SSC Ultimate Aero: the grudge match

Want to know what 1,200 horsepower feels like? In a car that weighs a third less than a Bugatti Veyron? It's violent, bonkers, near malicious. A crush on your body, a blur on your vision. As magnetic and sinister as peering over the edge of a cliff at crashing waves hundreds of feet below. A headlong rush - a physical one towards the far-distance, and a metaphorical rush towards the edges of your own self-restraint that, for me at any rate, exposes a gaping shortfall of skill to make the best of torque that can, because there's no traction control, produce extravagant wheelspin in the first three gears and occasionally in fourth beyond 100mph. In the dry.

But that's an original I'm driving. The spectacular white car in this gallery is its yet-unnamed replacement. Which will have some vital driver aids, but will also have another 150-odd horses, better aero and a whole lot less weight. Oh. Good. Grief.

Words: Paul Horrell
Photos: Ripley and Ripley