How Much Of The World’s Fastest Car Is Made In India?

It takes courage to build a supersonic car that aims to break the world land speed record. But it takes nerves of steel to sit behind the wheel and drive it at 1,600 kilometres per hour. Perhaps it’s fitting then that world’s fastest man is the one who’s determined to achieve this feat.

Andy Green currently holds the world land speed record which, according to Guinness World Records, stands at 1,227.985 kilometres per hour.

He set this record on October 15, 1997 in a desert in Nevada, USA in a vehicle aptly named Thrust SSC. Nearly two decades later, Green, a fighter pilot in the British Royal Air Force is all set to take the wheel of the Bloodhound SSC and attempt to break his own record. Only this time, he aims to clock a whopping 1,600 kilometres per hour in a jet car in the Kaksken Pan desert, South Africa in 2018.

Under the Bloodhound SSC’s hood, you’d find a 550 horsepower Jaguar supercharged V8 acting as its fuel pump but Green says the car’s total power output is 1,35,000 bhp. This supersonic car also boasts of covering the flying mile in 3.6 seconds. To give you a sense of how powerful the car is, the car’s engineers say that if the car was fired straight up into the air, it would reach an altitude of 25,000 feet. To save you a Google search, aeroplanes usually fly at an average cruising altitude of 36,000 feet.

While the car is being built in southwest England, Green told BloombergQuint that from the rear end suspension to the steering wheel, Indian companies have played a key part in the car’s development. He adds, “There’s core Indian DNA all the way through Project Bloodhound. So, when we see the car run next year, people in India should be just excited as we are.”