The Ultimate Aero
After seven years of painstaking development, SSC is proud to introduce the Ultimate Aero – A car without equal.
The SSC Ultimate Aero sets the benchmark for supercars today. Achieving tremendous power via its twin turbo V-8 engine, it produces 1,183 horsepower and 1094 ft.-lbs. of torque making the Ultimate Aero the world’s most powerful production car. Combining this proprietary power plant with a lightweight, aerodynamic body and the best handling systems available SSC delivers a vehicle that not only eclipses all other cars but stands OFFICIALLY as the “World’s Fastest Production Car”.
Simply put, there is no other production car that can match the performance of the Ultimate Aero.
Yes this car is fastest today, but with how easy it is to build huge HP and aerodynamics understood as well as they are before this small “production” run is complete another company will have surpassed it. Comparing this directly to the Veyron is not fair, short of speed, the Veyron is such an engineering marvel in a completely different realm then this thing. Compare the interiors, the exterior and the quality of materials used through out. Then factor in reliability and cache and the the clear winner is the Veyron, a forced induction V8 from a small company producing over 1000hp just won’t hold up. I have not driven a veyron though every reviewer who has driven it claims it feels so different then every other car out there, this is just like another Ascari, or Koenigsegg or Pagani.
all those above mentioned cars are just absolutely marvelous. the stuff they make is just mindblowing. those companies are awesome. i like those one off cars. im sure that if i see any one of those in person id turn into a drooling re-re and babble something incoherent
The Ultimate and Veyron are in two completely different categories as far as cars go, but they both went after the same title, and the Ultimate won. It’s got only two things going for it, speed and price, R&D, reliability, drivability, comfort, luxuries, design etc go to the Veyron no doubt.
However the top speed record it the only thing that made the Veyron world famous and so sought after, because it was the Ultimate in top speed (sorry for the pun), but no longer.
Now that it’s not the worlds fastest supercar, it’s not as appealing to customers. The customers who shell out so much money for the car, want the best, and now that it’s not the fastest, it dosn’t have much going for it to justify the price tag.
From a sheer engineering standpoint the Veyron is still the king, the car is capable of more and was indeed initially designed with a higher top speed goal, however in order to remain reliable they had to detune the car a bit. All they would have to do is create Veyron R and increase boost, remove/reduce the warranty and they would be back on top. The veyron is also the most expensive production car produced and even at the astronomical price, they are still losing money, that makes a huge statement about the R&D that went into this thing.
Much like a F40, F50, Enzo and McLaren F1, the Veyron will remain one of the most, if not the single most desirable collectible car of our time, these new companies that have ultra low production runs and no heritage will remain popular but not in the caliber of the big boys - history has proved this true time and time again. Yes certain niche customers will worship the underdog and the really odd cars, but the ones I just mentioned and maybe the Carrera GT will be the popular collectable cars of tomorrow. There are plenty of cool and rare cars from the 50’s but the 55 300SL is still one of the most desirable of that era.
id take the bugatti but im guessing if they were nervous about this new car at all they would just offer some sort of ecu reflash that turns up the boost like 1-2lbs then it would be the fastest again, but theres no need bugatti>ultimate
With the exponential increase of the effect of drag on anything over 55mph IIRC, it would take a lot more then 1-2 pounds of boost and tuning. There was a really good article in Motortrend (iirc) that took a Lambo LP640 and described what it would take (an already very high hp output car, with low drag) to reach Bugatti record, and they said it would need either to cut drag in half, or cut drag and greatly increase the power.
Difference between 240mph top speed and 250mph top speed, drag being consistent is most likely another ~50% in power.
Very general assumption with no real calculations made, but it gets the point across. Every 1mph top speed is a HUGE struggle.
I never claimed it wasn’t