- It should come as no surprise that we here
at donut are big fans of top speed runs.
I especially loved when Bugatti hit 253 miles per hour
in their iconic Veyron,
and then broke the 300 mile per hour mark in a modified
pre-production version of the Chiron.
So it was pretty mind blowing when I heard
about a new speed run claiming a production car
did a whopping 331 miles per hour.
(electronic music)
An automotive manufactured named SSC North America showcase
their hypercar called Tuatara.
When the company released a video of its speed run,
claiming a top speed that seems to be
tearing at the laws of physics as we know them.
You ever heard of general relativity it's by this artist
named Einstein. You probably never heard of him.
However, this video has created a ton of controversy online.
After some people started taking a closer look at the video,
very quickly, things started to unravel.
Suddenly viewers all over the internet
were claiming that it was faked.
- Why is this video not what it seems?
- The GPS speed seems so different from being visual speed.
- SSC denied these claims, of course,
but let's unpack the sequences of events that
led to this controversy.
What was the catalyst that sparked debate among
viewers of the video?
What kind of investigation was done to back up their claims
and how did SSC handle the backlash? Most importantly,
how fast did the car actually go?
(electronic music)
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Now let's get back to the show.
(dinging tone music)
- Before we get to the speed running question,
we need to get some background info.
Unless you're a car nerd like myself,
you've probably never heard of SSC North America before and
that's okay. To be fair. America doesn't
really have a bunch of household supercar
brands like Europe does with Bugatti, McLaren,
Ferrari, Konigsegg, et cetera.
So before we get the controversy,
let's discuss the origins of SSC North America.
(soft guitar music)
Formerly known as Shelby Supercars SSC North America is an
American automobile manufacturer that was founded by Jared
Shelby. And before you ask, no,
he is not related to the automotive legend, Carol Shelby.
When Jared was a kid,
he used to compete in karting and actually traveled across
the country to compete. Unsurprisingly, this fueled
his passion for the super cars that were coming out of
Europe and dreamed that one day he could build the perfect
supercar himself. When he got older,
he became a mechanical engineer for a medical device
company he co-founded called
Advanced Imaging Technology where he
managed aspects of the mechanical and ergonomic design.
And finally, in 1998,
he made the leap and founded SSC North America in
Richland, Washington.
During the early stages of the company,
they are focused heavily on creating a bespoke
American-made supercar to break
into the high-performance market.
You may remember their first effort called the
Ultimate Aero and for an upstart company,
it's fair to say that this was a pretty
damn impressive first attempt.
The 1200 horsepower monster, famously beat the
Bugatti Veyron's initial production speed record
of 253 when it hit 256.18 miles per hour,
which was verified by the
Guinness Book of World Records in 2007.
It is immensely difficult for an upstart brand just to
compete, let alone, knock down a titan like Bugatti,
who might I remind you is owned by VW one of the largest
automotive manufacturers in the world.
It was a true David beats Goliath moment for SSC.
Eventually Bugatti struck back with the
Veyron Super Sport, which averaged an incredible
267.9 miles per hour on two runs in 2010.
A couple of years have paSSCd and several other cars had
come and gone taking and passing the mantle of the world's
fastest production car. Keen to get back on the fray,
SSC in 2012 began development
of their next generation supercar.
Then in 2019 at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance
SSC announced the Tuatara.
(electronic music)
The SSC Tuatara is a hypercar armed with some neck snapping
stats. It has a carbon fiber body and carbon fiber monocoque
chassis.
So the car only weighs 2,750 pounds and is powered by a 5.9
liter twin turbocharged V8 pushing out 1,750 horsepower and
1,341 pound feet of torque when running on E85.
That corn juice.
To put that in perspective,
the Tuatara is lighter than a BRZ,
but with nine times the horsepower.
Insane.
SSC did a ton of work to ensure that
the engine runs smoothly at it's
8,800 RPM redline by placing a water pump booster
in the nose of the car to assist pushing
the coolant to the forward radiators.
The car also has a seven speed
robotized manual transmission.
Meaning the clutch and gear selection are electronically
operated. Constraining the hydraulic driven
components and sensors are producing
high force engagement.
All this results in a car that can
shift gears in less than 100 milliseconds.
Snappy af.
With all that out of the way,
we can get the price of this engineering achievement,
which sits at $1.6 million.
Ooh, that can almost buy a two bedroom in Las Villas.
So far everything seems to check out, right?
This has all the makings of an incredible machine that could
do 300 plus pretty easy, right?
(record scratching)
Well, we wouldn't be making this video if that was true.
Things began to spiral downwards for SSC
starting in October of 2020,
when SSC released a video of the Tuatara doing a speed run
on a stretch of closed road on Nevada highway 160.
That day SSC did two runs in both directions,
which is standard procedure for top speed runs.
And the first run,
the Tuatara did 301.07 miles per hour.
During the second run,
the video showed the car achieved an astonishing 331.15
miles per hour.
Now here's where the doubters started to raise their
eyebrows.
Most of the time when a speed record like this is achieved,
the new record holder only improves the previous record
speed by a few miles per hour, maybe 10 miles at best.
In this instance though,
the Tuatara average of 316 miles per hour,
absolutely demolished the previous record holder by 38.2
miles per hour.
This giant leap seemed almost impossible. And I'm not the
only one that thought that.
Viewers online and in the
comments, looked at the video,
claiming that SSC tampered with it to give the illusion that
Tuatara was going at the speed at claimed.
Once the initial doubters spoke out,
momentum began to build around the question,
whether the video was an honest interpretation of the SSCs
performance.
Even some notable YouTubers began their own investigations.
Shmee, for example,
had a video breaking down where the issues with the video
started. Using Google maps,
he calculated the distances between the medians on the
stretch of road SSC used,
and then compared the time it took and the video for the car
to pass the medians to the telemetry data that SSC was
showing on screen to make a long and mathematically dense
story short.
The telemetry data that SSC displayed was showing that the
Tuatara traveled faster than what the actual video was
showing.
That's weird.
This discrepancy created even more doubt among viewers that
the video wasn't an honest depiction of the run and that the
run was fake. Even worse,
our boy, Jason from Engineering Explained,
had a video where he ran his own calculation.
- Hello everyone. And welcome.
- That's a lot of equations there, buddy.
And he came to the conclusion that the car actually only
reached 240 miles per hour,
which is obviously well short of the 331 that SSC initially
claimed. Two separate people that have studied the video and
made calculations about the Tuatara's actual speed came to
the same conclusion.
Which was that the visual depiction of the run and the GPS
data did not match.
This was not a good look for SSC and mind you,
these are smart people, smarter than me even.
I know you look at me, you're like,
"dang that guy's got glasses. So he's smart."
That's not true.
I just can't see well.
So, what did they have to say about all the controversy?
Understandably SSC came out and stated that their initial
claims were accurate and said that they used
Dewetrons equipment to track the runs.
And even said that it received a letter from Dewetron on
October 22nd,
that confirmed the quote accuracy of the equipment
and speed sensors they had supplied SSC.
Dewetron is an Austrian based manufacturer of test and
measurement systems.
This seems like a pretty reasonable and sturdy response to
the allegations that they faked to run. However,
things got even worse for SSC
when Dewetron themselves came out and released a statement
saying the following. Quote,
"Dewetron did not validate any data from the world record
attempts or proceeding tests.
Nobody of Dewetron's employees."
I apologize. The quote continues,
"Nobody of Dewetron's employees was present during the test
drive or involved in the associated preparation."
They continue, "Since the results of the measurement data
highly rely on the right setup on the regular calibration of
the systems and sensors in use as well as many other
parameters,
we are not able to guarantee the accuracy or correctness of
the outcome." Ouch.
The Dewetron equipment was the cornerstone of SSC defense
of their speed run.
And shortly after Dewetron released a statement
SSC finally came out and admitted that the video they had
initially released was incorrect. At face value that run had
two major errors. First,
they did not have Dewetron employees on location
to certify that their equipment
was installed and functioning correctly at
the time of the run. And secondly,
they did not take special care to make sure that the video
of the run was displaying the correct visual information.
And didn't even double-check before posting it online.
So it is difficult to be certain whether SSC really did make
those mistakes or if SSC really thought that they could fool
the public because those kinds of mistakes are borderline
comically careless.
Or is it possible that the employees of SSC North America
were so obseSSCd with their work,
that they fell victim to confirmation bias.
Resulting in them accepting whatever results
they found and chose not to double-check.
I guess we'll never know.
(electronic hip-hop music)
After some time paSSCd,
SSC did another run in January of this year at the Johnny
Bohmer proving grounds at the Kennedy space center in
Florida. And this time they came prepared,
they had RACELOGIC on site to measure the run.
They even had Life Racing, Garmin, and the IMRA all show up.
They all agreed that RACELOGIC's Vbox is the most
respective measurement tool and use that for the run.
However,
SSC still had several redundant systems in the car just in
case they messed up. So far, so good, right?
So how'd it perform?
Well,
the Tuatara hit 279.7 miles per hour on its northbound run
and to 286.1 miles per hour on it's southbound run.
And the average of those two runs is 282.9 miles per hour.
Good enough to break the prior record, 277.87.
Therefore setting the record for
the world's fastest production car.
But still SSC wasn't satisfied and wanting to attempt to run
again, except disaster struck while being transported.
The Tuatara was heavily damaged in Utah while on its way
to Florida.
After the enclosed trailer flipped due to intense winds.
That's a pretty painful end to this chapter of SSC's
journey.
(trumpet music)
The road Jared Shelby had to take to get SSC North America
to where it is today was pretty long and particularly tough,
but I'm glad they made it.
No one can argue that the SSC Tuatara,
isn't a fun little car.
We're talking about a car that is faster than the Bugatti
Veyron however its legacy is at risk of being forever
tainted by the speed run controversy.
Unless Jared Shelby and SSC North America actually achieves
its goal.
It'll only be remembered as the car that didn't go 331 miles
per hour. And that's a real shame.
So get there. You guys can do it.
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Thank you very much for watching this episode.
If you like supercar content,
we've talked a lot about them in the past couple months.
Put some videos down here. If you liked this video,
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