Tick, Tick, Boom

Tesla Model 3 Performance HIGHS: Nauseatingly quick, airy cabin with great visibility, genuine value. LOWS: Off-putting user interface, inescapable clinical feeling, austere interior design.

- Andrew Krok

WRITING ABOUT ANY TESLA feels like wandering into Dr. Nightmare's Malfunctioning Loaded-Shotgun and Land-Mine Emporium. Say something nice? Buckshot in the face. Criticize the product? Kaboom. Thankfully, we stocked up on tourniquets before a bright-red Tesla Model 3 Performance landed at our Ann Arbor office. Not that we needed to-the g-forces from this pocket rocket are more than capable of cutting blood flow to the extremities.

Unholy acceleration has always been a mainstay of Tesla's sport-minded models, and the new Performance is no different. A pair of motors motivates all four wheels to the tune of 510 horsepower and 554 pound-feet of torque. Thanks in part to a relatively svelte 4046-pound curb weight, the Model 3 Performance blasts to 60 mph in a supercar-adjacent 2.8 seconds and continues through the quarter-mile in 11.0 seconds at 125 mph. By the time you remember what the speed limit is, you've doubled it.