Ever since Carl Benz strapped a
three-quarter-horsepower four-stroke to his Big Wheel, man has been fascinated
by the top speed of an automobile: How fast does it go? And more important, can
I make
it go faster?
Test facility in the heel of Italy;
features a 7.8-mile banked ring that simulates driving in a straight line at
149 mph. Built by fiat in 1975, now owned by Porsche.
Ripping through the air at the rate of a football field
every second, the white dot hurtles forward, bodywork flexing in the fight
against physics and common sense. Even at this speed, it takes over two minutes
to lap the 7.8-mile circular track. But it’s on us now, tires splayed with
force, nose encrusted with what looks like an entire species of insect as the
car bullies across the Italian sky. The engine must be screaming now,
screaming like the lungs of a diver caught breathless close to the surface. But
this is no Italian exotic. It’s a 735-hp Volkswagen Golf. And it’s just
tripped the timing lights at 205 mph.
No
doubt that every vehicle has well quality and has a big name in public, so that
becoming one of the most popular and searched by automotive lover. It was
firstly produced by Germany manufactured car since 1974 with refined and
enjoyable style.
Cast your mind back to a time of bad music, worse hair, and
your very first car. There can’t be many of us who didn’t sneak out to a
deserted road to see what our own car could do. And then conducted the whole
experiment again after fitting that performance air filter.
These days, carmakers often electronically limit top speeds
to accommodate tires or placate the safety lobby. Even most supercar
manufacturers have woken up to the futility of chasing maximum velocities.
Witness the meager 217 mph claimed for LaFerrari, easy meat for a 20-year-old
McLaren FI. Or, more to the point, a Hennessey Venom GT.
It’s niche builders like Hennessey and Koe- nigsegg that
keep the flame alive. But even outside the record-book crowd, there’s still a
hunger to go faster and plenty of tuners happy to help you do it. We trust Audi
when it says the R8 V10 Plus can do 198 mph. But how much faster could it go
with a pair of turbos strapped to its exhaust manifolds?
THEY BROUGHT A 735-HP GOLF, A 174-MPH DIESEL SUV, AND AN
UNBELIEVABLY FAST CAMPER VAN. FOR TUNERS, MAKING MORE SPEED GETS HARDER EVERY
YEAR, BUT WHAT DOESN’T KILL THEM EVIDENTLY MAKES THEM STRANGER.
It seemed like a fun thing to find out. So when a German
magazine asked if we wanted to come along on its top-speed tuner shootout, it
piqued our interest.
Hennessey has built what it claims is
the world’s fastest production car, and it’s pretty proud of it.
Road & Track has history with this stuff. Back in 1987, we
held a comparison test wherein Porsche’s then-new 959 had its tail comprehensively
handed to it by RuPs 211-mph, 911-based Yellow Bird. Alois Ruf wouldn’t be
present for this year’s excursion, but when the menschen from the land
of the unrestricted highway told us about their 168-mph RV, we were out the
door faster than a Callaway Sledgehammer.
Our host is Auto Bild, Sportscars, but the event was
assembled and funded by Continental Tires. Everyone needs tires, but making
them sexy enough for prime time is tough. Even in Europe, where the recent
introduction of a mandatory tire “window sticker,” with ratings for rolling
resistance, wet performance, and noise has finally helped shoppers differentiate,
few people appreciate how much tires influence the driving experience. But
safety isn’t sexy. What better way to publicize your wares than by fronting a
mad top-speed fest? Put your tires on hopped-up cars tearing around the
second-biggest circle on the planet, and they’ll pull numbers that would
incinerate the average Chinese remold in the blink of an eye.
Putting on an event like this is no small feat. You can’t
just decamp to a gas station on the side of an autobahn and let 16 cars go
crazy, and there are only a handful of tracks in Europe suitable for serious high-speed
testing. Consequently, they’re busy and expensive.
Alois Ruf wouldn’t
be present for this year’s excursion, but when the menschen from the land of
the unrestricted highway told us about their 168-mph RV, we were out the door
faster than a Callaway Sledgehammer.
