After ten months of silence, Project 1221, who have been working for five years with the aim of putting into limited production a revolutionary new gas turbine-powered supercar, have this week announced more news of their programme.

"Project 1221 has been operating sub rosa since the spring of 2001," read a press release issued on Thursday. "During approximately the past five years a great amount of independently financed work has been carried out by Project 1221 itself, concerning the in-house development of several design and engineering concepts of gas turbine-powered vehicles. In the immediate future Project 1221 may as well outsource relevant design, engineering and manufacturing activity and/or acquire technological know-how and/or form alliances, as this will be deemed appropriate, in order to attain its set industrial and commercial objectives and to expand its scope, notably to pursue zero-emission capability.

"At the same time Project 1221 may develop and market under a separate brand motorcars powered by reciprocating engines - not gas turbines," the press release continued. "In fact, given that the "vehicle part" of our endeavour has progressed more rapidly than the "gas turbine part", we took the opportunity to extract certain elements in order to create and produce a quite more affordable - yet sophisticated - conventionally powered sportscar. That should keep us busy while we wait for our production gas turbine engines and it could also generate some revenue soon, which would be quite welcome after such a long spell of absolute disbursement. More details will be disclosed in early 2007," it concluded.

This is the first time news of the ambitious project has surfaced since early last year. On 1st March 2006 they stated that: "Project 1221 remains determined to succeed in its quest for the introduction to the market of a complete range of gas turbine-powered vehicles, craft and aircraft. After almost four years of silent work the public announcement in December 2004 of our intention to introduce a turbine-powered supercar enabled us to eventually gauge the disposition of the public towards this unconventional proposition.

"Media coverage has been marginal (perhaps an indication that we must be doing something "right") yet interest from potential clients has been encouragingly high," they continued. "As well, during the last year or so, we went through various engine solutions ranging from twin 500 hp turbines to a single 1 200 hp turbine and then to an even larger 1 500 hp turbine. Each successive engine solution inevitably entailed modifications to the layout of the vehicle, potentially affecting its "character". For better or for worse the availability of a suitable gas turbine engine (or lack thereof') has indeed conditioned our progress since the very beginning of this venture, back in 2001," they added last March.