Thrust SSC, or Thrust supersonic car, is a British jet-propelled car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayersand Jeremy Bliss.
Thrust SSC holds the World Land Speed Record, set on 15 October 1997, when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) and became the first car to officially break the sound barrier.
The car was driven by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in the state of Nevada. It was powered by two after burning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines, as used in the British version of the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. The car was 16.5 m (54 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft) wide and weighed 10.5 tons (10.7 t), and the twin engines developed a net thrust of 223 kN (50,000 lbf), a power output of 110,000 bhp (82MW), burning around 18 litre per second (4.0 Imperial gallons/s or 4.8 US gallons/s). Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on its maximum speed, the fuel consumption was about 55 L/km (0.05 mpg-imp; 0.04 mpg-US). By comparison, the Concorde burned about 0.8 gallons/sec (10500 kg/h, 2885 gallons/hr) at full power, with typical 17 miles per U.S. gallon (14 L/100 km; 20 mpg-imp) per passenger (100 passengers were maximum capacity).
