Stuttgart Spy
Spa-Francorchamps
- Joined
- 10 Jan 2005
- Messages
- 277
World Record 238mph
Sometimes words just fall hopelessly short of explaining the force on offer from a car, and after the last of a series of 150mph runs in 9ff’s TCR-84, shaking hands and the need to sit down was all that company boss Jan Fatthauer needed to see.
It might look like a bog standard 997 Carrera 4S Cabriolet, but there is something deeply sinister lying under the hood – an 840bhp twin turbo engine for instance. Since our test drive it went on to break the record and become the fastest soft-top in the world at Nardo, too, cracking a simply insane 238mph.
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Very few cars will match this one,” said Fatthauer, who is also responsible for another record breaker, the 400kph V400, so he’s not used to making idol boasts. “There’s the Bugatti Veyron, the Koenigsegg and maybe the Pagani Zonda F. That’s about it…”
He wasn’t lying, it took 3.7s to 60mph, at a very conservative effort, and the only thing stopping that time being cut by a further half second or even more was the fact that the tyres couldn’t keep up with the wheels. The stiff Continentals, the only tyres rated to the top speed, simply cannot put the power down and it’s even more complicated than simple wheelspin.
As well as all four wheels flailing for a grip like a drunk tramp fighting an imaginary stranger in the street, there is so much force heading through the tyre that the rubber slips on the wheel. Nothing will stop that and tall four wheels can even break traction at 130mph. Even in a straight line it is moderately intimidating and this is one of those cars that won’t just drive itself and takes a responsible approach to throttle modulation if you want to stay alive.
Despite losing a lot of that power on the way to the road, this beast will break through 200kph (125mph) in 9.6s and 300kph in 21.2s, which is monumentally fast and shows just how easy it is to run into trouble with the local law enforcement after just a few seconds of hard acceleration. It all feels even quicker, too, as with the soft-top down the noise is deafening, the freezing air rushing through the car acting as a constant reminder of the pure insanity of the task at hand and you can simply see more of the world melding into one constant blur. Considering the messy aerodynamics of a chop-top, the top speed is a pretty frightening prospect.
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