300mph super-car???

fonecrusher1

Well lads do you think its a possiblity?

I don't mean anything like a drag racer or jet powered yoke. I mean a petrol powered wonder-car kind of like a Bugatti Veyron or theSSC Ultimate Aero: Or are these cars pretty much as good as it gets for a petrol combustion engine?
In the future perhaps some sort of hybrid will out pace the current speed kings.

How far can they take it?

Bonito

They're well cabable of creating something that can travel at break neck speed while having enough downforce to keep it's wheels on the ground.

The hard bit is the sheer monumental cost and the unpredictables. Cross winds, uneven roads, a blow out etc.

Mr Benevolent

The internal combustion engine is painfully inefficient at high speeds, but what really limits cars is having to touch the ground. Rolling friction, transmission losses and aerodynamic drag (which is ridiculously high compared to the draggiest aircraft). ICE cars will always be limited to under say 250mph.

Funny that, considering that 10 feet further up there are no speed limits. Well, 250kts below 10000 feet, but you know what I mean.

Short answer: No, cars are hopelessly crap at very high speeds.

unkel

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

Or are these cars pretty much as good as it gets

As good as it gets I think. Take the limiter out of a common enough mainstream cheapish (relatively) and reliable saloon like an M5 and it'll do 200MPH every day for years. To go from there to a reliable car that will do 250MPH every day required utter determination, commitment and big bucks - ask Ferdi P.

To go from 250MPH to 300MPH in an equally reliable day to day car using a petrol combustion engine just isn't feasible in the foreseeable future...

fonecrusher1

Ah jaysus lads all so negative!!:mad::D

The american thing SSC ultimate aero bar can do 257mph. Surely its not an impossible task to up the bhp by a quarter, lighten the car by about a 100kg to get an extra 43mph.

unkel

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

The american thing SSC ultimate aero bar can do 257mph. Surely its not an impossible task to up the bhp by a quarter, lighten the car by about a 100kg to get an extra 43mph.

Eh, yes. Impossible

Sometime in the future, car heads and the rest of the general public will hopefully fully appreciate the effort Ferdinand Piëch put into realising the Veyron. And the Veyron was hardly his only major contribution to automotive history either...

amacachi

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

Ah jaysus lads all so negative!!:mad::D

The american thing SSC ultimate aero bar can do 257mph. Surely its not an impossible task to up the bhp by a quarter, lighten the car by about a 100kg to get an extra 43mph.

Doing those two things might get it up 10 mph max. Then getting that kind of horsepower would be next to impossible if you want it to run more than a couple of hundred miles before being useless.

leeroybrown

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

Ah jaysus lads all so negative!!:mad::D

The american thing SSC ultimate aero bar can do 257mph. Surely its not an impossible task to up the bhp by a quarter, lighten the car by about a 100kg to get an extra 43mph.

It doesn't work like that. Aerodynamic drag is a power law relationship so you don't get that kind of linear speed increase. To double speed you pretty much have to square power.

bmw535d

also due to the fact that any tire that can be used on a road car will disintegrate at 250mph+ which is why a complete new tire had to be made for the veyron i don't think i will see it in my life time. how ever if they invent some sort of car that can change shape and hover or something they could do it because so far everything people said was impossible for a car to do has been done

Absurdum

Nothing is impossible! I don't see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future though. Car makers are probably more interested in 300mpg than 300mph.

fonecrusher1

unkel wrote: »

Eh, yes. Impossible

Sometime in the future, car heads and the rest of the general public will hopefully fully appreciate the effort Ferdinand Piëch put into realising the Veyron. And the Veyron was hardly his only major contribution to automotive history either...

On a slight tangent.

The veyron is indeed a mechanical masterpiece but it has been plonked into second place in the top speed charts by the american ssc aero.
Yes its a bit annoying because im sure its nowhere near the technical achievement that the bugatti is, but nonetheless it is the fastest production car on earth.

Im sure when news of the veyron hit the magazines & internet everybody was thinking oh well thats it, nobody will top that?? Impossible!

The fact is veyron's 248mph top speed was beaten by the yanks??:o

Mr.David

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

Ah jaysus lads all so negative!!:mad::D

The american thing SSC ultimate aero bar can do 257mph. Surely its not an impossible task to up the bhp by a quarter, lighten the car by about a 100kg to get an extra 43mph.

Reducing weight doesnt increase top speed......it only affects how quickly you reach it.

I think it would be hugely difficult but probably possible. But the thing is - there is no point whatsoever!

Mr Benevolent

unkel wrote: »

Eh, yes. Impossible

Sometime in the future, car heads and the rest of the general public will hopefully fully appreciate the effort Ferdinand Piëch put into realising the Veyron. And the Veyron was hardly his only major contribution to automotive history either...

Yup, look at the Phaeton... it's under appreciated, but still a fantastic car.

woody33

So if you built a circular track just down from the top of Everest where the air is thin and has less resistance....and you would need nitrous to make up for the lack of oxygen...

Midnight_EG

SSC reckon the Aero can do 273 unrestricted.



In theory if an F1 car had a tunnel long enough, it could drive on the roof thanks to it's awesome downforce.





Can't remember where I read that though.

bijapos

James May gives a brief explanation from around 1:50 in this vid of the power a road car needs to achieve those speeds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO0PgyPWE3o


And a lot depends on gearing as well. Any sports car can go faster with different gearing but manufacturers have to find a balance between top speed and acceleration.

Wind tunnel testing indicates that the Ultimate Aero could theoretically reach a top speed of 439 km/h (273 mph) given appropriate transmission gear ratios, although the supplied transmission would result in 418 km/h (260 mph)[6] at the car's redline. The base Aero, however, should "only" reach about 380 km/h (236 mph).[7] The Ultimate Aero accelerates from 0–96 km/h in 2.78 seconds,[8] slower than the Bugatti Veyron which achieves 0–96 km/h in 2.46 seconds partially due to its 4WD drivetrain. [9]

Bonito

Confab wrote: »

Yup, look at the Phaeton... it's under appreciated, but still a fantastic car.

I love the Phaeton's! Seen a couple of them in the metal.

peasant

woody33 wrote: »

So if you built a circular track just down from the top of Everest where the air is thin and has less resistance....and you would need nitrous to make up for the lack of oxygen...

Just race your car in a wind tunnel with a 350 mph tail wind

Lord Nikon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELkWgFFrU2s

Mr Benevolent

neuromancer wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELkWgFFrU2s

Now that's a brilliant car ad.

fonecrusher1

In a way he's kind of tailgating the jet car.

Mr Benevolent

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

In a way he's kind of tailgating the jet car.

No, he's in the overtaking lane

GET HIM!!

Xios

As jeremy clarkson said, the Veyron is for cars, what concorde was for aeroplanes. They've reached a limit that i recon won't be broken for some time, it'll only be bested in small amounts, like the aero.
Sure it's a lost cause tbh, motorbikes have won this hands down, check it
It has a top speed of 650kmph, road legal

Overature

yeay the veyron has two v8 audi engines, it uses one for about 3/4 of top speed 250mph (i think) and the other one for the rest.

at that speed the tires will last about 15 minutes, but the fuel lasts about 12 i think, thats according to top gear.

until they develop better materials to cope with the bug speed then i dought they will be able to go much faster.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

I think the point is that 300 mph is totally possible with todays technology, with tomorrows tech even more. However like concord the problems is that this speed is pointless, uneconomical and not worthwhile. If you want to travel at 300 mph buy a 10 euro ryanair ticket not a 3,000,000 euro super car. Sure they can put 2000 BHP in a car the shape of a bullet and off we go, the point is that there is no point in it for the money it would cost.

AugustusMinimus

Of course its possible.

There's no reason why you couldn't put a 2000bhp engine into a car, improve the aerodynamics somewhat and put a gearbox into the car with the correct gearings to hit 300mph.

I would imagine a car with 2000bhp could go over 300mph to be honest.



People also seem to think that weight affects top speed. It most certainly doesn't.

Things that affect top speed.

1. Engine power
2. Aerodynamic drag
3. Rolling friction from tyres to road
4. Gear ratios
5. Air temperature (lower increases engine power but increases aero drag)

Matt Simis

Id be more impressed with attainable cars that output over 300bhp yet deliver 100mpg personally.

fonecrusher1

Xios wrote: »

As jeremy clarkson said, the Veyron is for cars, what concorde was for aeroplanes. They've reached a limit that i recon won't be broken for some time, it'll only be bested in small amounts, like the aero.
Sure it's a lost cause tbh, motorbikes have won this hands down, check it
It has a top speed of 650kmph, road legal

1. Thats not a car. Read the original post.
2. Hit a pebble in that thing doing more than 150mph & its goodbye.
3. Its a 20 foot long bike with stabilizers....imagine driving it on a twisty road or city driving or anywhere beyond a test track or airport strip.
4. I could claim to drive a corolla that has a top speed of 200mph. Its only talk.

unkel

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

1. Thats not a car. Read the original post.

+1

In the spirit of this thread we are talking about a "normal" reliable car that can be driven to the shops every day and that is covered by several years manufacturing warranty. Like an M5 or a Veyron...

Max Power1

unkel wrote: »

+1

In the spirit of this thread we are talking about a "normal" reliable car that can be driven to the shops every day and that is covered by several years manufacturing warranty. Like an M5 or a Veyron...

lol

Mr Benevolent

Evelyn Thundering Scholar wrote: »

If you want to travel at 300 mph buy a 10 euro ryanair ticket not a 3,000,000 euro super car.

300mph? Try again More like 600mph or .86 Mach.

Tea 1000

Overature wrote: »

yeay the veyron has two v8 audi engines, it uses one for about 3/4 of top speed 250mph (i think) and the other one for the rest.

at that speed the tires will last about 15 minutes, but the fuel lasts about 12 i think, thats according to top gear.

until they develop better materials to cope with the bug speed then i dought they will be able to go much faster.

Bit of confused information here.
It doesn't have two engines, it has one. The engine is an 8 litre engine with a 16 cylinders in a W configuration. This is because it's essentially 2 Audi 4 litre V8's together, overlapping each other to the two off-set V's look like a W. It's still one engine. Top speed is 253mph.
The fuel tank according to Clarkson, will empty in 12 minutes at it's top speed. That sounds terrible, but in 12 minutes it'll be 50 miles down the road.
I reckon an Evo 4 would bearly do 50 miles on a full tank at it's maximum speed, so therefore the Veyron seems quite frugal at that velocity!
The comparison to the Concorde is a good one. It's possible to go quicker than a Concorde in the air, but to go at that speed in such refinement, reliability and comfort is what takes the big bucks to develop.

CianRyan

Tea 1000 wrote: »

Bit of confused information here.
It doesn't have two engines, it has one. The engine is an 8 litre engine with a 16 cylinders in a W configuration. This is because it's essentially 2 Audi 4 litre V8's together, overlapping each other to the two off-set V's look like a W. It's still one engine. Top speed is 253mph.
The fuel tank according to Clarkson, will empty in 12 minutes at it's top speed. That sounds terrible, but in 12 minutes it'll be 50 miles down the road.
I reckon an Evo 4 would bearly do 50 miles on a full tank at it's maximum speed, so therefore the Veyron seems quite frugal at that velocity!
The comparison to the Concorde is a good one. It's possible to go quicker than a Concorde in the air, but to go at that speed in such refinement, reliability and comfort is what takes the big bucks to develop.

Great plane and all, but one of them blew up and they took all of them out of use.
I'm not sure I'd be relying on it all to much at this stage.

JHMEG

unkel wrote: »

Sometime in the future, car heads and the rest of the general public will hopefully fully appreciate the effort Ferdinand Piëch put into realising the Veyron

Who?

SSC Ultimate Aero is the fastest production car. No foreign dudes with funny names worked on that.

CianRyan

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Concorde had a excellent safety record with the above crash being its only fatality and that crash was only due to a piece of metal that had fallen off another aircraft! They thought it was a aircraft fault so they grounded the fleet, the same thing has happened to other aircraft.

Pretty much every large civilian aircraft (and small) has experience a hull loss at one stage or another that if you didnt get on a plane that has had a crash you wouldnt ever fly!

I've just done my research and it turns out the planes were flying for almost a year after the crash, but were grounded as it wasn't economically friendly to keep up the necessary safety modifications and general services.

Pity really, as a child I always said I'd get to fly in one of them some day, now I'll never get that chance.

Money, I fcuking hate the stuff.

Gregor Samsa

JHMEG wrote: »

SSC Ultimate Aero is the fastest production car. No foreign dudes with funny names worked on that.

Jerod O. Shelby being a sensibly named Irishman

Tea 1000

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Concorde had a excellent safety record with the above crash being its only fatality and that crash was only due to a piece of metal that had fallen off another aircraft! They thought it was a aircraft fault so they grounded the fleet, the same thing has happened to other aircraft.

Pretty much every large civilian aircraft (and small) has experience a hull loss at one stage or another that if you didnt get on a plane that has had a crash you wouldnt ever fly!

Yep, it was probably one of the safest planes of all time, designed and first flew in the 60's, and flew safely until 2004 apart from that one incident in 2001, which was the fault of a strip of metal.
Mankind took a step backwards when that retired.

unkel

JHMEG wrote: »

Who?

SSC Ultimate Aero is the fastest production car. No foreign dudes with funny names worked on that.

Since when is the SSC Ultimate Aero Irish? :rolleyes:

But you're right, the SSC is the fastest production car (by all of 2 or 3MPH, is it compared to the Veyron) and tomorrow there will be another car with another extra 100BHP that will go another 2MPH faster. The point here is a day to day car like a Veyron, not an ultra light supercar like the SSC. It doesn't even have traction control or ABS!

JJJJNR

There will be other airplanes that will be faster than concord, they are already in development.

Sydney in 4.6 hours anyone.

CianRyan

I'd be more interested in New York in 45 minutes, underground. :cool:

So claims a TV show I watched a long time ago.
They were talking about the development of magnet trains running from London to New York, I think I remember speeds of either 8500mph/kmph. I'm really not sure anymore. Either way... Quick!

The train running using magnets to both push the train forward and keep it levitated from the track eliminates the track friction and the tunnels would be inside a vacuum to eliminate the air friction.
Special chairs would be made to help cope with the monumental G-forces that would be experienced in the bends, how, I have no idea.

I do remember that this wasn't just brain storming and there were(are?) people working on this to try and make it a reality.

Closer to home, Dublin might have an underground railroad by 2015.


Edit: This thread has gone very off topic, but is still interesting.
Madness.

bladebrew

^^^^ i saw that show alrite it was brilliant,
what would happen if it crashed at 8500km/h? surely it would just be vaporised,
no mess to clean up:)

anyways back on topic, id say if they could make a car that could do 300mph it would still sell, if i remember correctly an f50 road car can drive upside down at high speed because of that giant wing, so downforce shouldnt be a problem..unless it hits a pothole:eek:

CianRyan

Gumpert claim this too, I think, as do most F1 cars.
I'd love to see some one actually try this though.

Sure, I was cycling upside down on the roof the other day. I was wear a cap and it acted like a spoiler. :rolleyes:

unkel

CianRyan wrote: »

Sure, I was cycling upside down on the roof the other day. I was wear a cap and it acted like a spoiler. :rolleyes:

What's the address of your regular head shop? Must buy myself all of their magic mushrooms

Midnight_EG

unkel wrote: »

What's the address of your regular head shop? Must buy myself all of their magic mushrooms

Nah dude, he's in Tallaght so he's just schmadt :P

CianRyan

Midnight_EG wrote: »

Nah dude, he's in Tallaght so he's just schmadt :P

He knows the deal.
Hat placed at the perfect angle for optimum downforce, or upforce... Rather.

Sure my bike's rear wheel drive, like!

JHMEG

unkel wrote: »

The point here is a day to day car[/I][/B] like a Veyron,

LOL! Day to day alright. With talk of lads with fruit/fish names like Peach or was it Perch, and headshops... and I think the mushies are optional

Tea 1000

JJJJNR wrote: »

There will be other airplanes that will be faster than concord, they are already in development.

Sydney in 4.6 hours anyone.

It's Concorde. And there probably will after we're dead, but you're incorrect, they are not already in development. And the Sydney in 4.6 hours is a figure thrown about for a new type of thinking where if you can get the aircraft to take off and literally ascend into orbit you'll then use feck all fuel to get it up to great speeds, then descend back down when you're at the destination.
All those ideas are only ideas at the moment, and what company is going to develop something like that? Where's the money going to come from? Not any Government, so the aircraft companies themselves won't take the risk of getting half way there and going bankrupt.
It's kind of similar to the Veyron project, albiet on a much smaller scale in terms of the car. VW boss wanted the Veyron, so threw money at it.
It may happen again that some company will surpass it, but not until someone is flush with money!