It's no stretch to say that the relationship between environmentalists and high-performance motor vehicle enthusiasts has been strained over the past few years. Despite some common ground where motorcycles are concerned, horsepower and carbon emissions tend to be heated rivals.

But in a sign of the changing times, a team hell-bent on breaking the land-speed record is dedicating their effort to training the next generation of eco-conscious engineers. As Richard Noble, a major cog in the Project Bloodhound machine that aims to break the 1,000 mph barrier with their supersonic car, states, "Our industries are starved of engineers. There are real problems on the education front; and, of course, what we've got now is the environmental challenge coming up."

While the end results of the project may not yield an immediate clean vehicle solution, the interest it develops in schoolchildren worldwide may spawn the next carbon-free vehicle breakthrough.

Like similar contests that stretch the bounds of vehicle capabilities—such as the World Solar Challenge—the real victory is not measured in miles per hour, but in future technical developments. A subtle aerodynamic refinement on the Bloodhound SSC might add only 1 or 2 mph, but implemented across a fleet of vehicles a decade from now, it could keep hundreds thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from entering our atmosphere.