How do we get to 300mph? - BBC News
Henry Ford raced his 1904 Arrow to 91. 37mph (147km/h) across frozen Lake St Clair, near Detroit, Michigan, scaring him silly. Months later on a Belgian beach, Louis Rigolly broke Ford’s record, hitting 103. 55mph in his monster Gobron-Brillié racer. Five decades would pass before a production car would top 200mph, a feat generally credited to the 1987 Ferrari F40. In 2006, the $1. 25m Bugatti Veyron – with 1,001hp from a 16-cylinder, quad-turbo engine – broke the mould, making 250mph-plus... 2mph beyond Bugatti’s current mark, that 300mph earthbound velocity – in a street-legal car – seems tantalisingly within reach. Intrigued by that theoretical target, some of the international masters of speed – Sweden’s Koenigsegg, Britain’s McLaren, Italy’s Pagani and Bugatti of France – weighed in on what it might take to smash it. The pursuit starts, quite simply, with... More specifically somewhere between 1,600hp and 2,000hp, enough to propel a dozen garden-variety cars to the grocery. Von Koenigsegg, whose 2005 CCR clocked a then-record 241mph, believes an engine displacing roughly 10 litres might be sufficient. Translated: a car that needs 200hp to overcome aerodynamic drag at 150mph would need 1,600hp –. Source: www.bbc.com
