Construction of Bloodhound car nears completion

Amid the clatter and buzz of power tools and the occasional clang of metal on metal, Bloodhound SSC’s engineering lead for mechanical design, Mark Elvin, rubbed a hand across his scalp and considered the half-built car whose components were piled up around him. “We’ve been very good at being a virtual car for the past six or seven years,” he said. “It’s been necessary, because it’s difficult to attract sponsors to something that doesn’t actually exist yet, so you have to talk about it like it’s real. It’s a little bit strange to think that by the end of July we’ll be rolling out the finished car for the first runway tests at Newquay Airport.”

Indeed, each subsequent visit to the Bloodhound Technical Centre, an anonymous industrial unit on the western edge of Bristol, has revealed a more and more complete-looking car. From the boxy shape of the lower chassis to the arrival of the insectile curved form of the carbon-fibre composite monocoque that will protect driver Andy Green during the car’s runs on the stony desert surface of Hakskeen Pan in South Africa’s Western Cape, to the long, arched stretch of the upper chassis, the solid reality of Bloodhound is steadily making the full-scale model of the show car, familiar from its visits to industrial exhibitions and schools around the country over the past few years, look more and more like the working sketch that it is.