Hyper Powered

Charting the evolution of the hypercar, the most powerful cars on the planet and the pinnacle of automotive evolution.

- Daryl Lee

Ever since humankind went from horsepower to horsepower modes of transport, there has been an obsession with speed and power. To go faster and more powerfully than the people who went before.

Even when the automobile was in its infancy, there were countless speed record attempts and races, which only goes to show how fascinated people are with speed. And it soon emerged that there was a market for people who only demanded the best, the fastest and the most powerful.

Thus, the ‘hypercar’ was born – although the name, and indeed, its lesser cousin, the ‘supercar’ – probably wouldn’t have a proper appellation until at least the 1980s.

Even today, the hypercar and supercar defy any sort of formal codification. Today’s sports cars, and for that matter, sports saloons, are packing the sort of performance that a hypercar from barely 20 years ago could only dream about.

An example we frequently cite is that of the Ferrari F355, a superlative sports car from the mid-1990s that developed 380hp from its 3.5-liter V8 and could accelerate from rest to 100km/hr in 4.7 seconds.

These days, those figures would be bested by the Mercedes-AMG A45 S, which has 421hp from an engine with half as many cylinders and would despatch the century sprint in 3.9 seconds. Impressive numbers on their own, but even more so when one considers that the car achieving that level of acceleration is a hot hatchback that’s roomy enough for the kids and will happily do grocery runs with a smile on its grille.