Britain's Rolls-Royce to sponsor supercar's 1,000 mph record attempt

LONDON, May 13 (UPI) -- Aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce has announced it will sponsor a British project to drive a car beyond 1,000 mph.

The company said it would provide financial as well as technical support to the Bloodhound supercar project, the BBC reported Monday.

The Bloodhound will use an EJ200 jet engine, a Rolls-built power plant normally found in jet fighter aircraft, to attain a speed of about 350 mph before igniting a rocket motor intended to take it to a speed of 1,000 mph.

The current land speed record, set in 1997 by a team that included many Bloodhound project members, stands at 763 mph.

Rolls-Royce said the participation of so many personnel from the previous record project convinced it to forgo its usual hesitation to get involved directly in speed record attempts.

"In general, we have a pretty robust policy about using our power plants in applications for which they were not designed," Colin Smith, the company's director of engineering and technology, said.

"The reason we're prepared to relax this policy in this case is because Bloodhound is a professional organization," he said.

The Bloodhound team says they intend to run the car on a dry lake bed in South Africa in 2015.