Allen jaya's blog

Thrust SSC (The fastes Car in The World)

Above, the BBC documentary on the ThrustSSC.

Below, the BloodhoundSSC that is currently being built.

The teams

It has been said that the first car race probably took place the first time two cars pulled up beside each other. And ever since then, there has been competition to see who could go the fastest.

In the fall of 1997, two teams, one from Great Britain and the other from southern California, traveled to Nevada and gathered at the Black Rock Desert. Surrounded by the media and hundreds of devoted race fans, they took turns doing the best they could.

One team came fully prepared. After thousands of hours of hard work, they met their goals.

The other team tried but had problems, and has since sold the car to another American team that hopes to bring the record back to the United States.

But for now, and for the foreseeable future, there is no doubt whatsoever as to who has the fastest car in the world, and the fastest car in history.

Before we were able to fully appreciate the degrees of dedication, preparation and professionalism that the ThrustSSC team had put into their campaign, many of us had been betting on Craig Breedlove to be the first to go supersonic on land, with his Spirit of America jet car. Relatively lightweight and looking very aerodynamic, the Spirit of America seemed like an intelligent approach to the challenge at hand.

On September 4^th, 1997, Breedlove and the Spirit of America crew began testing the car at Black Rock. Breedlove and his team struggled with everything from a damaged engine (and a spare engine back in California that they hadn't even brought with them) to getting their truck and trailer stuck in the mud (and then being pulled out by the members of the ThrustSSC team).

And before long, Breedlove's team was forced to aim for Andy Green's World Land Speed Record of 714 miles per hour.

Craig Breedlove stated that he still intended to beat the current record set by the ThrustSSC team. Having driven the Spirit of America to a best speed of 636 miles per hour in 1997, Breedlove claimed to be optimistic about regaining the Land Speed Record, with runs of at least 771 miles per hour. For several years, Breedlove had a Web site at http://www.spiritofamerica.com/ but after being very rarely updated, the site disappeared in 2003.

In 2006, Breedlove's race car was sold to the late Steve Fossett, who had planned to run at Bonneville in 2007, possibly after Speed Week. Steve's target was 800 mph. That would have been quite a ride.

This page was originally created back in March of 1997, and has been revised several times thereafter, in light of the ThrustSSC team's incredible accomplishments on Monday, October 13^th, and Wednesday, October 15^th, 1997.