The SSC Tuatara is the world's fastest production car

SSC Tuatara first look.

Video Transcript

- Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new king of hypercar hill. The title of world's fastest production vehicle has been passed back and forth between automakers since 1894 when the 12 mile an hour Benz Velo, the world's first mass produced car made its debut. In the last 15 years, the title has changed hands four times.

Bugatti took it in 2005 with the 254 mile an hour Veyron BE, only to lose it to the SE Ultimate Aero. In 2007. Bugatti regained the title in 2010 with the Veyron 16.4 Supersport and managed to hold on to until 2017 when the Koenigsegg Agera RS notched 278 miles an hour. But Koenigsegg record would not stand forever.

On Saturday, October 10, it evaporated under the withering speed of SSE North America's newest 1750 horsepower hypercar, the SSC Tuatara. The Tuatara is the end result of more than a decade of R&D. Jerod Shelby, no relation to venerated car designer Carroll Shelby, founded SSC North America in 1998, initially producing the SE Ultimate Aero from 2004 to 2013. In 2009, the company began laying out its plan for the Tuatara, revolving around a singular goal, overwhelming speed.

While the Aero served as an initial test bed to see which technologies work best within the company's design parameters, the Tuatara was built as a blank sheet of paper as Shelby explained to Engadget. Its overarching goal as well as the philosophy of the company's design and engineering teams was simply exceed. Shelby first sat down with former Pininfarina stylist Jason Castriota to create an aesthetically pleasing vehicle.

The prototype was then hand it off to the team at Podium Engineering who would spend the next three years massaging the design eventually reducing the Tuatara's drag coefficient to a minuscule 0.279 and managing to achieve a 37.63% front rear aerodynamic balance at speeds over 150 miles an hour. Covered in an aerospace grade carbon fiber skin, the Tuatara weighs just 2,750 pounds.

The Tuatara V8 power plant is an equally marvelous piece of engineering prowess. Shelby teamed with Roger Nelson of Nelson Racing Engines to build it from the ground up. The 5.9 liter engine uses a flat plane crankshaft to reduce its rotating mass and lift the vehicle's red line up to 8,800 RPM.

The Twin turbo design offers 1,350 horsepower using 91 octane. But fill your tank with E85 f ethanol and you'll find the power of 400 additional horses under the hood, not bad for an engine that weighs just 428 pounds. The power produced then runs through the Tuatara's automated seven speed manual transmission, making shifting gears at speed a matter of simply tapping the paddles on either side of the steering wheel.

And while many high end manufacturers continue even in the year 2020 till insist on building their vehicles to accommodate drivers of a more Napoleonic stature, the Tuatara can reportedly accommodate people as tall as 6 foot 5 inches. The interior of the vehicle is tricked out as its engine bay complete with a digital driver display, center controlled touch screen, side cameras in lieu of mirrors, AC, and even a stereo.

Perhaps the Tuatara's coolest trick is its track setting, which drops the front and rear ride heights by more than an introspectively to ensure optimal aerodynamic down forces at speed. Conversely, there's also a lift setting, which raises the vehicle's nose by 4 inches so city drivers can get past stubborn speed bumps. In preparation for the vehicle's record setting run, SSC North America commandeered a 7 mile long arrow straight stretch of Highway 160 just outside of Pahrump, Nevada.

They even took over the private airstrip at Tonopah Airport for the week, using its aircraft hangar as HQ and the runways as warm up tracks for UK professional driver Oliver Webb, who would be piloting the Tuatara on its speed runs. According to Shelby's retelling, weather conditions for the week leading up to the Saturday speed run were nothing less than ideal-- clear skies, virtually and limited visibility, and nary a breeze in sight. So crosswinds are among high speed drivers most daunting challenges.

When you're traveling at nearly five times the posted speed limit, even a gentle gust is enough to compromise the vehicle's aerodynamics, push it off course or even throw it clear off the roadway. As such, the SSC North America team spent the run up repeatedly racing up and down the seven mile stretch in rental cars, searching for asphalt seams, rough patches, and windbreaks, anything that might interfere with the Tuatara's traction and stability during its drive. So, of course, the weather took a turn for the breezy as soon as the SSC team arrived on site early Saturday morning.

Compounding the wind, was the fact that even just after dawn the ambient temperature was hovering around 98 degrees Fahrenheit, which could potentially play havoc with the vehicle's tire performance. But having come this far, the team decided to cautiously proceed despite the environmental challenges presented. Webb's first run of the day was an immediate success. The Tuatara hit 287 on both legs of its circuit, the average of which was enough for SSC North America to reclaim its previously held title of world's fastest production car.

But Shelby was looking for more, much more. Going into this challenge, Jerod Shelby had hoped to achieve 500 kilometers per hour or around 312 miles an hour. However, as wind conditions continue to deteriorate, the chances of actually accomplishing that speed dropped precipitously. On Webb's second run, he managed to coax the Tuatara up to 301 miles an hour but was getting blown around the roadway by a vicious crosswind near the midpoint of the course.

This in itself was a huge deal. Only a handful of vehicles, like the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300 plus have ever managed to crack the elusive 300 mile an hour goal. Webb's final run of the day was by far the most terrifying. A pair of sizeable gusts shoved the two at her over two lanes and onto the shoulders rumble strip. Where he is not able to regain control of the vehicle, the results could have been disastrous but he did. And in doing so, Webb managed to make history as the Tuatara topped out at a whopping 330 miles per hour.

An average with the previous 301 mile an hour run, Webb's combined speed record stands at 316 miles per hour, 38 miles an hour faster than the Veyron and 4 miles over Shelby's own 312 mile an hour hope. Now, if you want to get your hands on a Tuatara of your own, well, good luck. The company is planning a limited production run of only around 100 vehicles with 12 being built in 2021 and 25 a year hitting the streets after that. Also, they cost $1.9 million. Yes, each.

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