Need proof that the SSC Tuatara is about as wild as production cars can get? Watch the video below.
While recently behind the wheel of the first production-spec Tuatara delivered to its fortunate owner, SSC boss Jerod Shelby conducted a series of second-to-third-to-fourth gear pulls in the hypercar that saw the car sprint from 60 mph (96 km/h) to 120 mph (193 km/h) in as little as 2.5 seconds.
While recently speaking with Top Gear, Shelby indicated the automaker wasn’t actually measuring the car’s acceleration and only became aware of just how rapid it is after sending off some data logs to its “master tuner” because the 8,500+rpm limiter didn’t seem to be kicking in.
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“I noticed, during those pulls, that I wasn’t feeling any indication of our rev-limiter kicking in at 8,500+rpm,” Shelby said. “So, when we got back to our facilities, we emailed the data logs off to our master tuner (a daily occurrence), and asked him to verify that the rev-limiter is still programmed to start kicking in lightly at 8,500+rpm. I got a call from a very excited tuner later that night, while I was eating dinner with my family, saying: ‘do you realize that you’re going from 60mph to 120mph in 2.5 seconds flat in a couple of these pulls?’ He said ‘I didn’t think that was physically possible from a 2WD car, but I checked and your logger was tracking six satellites during these runs, so this is legitimate. That is absolutely crazy’, he said.
In this particular video, the Tuatara appears to run from 60-120 mph in 2.8 seconds but look closely and you’ll notice Jerod Shelby is short-shifting at around 7,500 rpm and not pushing the engine to its very limits.