THE PACE RACE

How the supercar arms race dashed from 200mph to 250mph - and more...

-  John Barker

BUGATTI VEYRON EB 16.4 - 253.2 MPH

THE FIRST 250MPH production car was the Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4, right? You might even have seen it on an episode of Top Gear, when James May clocked an officially verified 253.2mph. Check Wikipedia, though, and you'll see that the Dauer 962 Le Mans got there first, recording 251.4mph way back in 1993. Really? Welcome to the contentious and occasionally contradictory world of production car speed records.

In truth, it has ever been thus. Back in the 1980s, Ferrari stole Porsche's thunder by claiming that its F40 was capable of 201mph, just pipping the 198mph 959, but no independent test verified Ferrari's claim. Jaguar made a bid for the record with the XJ220 but had turned up the wick another 50bhp, so that didn't count. RUF's CTR held the record instead, at 213mph, a figure I could readily believe, having seen just over 200mph in a CTR on a German autobahn. And yet, while RUF is recognised as a manufacturer, the car is arguably a modified Porsche.

Still, we can all agree that the McLaren F1 put the matter to bed with its phenomenal two-way average of 240.1mph at the VW group's EhraLessien proving ground. Or can we? When Gordon Murray designed the remarkable F1, he set many targets but none for performance. Of course, he knew that the F1's light weight combined with the power and torque of the BMW 6.1-litre V12 would give incredible acceleration, and that the FI's slippery shape would result in a high top speed. But that top speed was 221mph, which was when the 7500rpm rev limiter cut in. When Andy Wallace recorded 240.1mph in 1998, the rev limiter had been raised to 8300rpm, a tweak denied customer cars.