2010 Bloodhound SSC Show Car

(from Bloodhound Press Release)  World debut of the full size show car

Today the BLOODHOUND team unveils, for the first time, the complete life size Show Car, which at 12.8m, is longer than four Minis parked end to end.

The 1:1 replica is the result of three years of aerodynamic study and ten exhaustive design evolutions to perfect the shape and aerodynamic package of the planet's ultimate car.

World class aerodynamic research using Computational Fluid Dynamics was conducted by Swansea University, MathWorks and EPSRC, and at key moments the Project utilised more computing power than the Met Office (courtesy of IT Partner Intel). The BLOODHOUND aerodynamic team, lead by Ron Ayers, generated millions of mathematical equations to investigate how the air around the car would react as the car accelerates to its maximum design speed of 1,050 mph. Using this information they then designed the an efficient shape that would be stable at supersonic speeds, and controllable a sub-sonic velocity.

The Show Car started life as 5 m3 polystyrene blocks, which were then cut into bucks and moulds using 3 axis machining by Baker Patterns of Birmingham. Fibreglass and resin was then laid over the bucks in a process that took many thousands of painstaking hours to hand finish. The work was done by CHW Composites and Mike Horne Design on the Isle of Wight, who previously worked on ThrustssC us still the only car in the world to have officially gone supersonic. The BLOODHOUND model was then given the six coats of Akzo Nobel aerospace paint by Jon Benton and his team at Aero-Composites, who are more used to painting military and civil aircraft than forty- four foot long 'streamliners.' The 950kg showcar, which separates into three sections, was then transported to Farnborough by hauliers G&J Lockwood Ltd.