10 odd facts about Britain’s land speed record cars

In an unassuming room next to the gift shop at Coventry Transport Museum sit three of the most important, spectacular cars in the history of powered vehicles.

As a jewel in the crown of the museum's ongoing £9m refurbishment, former and current Land Speed Record holders Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC have been recommend in a dedicated exhibition, just feet apart. And just behind those, there sits a full-size model of the Bloodhound - the all-new, part-jet, part rocket challenger to the record that's aiming to crack 1000mph in 2016.

TG was invited along to the exhibition's opening to put our mucky fingerprints all over these sensational machines. Oh, and get talked around them by Bloohound's chief engineer Mark Chapman, and the man who drove Thrust SSC to Mach 1 glory - Wing Commander and future Bloohound driver, Andy Green.

Here's what we learned.

Another gloriously British tale of ingenuity from the Thrust 2 days is that the car holds the unofficial record of ‘World's Fastest Potato Delivery Van'. Without a passenger in the second cockpit, the team were worried about the slightly uneven weight distribution once Noble was aboard and driving.

The story goes several types of ballast - including a sack of spuds - were used to even out the weight split during Thrust 2's runs across Black Rock Desert. And you thought Domino's was fast food....

One of the frightening stats often quoted when Thrust 2's record-breaking moment is recalled is ‘7mph'. That's how close Thrust 2 was, at its v-max, from becoming aerodynamically unstable and flipping over. Sobering stuff.

Except, that's not quite the full story. Over to Andy Green to explain the slightly chilling reality.

"Seven miles an hour? That's what the published paper estimates," the lofty Wing Commander tells us. "Based on the facts, [the team] knew nothing more than the position of the springs. The springs in this car were simply blocks of rubber, because the engineers thought ‘really, there's no need for any double wishbone, independent nonsense - it's a flat surface, so we'll just get away with some blocks of rubber'.

"The problem with rubber bushes is the consistency of the rubber changes, and as they get old, they get harder. By the time this car ran in October 1983, even the lead engineer admitted he didn't know what the load characteristics of the rubber bushes were. So the ‘7mph from takeoff' was based around what they knew about the suspension when it was new. Even today, no-one knows what the loads on [Thrust 2's] wheels were - but it wasn't very much..."

In 1997, Thrust 2's successor - Thrust SSC - became the first car to break the sound barrier, when it recorded 763mph in the hands of Andy Green.

At the end of Thrust SSC's sharp black snout, at ankle height, there's a polished metal spike. It's not an aerodynamic element, but actually a pitot tube: a tiny air intake which is used in aviation to calculate airspeed. We peer over at the nearby Bloodhound model, which curiously doesn't have a mean-looking pitot tube-cum-jousting pole out front.

Why? "People kept walking into it, tripping over it, and bending the tube out in the desert", Chapman explains. "On Bloodhound, we'll actually be using GPS to measure the speed, but the jet engine still requires an airspeed indicator, so we've mounted the pitot tube up on the tailfin, out of the way..."

When you're trying to drive past Mach 1, the devil is in the tiny details, as Andy Green explains. "Even something as simple as what colour you paint the cockpit. You look at cockpits in the 1970s, and the cockpits are all black. Then you look at SSC, and think, ‘Oh, that's so much nicer!'

"White on the inside, with light grey panels - it's all so much easier, because things stand out, rather than using a really strong colour, which just makes the eye work harder. Understanding how human beings react to technology - and how the technology reacts - that's been the big difference [in progress between the record attempts]."

Green invites me to hop up onto SSC's priceless fuselage, clamber between its massive Rolls-Royce engine nacelles, and lower myself, chest-dip style, into the snug cockpit. Inside, it isn't the banks of gauges and bolt-upright driving position that surprise, but the simplicity of the main controls.

You have an off-the shelf steering wheel with fewer buttons than an Xbox controller, and two pedals - left for stop, right for 100,000bhp of go. It's the world's most extreme go-kart. It begs the obvious question: in regular car terms, what's SSC actually like to drive?

"Well, she's a pig," admits Green. "But the steering is surprisingly light and very slow, and because the desert floor is so smooth, it's comfortable too."

When you visit the Transport Museum (seriously, what else is worth doing this half-term?), go and take a look around the back of Thrust SSC. Compared to the front - all buxom curves of glinting metal - the back is a scorched, scarred warzone.

Paint and been stripped from the fuselage, and countless rivets are either damaged or missing. And the culprit of the damage? Thrust's er, thrust.

"The engines are actually exactly parallel to the bodywork," says Mark. "But the sheer force of the airflow above 700mph bent the afterburner flame inwards, towards the bodywork. Fortunately there's some titanium in there, and we weren't at top speed for long enough for the material to become critical."

However, the searing heat did cause Thrust SSC to overshoot its stopping distances, after the primary and back-up parachutes, stored in the car's slim tail, were damaged and failed to deploy.

One of the most fascinating elements of the Bloodhound project is that the team are learning as they go along. Take the outboard rear wheels - no-one's quite sure how they're going to cope at 1000mph.

"The air immediately next to the rotating face of the wheel is travelling 1000mph in one direction," explains engineer Mark. "But, that's meeting air coming over the car, that's travelling 1000mph in the opposite direction".

What happens when that air meets? How do you stop a catastrophic vibration? "We have no idea!" smiles Mark. "We just don't know, but we'll find out..."

In 1997, when Thrust SSC charged headlong through the sound barrier, Ferrari's mid-engined mainstay was the F355. It had a 3.5-litre V8, 375bhp, and could hit 62mph from standstill in an impressive 4.7 seconds.

Its 2015 equivalent, the 488 GTB, boasts a twin-turbo, 3.9-litre V8. It develops 661bhp, and trims the 0-62mph sprint to 3.0 seconds dead. Progress, then.

And it turns out jet technology has marched on quite a way too. Thrust SSC chugged along using two Rolls-Royce Spey engines from the RAF's F4 Phantom. On full afterburner, one develops 20,000lb of thrust, and weighs 1850kg.

Bloodhound only uses one jet engine - the EJ200 normally found in the RAF Typhoon. It weighs only 989kg - barely half the weight of the Sprey - yet it develops 20,250lb of thrust. On its own. Quite the power-to-weight ratio champ, then. And that's before you factor in the dirty great hybrid rocket that lives on top...

If you've never watched the on-board footage of Thrust SSC's final ever-run, check it out. It's well worth four minutes of your time to see history being made.

Green's cool-as-you-like voiceover is also magnificent - especially the classic British understatement, after the final run, when he remarks of one of the chiming alarms: "That noise is really p**sing me off now."

So, will there be any such distractions on board the Bloodhound? "No," laughs Green. "When you're concentrating that hard, the body actually reacts faster to visual rather than audible aids - you'll cancel an alert that lights up before an alarm." So, expect a few flashing lights inside the cockpit, but no wailing sirens.

To find out more about Coventry Transport Museum's Spirit of Speed exhibition, including details of how to visit and ride the land speed record simulator, click here.