- SSC has finally admitted that its Tuatara supercar did not reach the originally claimed speeds of 331 or 301 mph during its top-speed run in Nevada last year.
- In a post on Instagram, the company said that it will keep striving to officially break the 300-mph barrier.
- The Tuatara is powered by a 1750-hp twin-turbocharged 5.9-liter V-8 engine, and it averaged 282.9 mph in a subsequent run last year in Florida.
Last year, Shelby Supercar's (SSC) Tuatara, a 1750-hp twin-turbo V-8–powered supercar, claimed a world production-car speed record with an average speed of 316.11 mph. After controversy that the video of the record was false, and another failed attempt to reach those speeds, SSC is finally officially admitting that it did not hit those speeds in its initial run.
"We would like to acknowledge officially that we did not reach the originally claimed speeds of 331 mph or even 301 mph in October of 2020," the company said in a post to Instagram. "We were truly heartbroken as a company to learn that we did not reach this feat, and we are in an ongoing effort to break the 300 mph barrier transparently, officially, and undoubtedly."
Shortly after the internet frenzy saying the video was false, SSC took another run at the Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, the Tuatara averaged 282.9 mph on two runs, but it still didn't approach 300 mph. The company wanted to take another attempt at the record in April, but the car was damaged after its carrier flipped.
The Tuatara is powered by a twin-turbocharged 5.9-liter flat-plane-crank V-8 engine that produces 1750 horsepower and 1341 pound-feet of torque with E85 and revs to 8800 rpm. It uses a seven-speed robotic-controlled hydraulic, paddle-shifted manual transmission.
SSC says that it isn't done chasing the speed record, yet, and it wants to do it officially this time. We should be hearing about its next attempt at the title soon.