Car "Dude" Alan

Issue 136 - 20 July 2006

The British car magazine, Autocar, publishes its "World's Fastest Car" issue once a year. They define "fastest" as the car that goes from zero to 100 mph and back to zero the fastest. Some U.S. magazines try to do this occasionally too. Doing it in Britain, though, makes it interesting because they attract some of the boutique "car" manufacturers in that country. I put quotes around "car" because some of the vehicles they produce can only loosely be called a car.

This year was particularly interesting, at least to me. They crowned a new car as "world's fastest". If I told you what it was here, it would kill all the suspense. I'm going to reproduce their table of the 25 cars that they tested this year. The price they quote is in pounds, of course, and I will convert that at a current rate of $1.83 to the pound. You will find that cars that are available here are much more expensive there. I'm sorry that I can't include pictures of all these cars, but they wouldn't fit.

Rank	0-60 (sec)	0-100-0 (sec)	Price ($)	Make/model	Comments
25	6.89	22.65	24,041	Thurlsby Astra 888 CDTi	This is the nominal diesel of this crowd. The amazing thing is that it is nearly as fast as a supposed performance Vectra VXR.
24	6.94	22.35	46,079	Vauxhall (Opel) Vectra VXR	The performance arm of Vauxhall/Opel is VXR and this is one of them that doesn't deliver a lot of performance. This also was a station wagon and that probably didn't help a lot.
23	6.77	21.35	32,541	Ford Focus ST	Autocar loves the Focus ST, but points out fairly that it takes a curvy and maybe bumpy road to show the real virtues of this car.
22	5.98	21.00	43,911	Mazda 6MPS	It probably is disturbing to the Focus owner that the Mazda beat it rather significantly, though the Mazda is also significantly more expensive, bigger, and heavier.
21	6.07	20.55	35,685	Renault Megane F1	And, to the chagrin of the Focus and Mazda owner, the Renault is faster still. It really is too bad that we don't get any of these cars here because with increasing fuel prices, they should be quite attractive to Americans. On the other hand, the Renault is very French looking which probably would limit its appeal to Americans.
20	6.05	19.05	34,990	Vauxhall (Opel) Astra VXR	Aha! Here is a real competitor to the Focus on price and size -- and it is lots faster. Well, at least lots faster here, Autocar points out that the Ford would be much more satisfying to drive when the road gets curvy.
19	5.74	18.85	na	Vauxhall (Opel) Astra Sprint	This is the bridge from the mass-market cars to the sporty cars. It hasn't been formally introduced yet in Europe. It is a front-drive, two-door hatchback that is highly styled in the sense of the Honda Civic. Clearly it has the "go" to match the "look". It is sad that Autocar chose not to include any Japanese cars.
18	5.75	18.80	48,211	Nissan 350Z	The Nissan brings up the affordable bottom of the sporty cars on the list. The Nissan excelled in both traction off the line and braking, but didn't have enough power to place higher on the list.
17	4.67	16.60	62,211	Lotus Exige S	The Lotus really doesn't belong here at all because it is far more of a track racer than a drag racer. It's mid-engine design really limits traction off the line despite having lots of power versus weight.
16	5.04	16.46	80,392	Porsche Cayman S	The competition between the Cayman S and the Lotus is interesting. Again it is traction limited because of the mid-engine design. It has more power than the Lotus, but weighs a lot more. I'd have thought that the Lotus would be faster than the Porsche.
15	5.04	15.95	78,315	BMW Z4M Roadster	The difference between the Z4M and the Cayman S is even more interesting to me. The Z4M is convincingly faster in the 60 to 100 run and slower in braking, but fast enough to win.
14	4.90	15.81	146,391	Aston Martin V8 Vantage	Here is a GT car competing with the road trash. It has lots of power, but being front engine rear drive means that it has traction problems off the line. It also is heavy, make that very heavy.
13	4.49	15.80	91,463	Audi RS4	The Audi RS4 is now in U.S. showrooms. It is seriously fast and with all-wheel-drive, can delivery the power to the ground. With 414 horsepower, it will take the new BMW M3 to equal it in road performance (maybe).
12	4.96	15.20	116,196	BMW M5	On the other hand, the bigger, and much more powerful M5 is lots faster than the Audi. Also interesting to note that among the faster sporty cars the Audi and BMW are the only 4-doors. Note too that the BMW does have 500 horsepower to the Audi's 414, but does weigh more and has just rear-wheel drive.
11	4.39	15.00	74,721	TVR Tuscan 2	Here is the first of the unique British cars. The TVR is a fiberglass rear-drive roadster with a bespoke V-8 engine. It is quite light, has absolutely no safety equipment (other than seat belts) and has just 365 horsepower. With no traction control, Autocar pointed out that during this test, keeping it in a straight line was a challenge.
10	4.76	14.95	149,621	BMW M6	Now we're getting serious with under 15 second times. Launch control and a 7-speed transmission helped the BWM, but a rather high weight didn't.
9	4.46	14.80	146,308	Alpina BMW B6	Okay, how can a lower power, almost identical car with a 6-speed automatic beat the M6? This should really perplex the engineers at BMW Motorsport.
8	4.29	13.80	109,791	Chevrolet Corvette Z06	This is the only American car on the list and it places very high. Look also at the price of the Z06 in England. This is one very fast car.
7	3.97	13.80	430,050	Ascari KZ1	This is another unique British marque. It is far more refined than the TVR and is a hardtop. The real issue here is the difference in price between the Corvette and the Ascari, and the almost identical performance. Yes the Ascari accelerates faster, but the Corvette really covers it on braking. Racing at Le Mans pays off.
6	4.12	13.65	221,430	Lamborghini Gallardo	I am surprised that the Gallardo is faster than the Corvette. It has almost the same weight and just 12 more horsepower. It looks a lot sexier, but the all-wheel-drive and a paddle shifter makes the difference. Also it is half the price of the Ascari and faster, and looks better too.
5	3.60	12.50	179,047	Porsche 911 Turbo	This is another surprising result. It is the new 997 Turbo, but the Porsche has less power than the Chevy and more weight, yet it cleans the Z-6's clock by a huge amount in this competition. Sure it's more expensive, but it does appear that you get what you pay for in terms of performance.
4	3.67	12.50	58,551	Brooke Double R	This is one of the "cars" on the list. It would take some nerve to drive one of these on LA freeways. It has a very small open 2-seat body with open wheels capped by vestigal fenders. It has just 260 horsepower, but weighs just more than 1/3 of the Corvette. It is very fast, but it also is very basic.
3	3.50	11.95	69,531	Caterham CSR 260 Superlight	Read what I said about the Brooke above. The same applies to the Caterham. The difference is that the Caterham is front-engine and rear-drive and the Brooke uses a motorcycle engine just ahead of the rear wheels.
2	3.32	11.00	64,041	Ariel Atom 300	The Ariel is even more basic than the above two. It looks a little like the Brooke with some of the body missing. The body parts only cover the very essential parts, with things like suspension and chassis out in the weather. This is one very seriously fast car in a straight line.
1	2.80	9.90	1,610,400	Bugatti Veyron	This is the world's fastest car this year. I have more comments in the text below.

The Veyron is not only the world's fastest car, but it also is fastest by a very significant margin. It also is a real car unlike the three before it.

Volkswagen -- oops, Bugatti -- engineers brought the Veyron to the Autocar test because it is a very prestigious test in Europe. You think that 5.5 seconds is a very fast time for 0-60 miles per hour? I do. The Veyron does 100 miles per hour in that time. Also, the engineers were perplexed that the Veyron didn't go faster to 60. They said they did it routinely in 2.4 seconds. Holy cats! The blame was put on the track surface which really is an air strip. The engineers said that the Veyron didn't achieve full traction (it is all-wheel-drive) until 60 miles per hour. I am very impressed by this feat of engineering. But perhaps I should be even more impressed by the fact that this quite heavy car (more than the Porsche, Chevrolet, or Lamborghini) could brake from 100 to zero in less time than the Lotus -- which weighs half as much as the Veyron.

Autocar started 0-100-0 testing 49 years ago. The contest that year was won by an Aston Martin DBS with a 20 second time. This is the first less than 10 second time for a production car. I should point out that they had an A1 GP full open-wheel race car at this contest. It did 0-100-0 in 8.40 seconds. I'm not sure whether I am impressed by how much faster it is, or that it is just 1.5 seconds faster than a real car, the Veyron. Is the Bugatti really worth its $1.3 million in the U.S.? It depends on if you want the bragging rights or not.

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