American Car Breaks World Speed Record

For the first time since 1967, the Guinness World Record for “Fastest Production Car” belongs to an American automobile. Guinness has officially confirmed that Shelby Supercars’ Ultimate Aero hit 256.19 miles per hour on a remote highway in Washington last month.

A local 71-year-old car enthusiast named Chuck Bigelow drove the Ultimate Aero to the new world record. “We wanted to show that you don’t need to be a dedicated professional race-car driver to drive the car at this speed,” said Jerod Shelby, owner of Shelby Supercars and no relation to legendary muscle-car tuner Carol Shelby. “The very first time [Bigelow] got in the car, I said to him, ‘Why don’t you keep it under 200 miles per hour so you can get used to the car?’ Then he went 228 [mph] his first time down the road. He said, ‘It felt so good, I figured I might as well keep going.’”

The Ultimate Aero shattered the record previously held by the Swedish Koenigsegg CCR by 15 mph. Bugatti claims that its Veyron 16.4 has hit 253.52 mph, but the number is unofficial and not recognized by Guinness.

The 2,750-pound Ultimate Aero was able to topple the record thanks to a twin-turbocharged V8 engine turning out 1183 horsepower and 1094 pound-feet of torque. Highly developed aerodynamics to help keep the vehicle stable at extremely high speeds. The Ultimate Aero is exceedingly low to the ground — so low that there’s a switch in the cabin that lifts the front of the car four inches to help it better navigate uneven surfaces. (The Ferrari Enzo has a similar feature.)

Jerod Shelby said that the Ultimate Aero was in development for six years and was explicitly designed with the “Fastest Production Car” record in mind. “As a smaller U.S.-based manufacturer, the difficulty is to gain credibility and legitimize your product," he said." Six years ago we knew that the best way to do this would be to go for the speed record in order to put ourselves on the map."

To qualify for Guinness' production car speed record, the Ultimate Aero had to be fueled by pump gasoline (as opposed to extra-high-octane fuel used in race cars), plus meet all Department of Transportation safety regulations and Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards.

Guinness requires cars competing for the record to make two passes over the same course within one hour. They then average the speeds achieved on both runs. The Ultimate Aero’s driver, Bigelow, hit 257.45 mph on his first pass, then 254.92 on the way back.

The temporarily closed highway on which the Ultimate Aero was tested was a relatively short course that may have prevented it from achieving its true potential, as wind tunnel testing has shown the Ultimate Aero to be stable up to 273 mph. SSC hopes to someday test the Ultimate Aero out on a Volkswagen-owned test track in Ehra-Lessien, Germany, where the Koenigsegg and Bugatti were able to make their marks on a 5.6-mile straightaway.

“We look forward to the day we can test the Ultimate Aero’s true top speed capability in a controlled environment with a near perfect surface, as our predecessors did. We feel that we have safely left 6-10 mph on the table for when that day comes,” Jerod Shelby said in a press release.

They company has sold seven of the $579,000 Ultimate Aeros out of a production run of 50. The car went on sale this year.

Shelby said that the company’s next car, to be introduced in 2009, will be a 220-mph luxury four-door. According to Guinness, there is currently no world record for “Fastest Production Luxury Sedan.”

The last American car to break Guinness' production-car speed record was the Ford GT40, thirty years ago.