Will the real world's fastest car please rev up?

 

Maybe you've heard the world's fastest production cars are the Bugatti Veyron and the SSC Super Aero (The Super Aero just edges out the Bugatti, at 255 miles per hour (410.4 kilometers per hour), for the record). While it's true that either one spanks just about any other commercially available road-going vehicle, neither one is the absolute fastest car. For that distinction, you must turn to the team of Thrust SSC which set a land speed record of 763 miles per hour (1,228 kilometers per hour) in 1997 — the first land vehicle to break the sound barrier. That car was powered by two Rolls Royce Spey turbofan engines producing 50,000 pounds (222.4 kilonewtons) of thrust. Not satisfied with that, and worried the record might soon fall, Thrust honcho Richard Noble has assembled a British team, Bloodhound SSC, to launch an assault on the 1,000 miles per hour (1,609 kilometers per hour) mark. The team's needle-shaped craft will get its power from both an EJ200 military turbofan (similar to the engine in the Eurofighter Typhoon attack-interceptor jet) and a hybrid liquid-solid propellant rocket. Now, we'll go from a handful of cars that only a privileged few can afford, to the car so affordable that it's outsold all others — for decades.