Model of Bloodhound supersonic car unveiled

The British team hoping to drive a car faster than 1,000mph has unveiled a full-scale model of the vehicle. The 1:1 replica of the 12.8m-long (42ft) Bloodhound SuperSonic Car (SSC) is the result of three years of aerodynamic study.

The team has announced that aerospace manufacturer Hampson Industries will begin building the rear of the real vehicle in the first quarter of 2011. Another deal to construct the front end with a second company is very close.

"We now have a route to manufacture for the whole car," said chief engineer Mark Chapman. "We would hope to be able to shake down the vehicle on a runway in the UK either at the end of 2011 or at the beginning of 2012," he told BBC News.

Assuming no major issues arise from those runway tests, Bloodhound will be shipped straight to a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, to begin its assault on the world land speed record.

To claim the record, the vehicle will have to better the mark of 763mph (1,228km/h) set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997.

But the team believes Bloodhound's superior aerodynamic shape, allied to the immense power of its Falcon hybrid rocket and Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, will take the blue and orange car beyond 1,000mph (1,610km/h).