BECAUSE IT’S THERE
BLOODHOUND’S JET ENGINE DELIVERS 20,000 POUNDS OF THRUST.
“It’s a bit Everest, isn’t it?” For a brief moment, Ian Warhurst doesn’t sound like a mechanical engineer. Echoes of Henry Segrave, George Eyston, John Cobb, Malcolm and Donald Campbell, Art Arfons, Craig Breedlove—brave, quixotic adventurers who dreamed of being the fastest ground-bound humans on earth—reverberate through the room. “You’re going into the unknown, doing something that no one else has done before.” A pause. “That’s got to be appealing, hasn’t it?”
A little over a year ago Warhurst was wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Having sold his turbocharger parts manufacturing business to an American corporation, he found himself at the age of 49 wealthy enough never to have to work again. But a WhatsApp message from his eldest son, Charlie, changed everything. “Hey Dad, have you seen that Bloodhound’s getting sold? Why don’t you buy it? Ha ha.”
Bloodhound. Warhurst had long known about the British project to set a new land speed record, not the least because he’d followed Bloodhound founder Richard Noble’s 1997 attempt with the Thrust SSC, driven by RAF
