The first car to officially break the sound barrier was the Thrust SSC (Thrust SuperSonic Car). It achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) on October 15, 1997, in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA. The car was driven by Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green and became the first and only land vehicle to exceed the speed of sound on land. The Thrust SSC was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines and produced a thrust of approximately 223 kN (50,000 pounds force)

. This historic run marked the first time a land vehicle officially broke the sound barrier, occurring exactly 50 years and one day after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the air with the Bell X-1 rocket plane in 1947

. The Thrust SSC is now displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England

. While other vehicles like the Budweiser Rocket have claimed to break the sound barrier, these claims have not been officially recognized by the governing bodies for land speed records

. Therefore, the Thrust SSC holds the official record as the first car to break the sound barrier on land.