Thrust SSC was big at 54' in length, and heavy at 10 tons; whilst its reversed tricycle four-wheel layout gave excellent roll stability, the overall vehicle concept posed numerous problems for the Design Engineer to tackle. Widely spaced with a 116 inch wheel track, the 34 inch diameter front wheels were each sandwiched between an air intake and the external body shell, neither of which could physically support a wheel mounting or any of its variable loadings. With two thirds of the vehicle weight on the front wheels, the tread width of these being determined by the 'footprint' requirements of the operating desert, there were problems with wheel stressing for high speed, (up to 8500 rpm), and associated gyroscopic couples, wheel bearing speed/load combinations, and the provision of adequate brake thermal capacity.

All of these problems were solved by the adoption of rear wheel steering for SSC. With no steering requirement for the front wheels, each could be held between a pair of trailing arms; each pair being pivoted to a beam passing underneath the air intakes at the leading end, and suspended at the trailing end from the wheel-well rear bulkhead by a gas over hydraulic strut equipped with load and positional sensing equipment. This arrangement allowed for two sets of wheel bearings to support each wheel, solving the bearing load/speed problem, and for a solid centred wheel to be mounted between two half-shafts, solving the otherwise severe wheel speed/stress issues. A pair of wheel brakes, mounted either side of each front wheel, doubled