The World's Quickest Cars: Lucid Air Sapphire v Bugatti Chiron v Tesla Plaid - Cammisa's Drag Race

No no no! Do not look at me! Look over there! Ha! That's the Lucid Air Sapphire and it's Elon Musk's triple-engine nightmare. And the one question everyone wants answered is: will it finally unseat the damn Tesla Model S Plaid as the fastest-accelerating production car of all time? What I want to know is: Will it unseat the fastest-accelerating gasoline-powered production car of all time, the 1,500-horsepower Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport? ...and there's a little boy on his bike: sit down! — Listen, Josh Herrin, the last time I was here I told you I was going to bring very fast

cars

.

Do you think your little toy can keep up with the big ones? 35 years ago, when most of the German auto industry reached an agreement to limit their

cars

to 155 miles per hour to make Audubon's open sections safer, the

world

's fastest car could accelerate to 116 mph on the quarter mile. In just a quarter mile, each of the cars here can reach the German speed "limit" of 155 mph. Hell, they can all go 60 miles per hour by the time they reach the end of the driveway. Literally. Cars as fast as the Tesla Model S Plaid can get you kicked off a

race

track for not having a roll cage, full-face helmet, racing license, or even a parachute.

Well? These cars are not only fast. Racing against other cars is like racing the Stealth Bomber against a tricycle. The last time we

race

d a Plaid, we included a BMW M5 (E39) and gave it a 70 mph head start. The Tesla still won. But the Lucid Air Dream Edition didn't, so we're back with a Lucid Air Sapphire engineering prototype. This is mechanically identical to the car that's about to go into production, so if Lucid loses here today... well, Lucid's engineering team loses its job. With an additional rear motor, more than 1,200 horsepower, and grippy Michelin tires, the Sapphire can finally go toe-to-toe with the triple-motor, 1,020-horsepower Tesla Model S Plaid.

Both can compete with the speed and horsepower champion. Look, nothing comes close to a Bugatti: not in price, not in engineering, and certainly not in opulence. This is the   Chiron Pur Sport, which means it has a fixed wing. It also has Cup 2R tires, no sound insulation, and shorter gear ratios, not to mention its 1,479 horsepower. Wow, honey! So now we run! This will be a

world

record for a production car because it's a 9.1! This is not a treated surface like you would see on a race track. This is just plain old asphalt. The last time we competed a Lucid against a Tesla, the Lucid was eight cars behind.

Now there are three ahead! You wouldn't have thought that going from 1,111 horsepower in the Lucid Air to over 1,200 in the Sapphire would have made that much of a difference. But it was, and it's all about traction and torque at the rear wheels. At these acceleration levels, so much weight is shifted rearward that the front wheels don't actually contribute as much. On the Dream Edition, that meant the rear motor was maxed out but the front motor was reducing its power to prevent wheel spin. Adding the second engine in the rear means that the Sapphire now has enough power in the rear to be able to make the most of all the traction it has in the rear.

Meaning: You are maxing out all four tires. This is despite the Plaid having that Cheetah mode where it squats down for better casting. The fact is: the checkered Tesla Model S simply doesn't have enough torque to keep up! When was the last time you heard someone say that? When was the last time you saw a three-car race that featured a draw in the DFL? I have to give him credit, though: He ended up six and a half feet behind a $4 million, 8-liter, 16-cylinder, four-turbocharged monster. Very close! If you think the Chiron's "slow" 0-60 is because it's slow off the line, ohhh, think again!

It's violent! The thing revs the engine, releases the clutch and burns all four wheels! It's brutal! But it all comes down to traction control. An internal combustion engine can adjust its power maybe a couple of times per second, but an electric motor can go from full power to nothing a thousand times per second. That's what gives these things an edge. The only reason Chiron didn't win this race is because it wasn't long enough! Trust me, keep your foot on it long enough and that thing will leave both EVS for dead (and then run out of gas), but it'll probably be faster than the plane that costs more.

Well, then it's decided: two five-passenger sedans can beat or tie the world-leading, carbon-chambered, 8-liter, 16-cylinder, quad-turbocharged French king of speed. So as far as quarter mile

drag

s go, I guess this was the final nail in the coffin for the internal combustion engine...holy shit no it's not! We brought that motorcycle! Holy shit, in fact, because the last time we raced a car against the Ducati Panigale V4 SP2, it was against a Corvette Z06 and the bike left the car for dead. But MotoAmerica Supersport champion Josh Herrin thought there was a little more left in the bike.

So Ducati is back with some suspension tweaks and clear guidance from the company: Don't go easy on the clutch. Beat Lucid for the luxury of gasoline! I hope you appreciate how completely crazy this is. Today we have a Tesla, a Bugatti and a Ducati with a time of 9.3 in the second quarter. To achieve this, Josh released the Ducati's clutch at over 10,000 rpm. That was just the beginning. Watch the front wheel as it scrapes the pavement virtually the entire length of the track. This was the limit. As fast as this 210 horsepower motorcycle could accelerate, without hitting the kettle.

And yet, a five-passenger luxury sedan bested it. Lucid's 1000 Hertz traction control worked overtime virtually the entire track. At the line, both Lucid and Ducati surpassed that 155 mph mark where the Germans said that's enough. That occurred at only 1,320 feet, not on an open stretch of Autobahn. Oh, this is a good time to stop and reflect... because the sun has set and the trail is closed. But we are really at the limit. If you had added more power to either of these cars, they certainly wouldn't have been faster to 60 and they really wouldn't have been faster in the quarter mile.

Now that Bugatti and Rimac are the same company, the Chiron's replacement can be expected to be electric as well, starting a whole new chapter in speed. Speed ​​may not be everything, but it certainly is something, and today that something is the Lucid Air Sapphire, which is the fastest production car we've ever seen. You couldn't even keep up with him!