The most ambitious land speed record project in history is dead. The Bloodhound SSC project, a near decade long undertaking to design, engineer, and build the first car capable of going 1,000mph has gone bankrupt and with no hope of securing the estimated $31,500,000 needed to finish the car and actually run it in the desert, the financial overseers of the operation have publicly announced that the whole thing is done and that loaned parts will be returned to whence they came and many other elements of the car will be sold in an attempt to recoup some of the losses that the project has experienced.
Spearheaded by Richard Noble, the same guy who lead the awesome Thrust SSC project that became the first vehicle to officially break the sound barrier on wheels in 1997, Bloodhound was to be the land speed car to end all land speed cars. Cracking 1,000mph on land would be a historic barrier and one with seemingly little left to improve on. Noble’s approach was novel and cool. He effectively turned the whole works into a patriotic national engineering exercise. Kids in schools learned about the project, English companies, firms, and citizens got in on the act loaning expertise, parts or money.
The car was not vaporware. It did make test runs on an airport runway to check out the basic systems and likely also to prove to the world that this was something that progress was being made on. The propulsion of the vehicle was to be the massive Rolls Royce turbine you see used in the video along with a rocket engine that would take ol’ Andy Green and send him into the territory no human being on Earth has ever experienced in a land based vehicle, 1,000mph.
But the burdens proved too great. Employing dozens of people, many of which were engineers and skilled craftsmen, the costs began to spiral. Simply thinking of what it would take get the car to the South African desert they were planning on running at, paying dozens (hundreds?) of people to clear the course, man the course, and support the logistics of just that piece of the operation, it all becomes dizzying.
Max effort land speed cars are historically the biggest money drains that motorsport has to offer. Right back to the days of Campbell these often huge machines took larger sums to build and operate than any normal person of their respective era could ever comprehend. This was the biggest and grandest of them all. And now it is done.
What happens next?
We’ll all wait and see.
I have always followed LSR vehicles and this one was fascinating with its three engines. The main rocket, the jet for getting it up to speed and the 500hp Jaguar engine as a fuel pump.
Sad to hear they can’t get funding. I did my part, I bought a t-shirt.
I’ve followed LSR since Gary Gabelich and the Blue Flame Special. I painted my go cart blue and named it after that car when I was 12!
They should have hired the Burklands…
I am a fan of this project and I even donated a few dollars to it a number of years back… I am not suggesting there was impropriety of any kind… but… this stinks of … something.
But… holy crap… “another” $31,000,000 to finish it ?? I really want to see the accounting on this machine. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was cresting the 1/2 Billion dollar mark… and in the end all they will have produced is tons of data and designs… but no product… sad…
It seems too convenient that the car was tested a few months back and now they are pulling the plug completely… It sounds like something didn’t add up in the design during testing or they realized the concept wasn’t going to work.
It also seems like the death of this project has come just a little too suddenly and without warning. Maybe that very public test session could have been a big show to prove the hundreds of millions invested to date wasn’t a fraud and the investors can now write it all off… I suspect the legal issues on this have only just begun
I think your onto something. Doesn’t add up. Get so far along and then just throw in the towel? Some rich Saudi kid has a couple hundred mil to blow I’m sure. Al-Anabi???
Wow still $31M to finish. That is almost as bad as California Governor Moonbeam Brown’s high speed rail to no where.
The British are great at jousting at windmills.They would do those crazy Arctic “explorations”. Was it Scott who lost everything in the quest for the emperor penguin egg? It’s like they have to serve their egos or something, so make up an excuse to justify it.
The thing about LSR is it’s home made hot rods, why it’s beautiful.
This thing was nuts from the get go.
Andy Greene at Black Rock was completely out of control. Giant cajones though. British.
This straight up BLOWS!!!!! I’ve been watching this since the beginnings and really thought they were going to do it. They were supposed to make an attempt next year. WTF!! To get so far along and pull the plug, just sucks ass.
Bangshift SSR !
The way South African politics are going they could finish it and still not get to run.
This thing screams fraud. no way in hell that should still need another 31 and a half mill dumped into it.
I’d say it was a front for some to live large, and those funding it, finally pulled the plug.
I can only imagine what Danny Thompson could have done with the equivalent number of 1960s dollars.
I’m missing something. The car is basically built, and it runs. Why not take it someplace and just run the thing?
I’m a much bigger fan of home made hot rods, than this “throw money at it until we get to where we want”.
The costs don’t make sense, unless there’s some very poor oversignt
Bring it to the U.S. and set up a Go Fund Me page, there are more than enough motorheads here to raise 31 mil and you can sell it on Pay Per View. Where\’s Evil Knevil when you need him?
yet today… suddenly they found someone who bought it and is going to race it…. PT Barnum was right.
Great news! Project Bullshit was just that and no LSR attempt needs £25 million to make it happen. A Yorkshireman has paid only £250,000 for the car and maybe it will even turn a wheel in anger now it is free of Richard Noble and his upper class conmen!