MELKSHAM, England — Cooper Tire & Rubber Co.'s Avon Tyres business has joined the Bloodhound Project as a sponsor of the project to develop a supersonic car that can go faster than the speed of sound.
As part of its support, Avon is supplying tires suitable for use in desert areas, where the Bloodhound SSC vehicle is being tested. The tire will be used on project-support vehicles; Avon also is looking to produce a tire for runway testing of the land-speed record car, which will use metallic wheels designed to cope with the extreme speeds.
The Bloodhound SSC will be powered by three engines — a Eurojet EJ200 jet engine and a Nammo rocket/rocket cluster for thrust and a supercharged Jaguar V8 for auxiliary power to drive the rocket oxidiser pump.
At full power the jet will be providing 90kN of thrust and the rocket 120kN, or roughly 135,000 thrust horsepower, more than eight times the power of the cars on the Formula 1 racing car grid combined.
The project recently announced plans for a trial run in October on the dry lake bed at Hakskeen Pan, South Africa, with a target of hitting 500 mph.
The team's target is to break the world land speed record (763 mph) by 2019 and then push on to 1,000 mph mark.