A Concorde turbojet engine that spent years listed on eBay finally sold over the weekend to one lucky buyer, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be making supersonic booms of their own anytime soon.
The Concorde turbojet engine spent years listed on eBay before it finally sold for £565,000 (or $714,500). This particular Rolls-Royce Olympus turbojet spent its service life fitted to a British Airways Concorde. It’s been 20 years since the supersonic airliner’s final flight, but the Concorde is still remembered fondly as emblematic of a more ambitious era of commercial aviation.
If you were hoping that the buyer could refit the Olympus turbojet and put it into another aircraft or even a road car, that likely won’t be possible. The eBay listing stated that the engine was “not able to fly but perfect to dismantle and repurpose into collectible pieces of furniture or art.” Honestly, I don’t want to see anyone dismantle this engine to sell dinky collectibles. We have already seen it done with retired Airbus A380s, getting their fuselages sliced into bag tags.
It’s not known who purchased the disused 3.5-ton engine, but they received a considerable discount compared to the original listed price. The Rolls-Royce Olympus engine was listed for £748,000 in 2019 (or $975,0000.) It is also the only Concorde engine sold by British Airways that still had the afterburner fitted.
It would be incredible to see this Concorde’s engine on display in a museum, like the airframe this turbofan was attached which has been sitting in a museum for the past 20 years. Concorde G-BOAG flew its final revenue flight in October 2003 from New York to London Heathrow. The following month, the British Airways plane flew to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where it has been on display ever since.