Next fall, the Bloodhound SSC will line up on a South African plain and try to go faster than 763 miles per hour, the current land speed record. If it does that, then it will try to break its own record one year later by going 1,000 miles per hour. The team behind the effort is running an Indiegogo campaign to raise 50,000 pounds ($78,251 US), and if you contribute, you can get your name or your sexy selfie on the navy blue flanks of the
Building a vehicle capable of going 1,000 miles per hour on land isn't something you do overnight. The folks behind the Bloodhound SSC project have been working toward reaching that insane speed since 2008 with the first record attempt still a year away. The goal is to go to the Hakskeen Pan in South Africa and obliterate the current land-
Back in 2006, Autocar tested a parking lot's worth of road-legal metal to see which was fastest from 0 to 100 miles per hour and back to 0. The Bugatti Veyron beat everything else there with a time of 9.9 seconds, including two motorcycles, outdone only by an exceedingly non-road-legal Jonathon Ramsey
The Bloodhound SSC is the offspring of the Thrust SSC that set the world land speed record in 1997, RAF pilot Andy Green blasting across the desert at 793 miles per hour. Whereas Thrust SSC was about going supersonic, though, Bloodhound SSC is about encouraging kids to get into science - it's an education project whose main purpose is to entice students to be the next generation of s
Rolls-Royce, the "power solutions" company that makes jet engines and much more (not the luxury motorcar company) has signed on to support the Bloodhound SSC Land Speed Record attempt project. This isn't just a financial tie-up and exchange of engines and tech, though, Rolls-Royce is just as interested as the Bloodhound gang in promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics to children in the UK and around the world.
If you remember the Bloodhound Supser Sonic Car, you know the team behind the monstrosity is out to make sure the land-speed record remains in British custody for the foreseeable future. Currently, the record sits at 763 miles per hour, set by the ThrustSSD in 1997, but the Bloodhound gang wants to see that number upped to 1,050 mph. On land.
We've been told there was a time when critics of the automobile warned against the dangers of high-speed driving. At the lofty speed of 35 miles per hour, they said, the air could very well be sucked right out of your lungs, leaving you to die of asphyxiation as you careened along at the edge of sanity.
Bloodhound SSC show car – Click above for high-res image gallery
Click above for gallery of the 1,000-mph Blackhound SSC
