Top speed wars are pretty pointless. Sort of like the Cold War: lots of arm waving, shouting, and very little action. The Bugatti won a battle, then the old SSC Ultimate Aero took over, then the Super Sport reigned supreme for Molsheim again, with 431kph. The problem is, as much as these companies can arm-wave and shout about 400+ top speeds, it's not as if you're going to line up at the lights any time soon and fight it out for real. Top speed is irrelevant unless you have a dead-level 10km-long driveway. With a braking zone a couple of kilometres long.
But it's still a war worth fighting, in the name of freedom. Top speed freedom of course. In the last round of fire, Shelby Supercars (not in any way related to the great Carroll) lay there coiled and wounded after the Veyron Super Sport slugged it one straight in the chest. Now SSC is back on its fighting feet, and with a hurt pride but intact honour the company's loaded another clip. Safety's off. Ready, aim, fire. Bam! 442kph.
The Veyron drops down like lead.
This latest weapon in SSC's arsenal is called Tuatara. It's touted as the next generation of the supercar, although we'd like to amend that last bit to "hypercar". The American company released snippets of information and even some official images earlier in the year, but we've had to wait until now for full details.
We'll start with the name, which is shared with a New Zealand reptile that's quite important in the evolutionary study of lizards. Yes, we did some actual research there, and we take it as a reminder of the Tuatara's evolution from the Ultimate Aero. Plus, SSC's press material says, "The Tuatara possesses the fastest evolving DNA in the world." Turns out they've also heard of Wikipedia…
But even though the two cars, old and new, look worlds apart — this one was designed by the talented pen of Jason Castriota — the formula is much the same: low weight, insane power and low drag.
The engine is still a twin-turbocharged V8, but has grown in capacity to 7.0-litres from the old 6.3. And where the old car used a six-speed manual transmission to try and grapple with the tarmac, the new car uses a much more effective seven-speed paddle-shifter with a triple-disc carbon clutch plate. If that's too high-tech for you, you can still get it with a proper H-gate manual, and that one also comes with a seven-speed pattern. Sorry Porsche, someone beat you to it…
The body is made entirely out of carbon fibre, and the chassis too, leaving just the front and rear crash structures to be composed of aluminium. Even the wheels are ultra-lightweight one-piece carbon fibre items. Say what you will, but for all the might of the Veyron, it can't boast about carbon fibre wheels.
And neither can it boast about its extraordinary power figures any more. While the Veyron Super Sport uses four turbos to feed its 8.0-litre W16, producing almost 1,200 horsepower, the Tuatara gets an astonishing 1,350bhp out of half as many cylinders and a litre less.
We don't know how they did it, frankly, but we do know that the war isn't won. Only another battle. Bugatti will be polishing its barrel.
Ultimate Aero
In 2007, SSC challenged the Bugatti Veyron's top speed production record with a run in the US. The ultimate Aero had to beat Bugatti's 407kph, and duly did so with a speed of 412kph, measured as an average speed over two timed runs, per Guinness World Record regulations. With an engine very similar to the Tuatara's twin-turbo V8 — in fact many parts are shared by the two cars; suspension, block, brakes — the Ultimate Aero could do 0-100kph in less than three seconds, despite driving only the rear wheels.
