Richard Noble was right when he told the team at the end of the Jordan2 Campaign that it would not be easy to raise the funds for Black Rock. He needed to find £600,000 - a number of potential corporate sponsors were on the horizon, but they could not be counted as definite - the team would have to raise as much as possible through merchandising.
Open Days for the Mach 1 Club and Britain's car clubs were organised, the Internet sales operation was expanded through online credit card transactions, and new merchandising items were produced. All the time the repairs and modifications to ThrustSSC continued to consume funds - and the corporate sponsors were not coming in.
Each week the Web Site announced the current fund-raising status - and as time went by it became obvious that desperate measures were called for. At Press Day the media were shown the car in action - and were then told that that would be the last ever run unless the money came in. One of the biggest outstanding items was the 250,000 US gallons of fuel required to fly the Antonov, car, equipment and team to Nevada - an Internet appeal was launched to get the Web Site readership to buy it in 25 gallon lots.
Suddenly the money started to come in - nowhere near enough for the full Black Rock Campaign budget, but enough to make it worthwhile going. At the last possible minute the go-ahead was given - and the equipment was trucked to Stansted airport. Spirit of America was already in Gerlach - the race to the sound barrier was on!
For more information please read:
The Daily Status Pages from Summer 1997 are still available:
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