Engineering the SSC Tuatara: The New World’s Fastest Production Car!

2021 Update! SSC TUATARA Officially Breaks World Speed Record

The SSC Tuatara is officially the world’s fastest production car. With an average two-way speed of 282.9 mph over 2.3 miles, SSC broke the standing record of 278mph. This happened last week while testing at JBPG in Kennedy Space Center on SSC’s quest to break 300 mph.

From October 2020: Designed and Manufactured by USA based SSC North America, The Tuatara (pronounced too-a-tar-a) has recently taken the title of “World’s Fastest Production Car” with a top speed of 316 mph!

In recent years the title of “World’s Fastest Production Car” has changed hands quite frequently with brands like Koenigsegg and Bugatti battling for supremacy.

The Tuatara’s origin was a “blank sheet of paper,” designed by the SSC team as a R&D testing platform, with a singular goal: ultimate speed. The body was designed by a former Pininfarina designer (the firm who have traditionally designed most Ferrari bodywork) to look great. The SSC team then took this great looking design and fine tuned it to make it have an extremely low drag-coefficient, while also providing adequate downforce at speed. Beneath the carbon-fiber skin lies a twin-turbo 5.9L V8 powerplant with an 8800 RPM redline, churning out a whopping 1350 horsepower! Amazingly this power rating is with 91 octane fuel only, if the Tuatara is filled with e85 it generates an amazing 1750 horsepower.

The speed run was done on an extremely flat and straight, seven-mile section of closed highway in Nevada. After the first two runs were averaged (once in each direction) the Tuatara had a top speed record of 287 mph, earning the new top speed. But they were not done. Despite the challenging wind conditions the team kept at it, finishing the day with runs of 301 mph and 331 mph, averaging to 316 mph and crushing their previous attempts!

Unfortunately this run is being disputed, and was not approved by the sanctioning body due to an issue with the GPS system responsible for verifying the telemetry, and the car not being homologated for road use. SSC will be rerunning the Tuatara with multiple timing systems to be sure of the official top speed. Dang. Its still stupid fast.

Looking to get your hands on a SSC Tuatara? You’re going to have to be quick! There will only be 100 made in the initial run and they will each cost $1.9M!

Still need convincing? Watch the Tuatara race a Bugatti Veyron