I know it is a prehistoric looking (but still extant) lizard, endemic to New Zealand, but as it sits motionless for much of its life, it seems an odd choice of name for a superfast car! For more than a decade, Shelby and team worked diligently behind closed doors to craft the Tuatara into what you see here.

Rules dictate that the Tuatara be a production car identical to the version available to customers, perform the run on a public road, run street tires and non-race fuel, and have two world-record sanctioned witnesses on hand to verify the certified GPS tracked time. SSC CEO Jerod Shelby found race car driver Oliver Webb sitting on the ground, shaking, in front of the Tuatara supercar with his head in his hands. Now that the SSC Tuatara has snagged the top speed record at 316 mph, it’s time for other festivities. The SSC Tuatara hyper car was parked, tire engineers already scurrying around the vehicle like worker bees. Bugatti held the world record for the bulk of the last decade with its 267.81-mph (431-km/h) record in 2010, in spite of a little elbowing from Hennessey. Situated behind Webb was the Tuatara’s custom-built 5.9-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 engine with 1,750 horsepower and 1,348 pound-feet of torque. You wouldn't want to go 300+ on street tires on a regular basis. Not only had the Tuatara eviscerated the previous confirmed record by nearly 40 mph more, Webb’s 331.5 single pass had blown the doors off the previous single-direction record of 304.77 mph set by a modified Bugatti Chiron. It looked as if Shelby’s goal to hit an average speed of 312 mph—500 kilometers per hour—would remain out of reach, despite Webb’s prior run of 301.07 mph. The crosswinds are all that prevented us from realizing the car’s limit.". "There was definitely more in there; I know we could have gone faster," says Webb. For a few years following its debut, everything seemed to be moving along nicely toward Tuatara launch. This website stores cookies on your computer. SSC tapped famed designer Jason Castriota, formerly of Pininfarina, to pen the Tuatara into something capable of safely traveling nearly four-and-a-half times the normal highway speed limit. I saw a big number but I was saving the car, so I don’t know how high I got.” Webb was right; just as he was fighting to save the car from a terrifying crosswind that nearly blew him off the road north, he had seen a big number. First announced in 2010, the Tuatara was meant to pick up where SSC’s Ultimate Aero—once a land speed record holder itself—had left off. The SSC Tuatara, made in Richland, Washington by a company with 24 employees, beat out the likes of France's Bugatti and Sweden's Koenigsegg with …

Terms of Use One man that wasn’t particularly impressed was Jerod Shelby, the man behind SSC that recently set a new production car top speed record with a customer-spec Tuatara. Having done that rarest of things in the hypercar community — namely, demonstrating outrageous performance to independent observers — the SSC Tuatara has ensured itself at least a mention in the history books. Jerod O. Shelby (born March 11, 1968) is an American engineer as well as founder and CEO of SSC North America, a hypercar manufacturing firm based in Richland, Washington, USA. Jerod Shelby, founder and owner of SSC North America, had a singular design goal for the Tuatara: speed. According to Shelby, this top-speed record is only the beginning. Webb’s blistering pace gave the SSC Tuatara the outright title of fastest production car in the world, with a Guinness World Record-certified speed of 316.11 mph (508.73 kmh), handily beating the previous record of 277.87 mph set by the Koenigsegg Regera RS on the very same stretch of road. That won't be easy to beat in something that doesn't look like it was designed for a salt flats land speed record.

These cookies are used to improve your experience and provide more personalized service to you. That is, until Webb looked up at Shelby and said, “I saw a big number, Jerod.

It was a true testament to everything we’ve worked for [these last] 10 years.”. Where does this name come from? "We are entering a time where we are no longer faced by the limit of machines, but by the human factor.”. As the data trace would reveal moments later, he’d seen 331.15 mph. 508kph SSC Tuatara: The world has a new fastest car! The SSC Tuatara broke the speed record earlier this month, accelerating to a top speed of 331.15 mph. For the record to count, the Guinness World Record mandates that a car make two consecutive at-speed passes in opposite directions, with less than an hour between passes.