The jet was driven by [[Royal Air Force]] fighter pilot [[Wing commander (rank)|Wing Commander]] [[Andy Green (RAF officer)|Andy Green]] in the [[Black Rock Desert]] in the [[state (U.S.)| state]] of [[Nevada]]. It was powered by two [[afterburner (engine)|afterburning]] [[Rolls-Royce Spey]] [[turbofan]] engines, as used in the [[McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in UK service|British version of the F-4 Phantom II]] jet fighter. The twin engines developed a net [[thrust]] of 223 kN (50,000 lbf) at the measured record speed of 341 metres per second,<ref>{{citation|url=http://www.thrustssc.com/thrustssc/contents-story.html|title=The ThrustSSC Story}}{{deadlink|date=September 2022}}</ref> burning around 18 litres/second (4.0 [[Imperial gallon]]s/s or 4.8 [[US gallon]]s/s) of fuel. Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on this speed, the fuel consumption was about {{convert|4850|L/100 km|2|abbr=on}}. The thermal power released by burning 18 litres/second of aviation fuel is approximately 630 MW which means the vehicle was operating at around 12% efficiency at its record speed, efficiency being the useful working power (76 MW) divided by the thermal power (630 MW).{{cn|date=October 2022}}
The record run in October 1997 was preceded by extensive test runs of the vehicle in autumn 1996 and spring 1997 in the [[Al-Jafr, Jordan|Al-Jafr]] desert (located in [[Ma'an Governorate]]) in [[Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan|Jordan]], a location unknown before for its capabilities as a test range for high speed land vehicles.{{cn|date=October 2022}}
