New car news

28 October 2011 - 17:00

SSC does 0-320km/h in under 16 seconds

Shelby Supercars is smarting. Smarting from the hammer blow delivered by the iron fist of the 417km/h Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, and reeling from the hand-speed of the Agera R. Probably. It wants revenge. It might just get it.

The company has uploaded a video of a bright orange SSC Ultimate Aero doing some gear ratio testing. It's using this as a mule to dial in the most extreme performance possible, before "transfer into the final Tuatara performance package". It's basically a test prototype for its upcoming 1000kW hypercar with the silly name.

See more pics of the SSC Tuatara

Naturally, the most ‘logical' test for gear ratios is 0-200mph, right? Of course it is! Considering the Koenigsegg Agera R recently posted some quite astonishing acceleration times and sent them off to the Guinness World Records team, one of those being a 0-320km/h time of 17.68 seconds.

Well, SSC's sprints showed second gear starts "achieved by far the best test results", and recorded six individual 0-320km/h test runs.

Each run unofficially clocked in at "under 16 seconds". Under sixteen seconds.

"More importantly, the team has now determined what they feel are the perfect gear ratios for the new seven-speed Tuatara transmission", SSC later noted.

Consider us gobsmacked.