The jet car that almost claimed the life of the Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond has been put up for sale on an online auction site.

Hammond spent five weeks in hospital after the jet-powered dragster Vampire crashed at 288mph last year at the Elvington airfield, near York. He was flown to hospital and treated for swelling to the brain.

Although the rocket car was wrecked in the crash, it is now being marketed on eBay with a starting price of £2,500. By last night the top bid was £7,149.

The listing states: “Vampire is now a little the worse for wear after its much-publicised excursion into the weeds. It is being sold as scrap without any warranty or guarantees.

“The chassis is bent, the historic afterburning Rolls-Royce Orpheus turbojet engine might run again (there is a comprehensive spare parts inventory to go with the car, including a new jetpipe), and just about every component on the car is damaged in some way. The roll cage was removed by someone postcrash and has not been returned to us. But this is the only key component which is absent.” The Vampire weighs 2,200lb, accelerates from 0 to 272mph in six seconds and consumes up to 10 gallons of fuel per mile. Its co-owner Colin Fallows set the official Outright British Land Speed Record in it with an average speed of 300.3mph.

The eBay posting adds: “The winning bidder will acquire a genuine piece of UK automotive history whose demise has been well publicised.”

In its final public appearance before the crash, the car was driven at 331mph at RAF Fairford in Gloucester-shire. Its sister car, Split Second, reached 362mph at the same event.

Mr Fallows, a 56-year-old engineer, jointly owns the car through Primetime Land Speed Engineering with his co-principal Mark Newby, and said that they had already rebuffed a number of souvenir hunters making large bids for parts of the car.

“Everybody who’s approached us so far has wanted pieces of it, and we’ve been offered huge sums of money for the steering wheel,” he said.

“We didn’t want to sell it in bits because of the inconvenience of taking it apart. If we sell the whole thing, then it’s out of our way. I’m not particularly fussed where it goes, but it would be nice to keep it complete. The Vampire is badly scarred. There are no wheels and the chassis is bent. I’ll be happy with £10,000.”

Mr Fallows, from Northampton, denied that it was “macabre” to sell the car after the near-fatal smash. He said: “I’ve not told the BBC or Richard [Hammond] about my plans and I don’t really care how they react.”

A report into the crash by the BBC criticised the producers of Top Gear for failing to spot a damaged tyre on the jet car.

The report, published in September, put the accident down to the “catastrophic disintegration” of a front tyre at high speed, probably caused by an object such as a nail. The 88-page document also revealed that Hammond’s fellow presenter on the show, James May, had been the first choice to take part in the stunt but was unavailable on the day of filming. It concluded that the accident should have been prevented.

Criticism centred on Primetime Landspeed Engineering as well as Top Gear for failing to have independent third-party checks made.

The report said: “Prior to, and on the day of the shoot, Primetime Landspeed Engineering had not provided information in any significant detail, which emphasised what particular routine safety checks they followed to ensure that the car was in a safe state prior to each run.”

Before the crash, Hammond had reached a top speed of 314mph and was staging a seventh run so that the show’s producers could get better shots of the car’s afterburner.

The dragster veered off the track at 288mph, flipped over several times and crashed on to grass.

Hammond, 38, made a complete recovery after the accident but has said that he has no memory of the two weeks after the crash.

Fans of Top Gear donated more than £250,000 towards the cost of a new helicopter for Yorkshire’s Air Ambulance service. Hammond recently invited the doctors, nurses and air ambulance staff who saved his life to a £20,000 private party as a thank-you.

Last night the car had attracted 30 bids. Potential buyers have until 7am on December 30 to stake their claim. A spokeswoman for the BBC said that “as Mr Fallows owns the car he can do what he likes with it”.