100 years ago, the race to build the fastest car had taken cars from
being barely faster than horses to being capable of well over 100mph in
around two decades.
By the 1950s Aston Martin was breaching 150mph with its DB4 GT, while
the Ferrari F40 had ventured above the 200mph barrier in the
1980s. Getting cars to go faster than that became more and more difficult,
and then celebrated racing firm McLaren came along to blow everyone out
of the water.
In 1998, the iconic McLaren F1 breached 240mph - well
in excess of what anybody else could manage at the time.
Even when Bugatti's incredible
(and incredibly expensive to make) Veyron landed on the scene
in 2005 its top speed was 'only' 13mph more than the McLaren, at 253mph.
But Bugatti didn't rest on its laurels, coming out with the Veyron
Super Sport in 2010 which cracked 267mph. Since then, there's been all manner of cars (some from companies you
might never have heard of) the claim to be even faster still. Bugatti
itself replaced the Veyron with the even faster Chiron, and the target
shifted to a nice round number: 300mph.
>>> Learn more about your favorite fast cars here <<<