed race cars as police cruisers. He shares a rivalry with Sonic the Hedgehog 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 the Shadow Saga, 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 from the police force after Sonic and his friends return home, saying that without Sonic he "doesn't have any more competition," referring to what he told Sonic when they first met about the Speed Team's lack of arrests while serving Station Square.

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.