Is the performance car arms race over?

Have we reached peak power output for a road car? Is the arms race finally over? Has Rimac just put an emphatic full stop on stratospheric horsepower figures with its violently fast Nevera R? OK, so the 2,300bhp Koenigsegg Gemera will land later this year, but beyond that a truce? It’s been a long time since more bhp translated directly to more driving fun.

In 1926, the Bugatti Type 41 moved the game on with a heady 296bhp. Fast forward 66 years and the McLaren F1 mustered 618bhp – a 109 per cent increase – but it’s only taken half as long again for the Nevera R to hit 2,078bhp, a 236 per cent hike over the F1. You could put this all down to electric cars unlocking silent, low hanging horsies, but the Gemera has a V8, as does the non-hybrid 2,031bhp Hennessey Venom F5 Evolution. The whole world’s gone mad.

We must stick our hands up and take at least partial responsibility for this, because who doesn’t like a juicy story with a 2,000+bhp hook and 300mph punchline? We’ve fuelled or at least gently encouraged the competition. But enough is probably enough. As Ollie Kew discovers in the latest issue of TG magazine, the Nevera’s performance is now limited not by power, but by all four tyres’ limits of adhesion... and the limits of a driver’s neck.

Mate Rimac himself freely admits the Nevera is a showcase of what’s possible, but not necessarily what customers want to buy. As a result he’s dropped a strong hint that the next Rimac could be a hybrid, not pure electric, and therefore more visceral and less powerful at the same time.

Less power means more focus on the touchpoints that really matter – the steering, the brakes, the way the torque is delivered – it encourages creativity because headline performance is no longer enough on its own. See the rash of off-road supercars cropping up, and the return of coachbuilt specials like the Ferrari SP3 Daytona, that find new routes to making the driver feel something... other than nauseous.

Alternatively, you could do a Porsche and simply paint a Le Mans car silver, slather it in tan leather and pester authorities until they let you put some numberplates on it. Given it requires a pit crew to start, the Porsche 963 RSP is probably the most extreme road car ever, but far from the most powerful. Ollie Marriage drives it in this issue, and strangely his feedback wasn’t “Could do with a bit more ooomph”.

Elsewhere we’ve driven the Corvette ZR1 and the finished Praga Bohema for the very first time, and there's a behind-the-scenes look at the incredible Isle of Man TT. Oh, and you'll get a bonus supplement where we celebrate the V10 engine, naming our 10 favourites in the process. 

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