The Bloodhound supersonic car (SSC), which made its public debut in September 2015, was an ambitious project to design, build, and run a vehicle capable of achieving land speeds in excess of 1,000 mph. Though it got a lot of people intrigued and excited, it failed to secure quite as much funding as it needed, which forced the project to go into administration in October of this year. This past week, the administrators declared they’d failed to secure the necessary £25 million ($32 million) of additional funding to keep the project going, which effectively means it’s all over.

Though things look dire, one person who retains some hope that the Bloodhound will be revived by a late injection of fresh money is Bloodhound project leader Andy Green. He drove the current land speed record-holding vehicle, the Thrust SSC, to a speed of 763 mph back in 1997. Speaking with Autocar, Green says that there are still investors who are interested in propping up the Bloodhound SSC endeavor, though he admits that “hope is fading” fast. He makes the point that the car and the systems for it are operational, and it’s only a matter of sustaining the funding required to continue testing and refining the vehicle.

Photography by Vlad Savov / The Verge