samedi 21 décembre 2013
0
Knowing What Is The Fastest Car In The World Isn't Easy
It seems like a fairly straight forward question, doesn't it? What is the fastest car in the world? How complicated can it be? As far as we can tell, there's only one world. And however fast, however many cars, can drive, there's got to be one that's faster than the others. Or at least a couple tied for fastest? Right?
Alas in the high stakes prestige game of crowning any automobile the fastest car in the world there are a number of considerations to take into account. And they do indeed need to be taken into account. For, ambiguity about the definition led to more than a little controversy in 2013 about just which car was to wear the crown.
Before we dive right into that matter, we should first introduce the players in this little drama of ours. Three cars are especially important to this story. The first of these is the Bugatti Veynon Super Sport: the reigning king. You might call it the European Union of sports cars, produced by a Franco-German collaboration. Owned by Volkswagen, the car is assembled in the small French town of Molsheim. The Bugatti accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 2.4 seconds, driven by an 8.0 liter W16 engine that works up 1,200 bhp. The Guinness Book of Records has certified it as reaching the track speed of 267.8 mph.
The challengers are, first, the Hennessey Venom GT, with a speed of 265.7 mph. With its 7.0 liter V8 twin turbo engine producing 1,244 bhp. It has a certified acceleration speed of going from 0 to 186 mph in 13.63 seconds. That's kind of fast, too. The other challenger of note is the SSC Ultimate Aero. This car has the distinction of having been twice crowned the world's fastest car. Uncontroversially, in 2007, the Aero recorded a certified speed of 256.18 mph, to win its first title. It kept that crown for nearly three years. The second time it was crowned fastest car in the world, though, was a little more sensational. We're almost ready to dive into that story, but first, one more thing: we also have to know the rules by which the game is normally played.
To be clear, here, any claims about a car being the fastest in the world are really about whether it is the fastest "production" car. Production car, you ask? The only cars that qualify under this rule are ones that can be bought commercially. Vehicles, that could perhaps be called cars (even if they more resemble rockets), but are only legal to drive places like the Utah salt flats, don't count. Only a car that can be legally purchased and driven on city streets counts as a production car.
Only such cars qualify for the race, as it were. Those that have been modified from their retail form, so as to amplify their race track speed obviously are disqualified. Who would quibble with that, if the point is to speed test actual production cars? That would seem like a pretty straightforward matter. Well, as it happens, not really so straight forward after all.
In 2010 Bugatti took the crown of world's fastest car away from the SSC Ultimate Aero. The German-French collaborative car reigned uninterrupted, until April of 2013. At the very beginning of that month, John Hennessey, car guru of the Hennessey Venom GT, alleged having set the production car record by hitting 265.7 mph. As this was not a certified test it posed no threat to the Bugatti record. And, anyway, Bugatti's record was faster than that, at 267.8 mph. Rather, what led to the controversy was that Hennessey also noted in passing that, in fact his car's speed really did make it the actual fastest production car in the world. And the reason he cited was that Bugatti attached a speed limiter to their retail cars.
And this was true. Commercially purchased Bugatti Venyon Super Sports did have a safety system implemented to prevent the cars moving at speeds in excess of 258 mph. This was almost a full 10 mph below the track recorded record. The folks at the Guinness Book of Records heard about this and a several days long fiasco ensued. The Guinness officials decided that the speed limiter posed a modification for speed testing purposes. Consequently, it disqualified the Bugatti as a production car. The crown was revoked. Since there was no official certification of the Hennessey's speed, the crown reverted back to the former record holder, the SSC Ultimate Aero.
A peculiar situation all around, this one was. Presumably the point of a rule against modified cars had been prevention of non-commercial cars - such as those taken off a production line, and modified specifically for speed racing -- competing on an uneven footing with production cars. Again, that seems reasonable enough. However, this was a situation in which the car wasn't modified for advantage on the track, but rather for safely on the street. The modification in question did have the effect of making the car faster on the track than on the street, yet the production car wasn't modified to be faster; it was modified to be slower. It would seem that no one had considered this possibility when they came up with the production car rule.
There remains plenty of controversy to this day regarding the correct interpretation of the rule and whether the limiter-less Bugatti should be allowed to compete. The Guinness Book officials though in the end concluded that reading the rule that way contradicted the spirit of the rule. Only days later they pulled a sharp U-turn. Bugatti had its crown reinstated and remains reigning champ as fastest car in the world to this day.
When you consider it, though, it is a bit strange to call any of those production cars. They are pieced together from a diversity of system sources, hand crafted in meticulous manual processes and result in a tiny number of such cars only ever being purchased. So, maybe, the lesson here is that "production car" is a judgment in the eye of the beholder. Be that as it may, I'm quite sure that rules made to be broken. Right?
Alas in the high stakes prestige game of crowning any automobile the fastest car in the world there are a number of considerations to take into account. And they do indeed need to be taken into account. For, ambiguity about the definition led to more than a little controversy in 2013 about just which car was to wear the crown.
Before we dive right into that matter, we should first introduce the players in this little drama of ours. Three cars are especially important to this story. The first of these is the Bugatti Veynon Super Sport: the reigning king. You might call it the European Union of sports cars, produced by a Franco-German collaboration. Owned by Volkswagen, the car is assembled in the small French town of Molsheim. The Bugatti accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 2.4 seconds, driven by an 8.0 liter W16 engine that works up 1,200 bhp. The Guinness Book of Records has certified it as reaching the track speed of 267.8 mph.
The challengers are, first, the Hennessey Venom GT, with a speed of 265.7 mph. With its 7.0 liter V8 twin turbo engine producing 1,244 bhp. It has a certified acceleration speed of going from 0 to 186 mph in 13.63 seconds. That's kind of fast, too. The other challenger of note is the SSC Ultimate Aero. This car has the distinction of having been twice crowned the world's fastest car. Uncontroversially, in 2007, the Aero recorded a certified speed of 256.18 mph, to win its first title. It kept that crown for nearly three years. The second time it was crowned fastest car in the world, though, was a little more sensational. We're almost ready to dive into that story, but first, one more thing: we also have to know the rules by which the game is normally played.
To be clear, here, any claims about a car being the fastest in the world are really about whether it is the fastest "production" car. Production car, you ask? The only cars that qualify under this rule are ones that can be bought commercially. Vehicles, that could perhaps be called cars (even if they more resemble rockets), but are only legal to drive places like the Utah salt flats, don't count. Only a car that can be legally purchased and driven on city streets counts as a production car.
Only such cars qualify for the race, as it were. Those that have been modified from their retail form, so as to amplify their race track speed obviously are disqualified. Who would quibble with that, if the point is to speed test actual production cars? That would seem like a pretty straightforward matter. Well, as it happens, not really so straight forward after all.
In 2010 Bugatti took the crown of world's fastest car away from the SSC Ultimate Aero. The German-French collaborative car reigned uninterrupted, until April of 2013. At the very beginning of that month, John Hennessey, car guru of the Hennessey Venom GT, alleged having set the production car record by hitting 265.7 mph. As this was not a certified test it posed no threat to the Bugatti record. And, anyway, Bugatti's record was faster than that, at 267.8 mph. Rather, what led to the controversy was that Hennessey also noted in passing that, in fact his car's speed really did make it the actual fastest production car in the world. And the reason he cited was that Bugatti attached a speed limiter to their retail cars.
And this was true. Commercially purchased Bugatti Venyon Super Sports did have a safety system implemented to prevent the cars moving at speeds in excess of 258 mph. This was almost a full 10 mph below the track recorded record. The folks at the Guinness Book of Records heard about this and a several days long fiasco ensued. The Guinness officials decided that the speed limiter posed a modification for speed testing purposes. Consequently, it disqualified the Bugatti as a production car. The crown was revoked. Since there was no official certification of the Hennessey's speed, the crown reverted back to the former record holder, the SSC Ultimate Aero.
A peculiar situation all around, this one was. Presumably the point of a rule against modified cars had been prevention of non-commercial cars - such as those taken off a production line, and modified specifically for speed racing -- competing on an uneven footing with production cars. Again, that seems reasonable enough. However, this was a situation in which the car wasn't modified for advantage on the track, but rather for safely on the street. The modification in question did have the effect of making the car faster on the track than on the street, yet the production car wasn't modified to be faster; it was modified to be slower. It would seem that no one had considered this possibility when they came up with the production car rule.
There remains plenty of controversy to this day regarding the correct interpretation of the rule and whether the limiter-less Bugatti should be allowed to compete. The Guinness Book officials though in the end concluded that reading the rule that way contradicted the spirit of the rule. Only days later they pulled a sharp U-turn. Bugatti had its crown reinstated and remains reigning champ as fastest car in the world to this day.
When you consider it, though, it is a bit strange to call any of those production cars. They are pieced together from a diversity of system sources, hand crafted in meticulous manual processes and result in a tiny number of such cars only ever being purchased. So, maybe, the lesson here is that "production car" is a judgment in the eye of the beholder. Be that as it may, I'm quite sure that rules made to be broken. Right?
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