Good news for the 1,000mph car as Bloodhound gets a new owner

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  The car is powered by a combination of a hybrid rocket engine from Nammo, and a Rolls-Royce jet engine from a Typhoon. [credit: Bloodhound LSR ]

At the end of 2018, things looked pretty bleak for the Bloodhound SSC land speed record project. Breaking a land speed record has never been easy, particularly if the goal is to clear 1,000mph (1,600km/h). You need a highly engineered car, a rigorous test program, and a suitable bit of land upon which to run it. Which in turn means somewhere very flat and remote enough for the neighbors not to mind, but convenient enough that you don’t have to also build a bunch of new roads to get there. Bloodhound SSC found that at the Hakskeen Pan in South Africa. But by October 2018, the project entered into administration (a UK equivalent to bankruptcy) when it ran out of funding. By December, with no buyer found, it looked like the dream was over.

Earlier this week, that all changed. The effort—now called Bloodhound LSR—has a new backer, one Ian Warhurst, who bought the assets from the administrators at the end of last year. It’s also got a new HQ; the car has moved from its former base in Bristol, England, to SGS Berkeley Green University Technical College (UTC) on the Gloucestershire Science and Technology Park (also in England).

“Since buying Bloodhound from the administrators last December, the team and I have been overwhelmed by the passion and enthusiasm the public have shown for the project. Over the last decade, an incredible amount of hard graft has been invested in the project and it would be a tragedy to see it go to waste,” Warhurst said in a statement. “Starting with a clean slate, it’s my ambition to let Bloodhound off the leash see just how fast this car can go. I’ve been reviewing the project and I’m confident there is a commercial business proposition to support it. I’ll provide robust financing to ensure there is cashflow to hit the high-speed testing deadlines we set ourselves.”