other sites across France and in other countries. Production ceased after 282 Caravelles of all types had been manufactured, including 2 prototypes or pre-production aircraft and 280 production aircraft. Sud Aviation's break-even point had been forecast to be around the 200-unit mark. Despite its commercial success, the Caravelle was not the focus of Sud Aviation's development efforts during the early 1960s as the majority of the company's design engineers were reallocated onto a successor for the Caravelle. The project ambitiously aimed at producing a supersonic transport with the same general size and range as the Caravelle. It was decided that this should be named after the firm's recent success, thus the Super-Caravelle name was applied to the design. The French Government had requested supersonic transport designs from Sud Aviation, as well as French rival firms Nord Aviation and Dassault during the late 1950s and of the three submissions, the Super-Caravelle won the contest with a medium-range design, which was deliberately sized to avoid competition with transatlantic designs assumed to already be on the drawing board. However, in part due to the high projected cost of the project, it was decided, at the direction of both the French and British governments, to form a consortium with the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) in November 1962, merging their design and production efforts to develop a supersonic transport. Out of these combined efforts, Concorde would emerge. At first, the new consortium intended to produce long-range and short-range versions, however there was no interest in the short-range version and it was dropped to focus on the long-range airliner. The consortium received non-binding options for over 100 of the long-range version from the major airlines of the day, and Pan Am, BOAC, and Air France were to be the launch customers, with six Concordes each. Other airlines in the order book included Panair do Brasil, Continental Airlines, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, American Airlines, United Airlines, Air India, Air Canada, Braniff, Singapore Airlines, Iran Air, Olympic Airways, Qantas, CAAC Airlines, Middle East Airlines, and TWA. Concorde sold very poorly due to several factors. Costs spiralled to more than six times the original projections, arriving at a unit cost of £23 million in 1977 (equivalent to £ million in ). Its sonic boom also made supersonic travel over land unrealistic. World events, such as the 1973–74 stock market crash and the 1973 oil crisis, had made airlines cautious about