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Rulebook. Shredded.
3 years ago
Sutcliffe couldn't believe what the Lotus Carlton could do in 1990
After the first ‘no mistakes, no more BS’ run down the mile straight I remember looking at the numbers that chugged their way out of the Leitz Correvit timing machine, and thinking how surreal they seemed. The 0-60mph time of 4.9 seconds was nuts enough on its own – this was an era in which the 204bhp Sierra Cosworth felt pretty damn rapid with a 0-60mph time of 6.2. But it was the 0-130mph time of 17.6 seconds that truly blew my mind. It meant the Carlton could get to 130mph in less time than it took the mighty Cossie to reach 100mph. I remember staring at that number in total disbelief that night because I’d never seen anything like it before.
In the years and decades that followed I was lucky enough to figure all sorts of increasingly quick cars for What Car? and Autocar. The TVR Griffith 4.3 caused quite a stir when it became the first ‘affordable’ British sports car to hit 60mph in under five seconds. As did the Cerbera a few years later when it hit 100mph in under nine seconds.
"Question is, do we really need such monstrous acceleration from a road car? Is it necessary? Does it prove anything that hasn’t already been proved? Surely there comes a point beyond which enough is already too much?"
Of the truly big hitters the XJ220 was the first supercar to leave the rulebook in shreds, hitting 100mph in 7.9 – that felt entirely crackers at the time. Until the McLaren F1 nuked all acceleration records known to man a couple of years later by hitting 60mph in 3.2sec, 100mph in 6.3sec, and 200mph in 28sec dead.
When we recorded those historic numbers in 1994 on a combination of the runway at Bruntingthorpe and the mile straight at Millbrook, Ti’s co-founder Andrew Frankel and I were convinced that no road car would beat those times. Ever.
Then a decade or so later came the Veyron, and then the Veyron Super Sport, which got to 60mph in 2.6sec, to 100mph in 5sec and to 200mph in 22.2sec. By which time it was all getting a little bit ridiculous in the world of the ultrafast car, because soon afterwards came not one but three so-called hypercars – the P1, the LaFerrari and the 918 Spyder – all of which were more accelerative than the Veyron Super Sport. Just.
"How silly are the numbers? Very. And then some. The ones that stand out for me personally are a bit weird, true, but then I have these strange reference points in my mind, so I’ll start with that 0-130mph time. The Carlton, remember, did it in 17.6sec. The Nevera has just done it in 4.74. That, my friends, is simply bonkers"
Next, another breed of even more bespoke hypercars from Koenigsegg & Co, each costing that little bit more than the next, containing a bit more power and torque, accelerating that little bit faster.
Last week, however, the world of acceleration times had a great big bomb thrown into it, and once again I found myself staring at a set of numbers unable to comprehend what I was looking at. I’m talking of course about the 23 different acceleration world records that have just been vaporised by the 1888bhp/1739lb ft Rimac Nevera, a car from Croatia I’ve spent a fair bit of time driving and being blown away by recently.
How silly are the numbers? Very. And then some. The ones that stand out for me personally are a bit weird, true, but then I have these strange reference points in my mind, so I’ll start with that 0-130mph time. The Carlton, remember, did it in 17.6sec. The Nevera has just done it in 4.74. That, my friends, is simply bonkers.
But not, perhaps, as bonkers as the four wheel-drive Rimac’s 0-200mph time of 10.86sec, because this means it beats the once unbeatable McLaren F1 to the double-ton by 17 seconds. I mean, what the fudge?
And if that’s not enough to fray the inner edges of your imagination, how do 0-60mph in 1.74 and 0-100mph in 3.21 grab you? The first is hard enough to get your head round even if you’ve experienced the effects of the Nevera’s individual-wheel torque-vectoring system first hand. The second means the Rimac can hit 100mph in exactly the same time the F1 requires to hit 60mph.
I could go on. In fact I will. How does 0-250mph in 21.86 seconds sound? Or a standing quarter mile in 8.25sec? This is a car with number plates, remember, one that can be driven quite easily to the shops, and which can do a genuine 280-300 miles between charges…
But the number that really does it for me is not a zero-to-anything number at all. It is instead a rolling acceleration time, and to understand its significance you need to think back to the last time you did 130mph. Maybe you’ve never done 130mph, but if you have, well, it’s quite a decent speed, is it not? One that takes a while to reach in any car.
Well now imagine that you’re doing 60mph along a dual carriageway then someone says nail it. You mash the accelerator wide open and, if you happen to be in a Rimac Nevera, you’ll be doing 130mph just 2.99sec later. To be clear, the Nevera can get from 60mph to 130mph in a whisker less than three seconds. And on the way there it gets from 120mph to 130mph in just half of one second. Think about that because it is truly quite rude. I’m not sure there are many bikes that could live with that, and certainly no petrol-powered road cars. None.
Question is, do we really need such monstrous acceleration from a road car? Is it necessary? Does it prove anything that hasn’t already been proved? Surely there comes a point beyond which enough is already too much? Or is too much still never enough, even at this level?
"The 0-60mph time of 4.9 seconds was nuts enough on its own – this was an era in which the 204bhp Sierra Cosworth felt pretty damn rapid with a 0-60mph time of 6.2. But it was the 0-130mph time of 17.6 seconds that truly blew my mind. It meant the Carlton could get to 130mph in less time than it took the mighty Cossie to reach 100mph"
I’m not sure any more. We can argue about the ethics and even the physics of the world’s fastest road cars until the sun decides not to rise one day, but in the meantime the only way you’ll prevent mankind from wanting to go further and faster is to legislate against it, and even then the most determined among us will always find a way round such things.
What I do know is that having figured quite a few of the world’s fastest cars over the years, I understand the buzz behind a crazy number. And the numbers the Nevera generates are absolutely incredible. Officially.
But the fact that it’s also a seriously engaging and just very good road car to drive as well is, in the end, what defines it. Not the raw numbers it can generate. Even if some of those numbers – all of them, in fact – are magnificently ridiculous. Just like Bitch-Carlt’s 17.6 second 0-130mph time was all those years ago. And so it goes on…
Second Opinion, by Dan Prosser
Like all of us, I’m sure, I’ve been fascinated by acceleration and top speed figures in the past. As a kid reading car magazines every waking hour I loved that TVRs would roast Porsche Boxsters off the line – that was reason enough to choose the British car over the clearly inferior German one.
I can’t be alone in thinking things have got somewhat out of hand. But I agree with Steve – if all this stuff was legislated out of existence, it’d be a real shame. I don’t want to live in a world where lawmakers, not engineers, decide how fast, far, high or deep we can go.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but reflect on what the legacy of cars like the Rimac Nevera, Bugatti Chiron, McLaren F1, Ferrari F40 and others might eventually be. These are the cars that have expanded the performance envelope for road-legal machines more than any other, breaking records and doing what was once unthinkable. But have they also made us overestimate how important performance figures really are?
I think so. I wonder how many Bugatti Veyron owners have ever recorded 250mph in their cars. None? Possibly. It is never a number on a piece of paper that makes a car fun or thrilling to drive, but the experience itself. And my issue with all this stuff is that when the numbers become the priority, everything else suddenly, inevitably, becomes less important.
Including how enjoyable a car is to drive on the road. Car magazines, car companies and car buyers have been bewitched by these acceleration and top speed figures for decades. The upshot is that now, in 2023, there are hot hatches that are so searingly fast you can use the fullness of their performance on the road for only a few seconds at a time. Less in the case of many performance EVs.
It isn’t about to stop and there’s not a great deal any of us can do to challenge the status quo. But I for one will continue to champion the performance cars that do not conflate raw speed with fun, the few that almost disregard performance figures altogether, because those are the ones I enjoy driving the most.
