Transporting a Supersonic Car from London to Johannesburg.

For the last 6 months WTA UK has been involved in the complex project of moving Bloodhound LSR's supersonic car from the United Kingdom to South Africa where we have read much about their very successful tests and at the last count (7th of Nov) the car had just cleared speeds of 501 mph

A Car with a Rolls Royce Jet engine doesn’t just get loaded onto a plane

The presumption would be that all you need to do is get the car onto a plane and ship it to South Africa, however, this was far from the case. It has taken the WTA team of project cargo experts to get the Bloodhound LSR car to South Africa. As we know it is not just any car, it is a car with a Rolls Royce Jet engine which required a military license to clear customs.

Not only is the Jet engine classified as a dangerous goods item, there were also hundreds of other components that were classified as dangerous goods, such as the oils, solvents and lithium batteries to name a few.

All this means that there was a lot of paperwork to be filled in, otherwise, the car and all critical parts associated with the car would not have cleared customs.

Precision engineering needs precision logistics planning to ensure nothing is damaged on-route to South Africa

WTA UK and their team of Logistics suppliers including Cargolux and the trucking company P Wallenborn, met several times during the planning stages, meaning that every step of the process was thoroughly checked over and when it came to transportation day, all the teams were hands on deck.

Cargolux arranged advance delivery of the aircraft pallets to the Bloodhound LSR headquarters, which allowed them to test their bespoke racking system, which is essentially the system that holds the vehicle onto the pallets, this meant that there would be as little movement as possible of the vehicle once being transported via truck and air.

Months of planning come into fruition on the 10th of October

Early on the 10th of October, the Bloodhound car was craned onto the P Wallenborn Lorry driven to Heathrow into a bonded warehouse where the carnets (International customs and temporary export/import documents) and licenses were checked by customs for approval to export out of the UK.

Once cleared the vehicle made its way to Luxembourg, where all the paperwork was verified by Cargolux once again prior to being loaded onto the 747- 400 plane. Eleven hours later it safely arrived in South Africa.

Supersonic Car arrives safely and testing is underway

It is expected that the car will make its way back to the UK via sea at the end of November.

Further test dates to be announced by the Bloodhound LSR team for 2020.