Bloodhound gang: the team behind the supersonic car

Back in the 1970s, I had an obsession with Top Trumps. There were different sets of these cards - footballers, racing drivers, aircraft - but the game was simple. Each card carried a series of statistics - for a footballer, it might be number of appearances or goals scored. To play, you’d pull cards off the top of the pack and call out one stat. Other players would compare that figure with their card. The highest would win.

Everyone had a favourite Top Trumps pack. Mine was the World Land Speed Record. The cars, with their amazing names and outlandish shapes. The drivers - the Brylcreemed Brits of the inter-war years; the razzle-dazzle drag-racer Americans.

At a press event for the latest land speed record attempt, it appears that these cars have lost none of their power to enrapture children. A 10-year-old boy and his little sister run up to the full-size mock-up of Bloodhound SSC, the jet and rocket-powered vehicle that is aiming for a record speed of 1,000mph in 2013, and stop in their tracks two metres from the car’s low, pointed nose, their mouths and eyes wide. Looking around, many of the assembled journalists are clearly trying to suppress the same reaction.