Tuesday 26 November 2013

supercar benchmark

Every new supercar is claiming to produce more power and torque with the aim of beating their rivals to the coveted title of being the best and the fastest. It seems that in the last decade there has been a massive paradigm shift with the supercar development. From the 500hp level supercar to now 900+hp. the jump in power figures has been tremendous. The new Mclaren P1 is pushing the technology envelope with electric power assist and Porsche's 918 is also using hybrid power. this has started to make the Bugatti Veyron look old when comparing technology.

The Americans have also jumped on the bandwagon and took fast cars and made then ridiculously fast. Hennessey took the GT-R and made is push out over 1400hp and also made the Venom (based on the Lotus) with more than 1000hp. Both of these are capable of making Lamborghinis look slow.

The question remains with where will this development taper off? at 1500hp? 1800hp? or 2000hp? Are the tyre companies able to make tyres to cope with such speed? And with the road getting more congested each day, will anyone really have a chance to push these cars to their limit outside of Germany?

The effort and technology is truly admirable but is it really useful?