The British car designed to go 1,000mph (1,610km/h) will make its first public runs in Cornwall later.
Bloodhound SSC is conducting initial “slow-speed” trials and should get up to about 200mph (320km/h) on the runway at Newquay Airport.
Driven by RAF Wing Commander Andy Green, the car aims to break the world land speed record in 2019.
This will take place on a special track that has been prepared on a dried-out lakebed in Northern Cape, South Africa.
“This is about showing the world what we’re about,” said Wing Commander Green.
“We’ve designed and built the most extraordinary, sophisticated, high-performance land speed record car in history. It will do 0-200mph in about eight seconds. For a five-tonne vehicle – that’s eye-popping performance,” he told BBC News.
It is exactly 20 years since the RAF man drove the jet-powered Thrust SSC vehicle through the sound barrier in the American Nevada desert to register a speed of 763mph (1,227km/h).
His new machine benefits from two decades of technological improvement and will have the assistance not only of a state-of-the-art Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine but the thrust of a rocket motor.
Bloodhound seeks in the first instance to push the existing record above 800mph, but then wants to reach a speed that no-one is ever again likely to want to try to match.
The sleek, arrow-shaped car has taken some nine years to develop and still awaits its Norwegian rocket motor.
Nonetheless, it is now at a stage where it can begin slow-speed trials, to test the performance of the Eurofighter power unit, and to run the rule over the vehicle’s steering, brakes, suspension, and electronics systems.
The shortness of Newquay’s runway (1.7 miles/2.7 km) severely limits the speed Bloodhound can attain before it needs to brake and safely stop. However, the thousands of ticketed spectators should still get a good sense of the car’s potential. -BBC
