3. The project started to stop an American stealing our record
Meet Richard Noble, the man behind the project. Noble was behind the wheel of the record breakingThurst2 in 1983.
Noble told T3, "We first broke the land speed record in 1983 with the Thrust2 car, we then followed that up in 1997 with the ThrustSSC car which was the first car to ever break the sound barrier on land. Huge public interest all over the world, in 1997 our website was the 5th largest in the world.
"There was an American called Steve Fossett. He's very famous for being the first to solo-ballon around the world, an amazing man. He had 110 world records, a lot of money, a lot of motivation, a lot of dedication. He decided he was after the land speed record, and that represented a real threat to us.
"So you can see the situation, what do you do? Do you just say 'well okay, let him get on with it', or shall we take him on? So we decided to take him on, but also we'd raise the bar so high that it would be very difficult for him to come back. That was the idea."
Sadly Fossett passed away before the competition could really get started, but the Bloodhound Project continued.