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Bloodhound SSC fires up Rolls-Royce jet engine for land speed record

RAF ST MAWGAN, England — Fizz, whirr, shriek, pop and silence ... It took several attempts to get the Bloodhound land speed record contender started for the first time on Sept. 28. On a bright and blustery day at RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall, in southwest England, the sense of occasion was palpable, if only the damn jet engine's blades would fire up. But the Rolls-Royce 20,232-pound-thrust turbofan wasn't going to give up its virgin status as a car engine easily. As driver, RAF pilot and current land speed record-holder Andy Green explained, the Rolls EJ200 is one of the most reliable military jet engines ever, but it's never been used before in a car. "I can show you figures of its incredible reliability," he said, "but every bit of its control software expects it to be in a Typhoon [fighter aircraft], and we have to keep telling it that it is in an aircraft, which needs some quick-footed work on the software." This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Quick-footed indeed, as right there on the RAF St Mawgan runway, without a pizza or a Coca-Cola in sight, software engineer Joe Holdsworth performed a virtuoso piece of recoding on the engine's software to persuade it not to shut down in alarm at some low-level electrical interference it simply doesn't see in its normal aeronautical environment. Then, with just 20 minutes left of the team's running permission window, the remote jet starter cart shrieked, its air-delivery pipe bulged like an elephant's trunk blocked with a coconut and the massive turbofan spun, popped, emitted a polite ball of flame and smoked into life. No cheers or high-fives here; this is after all a British team. But there was clear delight from the 20 engineers attendant on Bloodhound. After three successful starts, Wing Commander Green leapt from the cockpit and Mark Chapman, chief engineer, pronounced that he was well satisfied and that the sight of a jet car surging gently against its arrestor cable and wheel chocks was awesome. "We knew it was going to take a couple of starts to get it running," said Chapman, who explained why the engine appeared so smoky at first. "This is an inhibited engine, so it was tested a couple of months ago at Rolls-Royce and basically filled with corrosion inhibitor, and you've got to blow that all through at the start.

Rolls-Royce posts 25% jump in sales thanks to Cullinan demand

Luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce said on Tuesday it recorded a 25% jump in sales in 2019, underpinned by solid demand for its first-ever SUV, Cullinan, just a year after the launch. The 116-year-old British company said it sold a record 5,152 cars in 2019, compared with 4,107 units in the prior year. "Worldwide demand last year for our Cullinan SUV has driven this success and is expected to stabilize in 2020," Chief Executive Officer Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes said in a statement. The Cullinan was unveiled in 2018. The BMW-owned brand's strong numbers serve as a breather at a time when the global automobile industry is still grappling with various challenges amid a broader economic slowdown that dented sales of many automakers. North America continued to be the biggest contributor with about a third of Rolls-Royce's total sales, followed by China and Europe. Related Video:

Top Gear caught filming Best of British near Buckingham Palace

YouTuber and car-fan extraordinaire Shmee probably had very little trouble tracking down the Top Gear film crew recently, as the group was putting together an episode that could accurately be described as "excessive." With its flag-waving (literally) Best of British theme, the TG guys gathered a jaw-dropping array of British cars, and parked them all right in front of Buckingham Palace to make extra sure that the point was driven home.
Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May were outfitted with a trio of Jaguar F-Types festooned with gigantic Union Jacks, with which to survey the landscape of British motoring glory. In the video below, you'll see that this includes any number of Mini, Aston Martin, Lotus, McLaren, Land Rover, Bentley and Rolls-Royce models (just to name a few), as well as a healthy dose of weird stuff that most people would never guess at being built in the UK. The lawnmowers and military vehicles are especially cool.