No matter how fast and uncompromising supercars are, their own “super-super” began to appear among them as well. The word “hypercar”, as it is commonly believed, arose with the incredible McLaren F1. In the late 1980s, the unprecedented road car began to develop the British company McLaren, which until then built exclusively racing cars, primarily for Formula 1.
Introduced in 1992, the F1 was dual-purpose: only 65 out of 106 examples were road cars, while the rest were successfully raced. In 1995, the McLaren F1 even won the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Hypercars of heaven: the history of superfast cars
The British literally reinvented the sports car, its design even today casts doubt on the earthly origin of the car. The driver in F1 did not sit on the left or right, but in the middle, with two passenger seats behind him. Behind the seats was an atmospheric 12-cylinder BMW engine. Its volume was increased to 6.1 liters and power to 627 hp.
The figure for its time is as incredible as the price of $1.2 million in 1992.
The record speed for road cars (386.4 km/h), set by “McLaren”, beaten only in 2005, and that a couple of kilometers per hour. Dispersal to a hundred took only 3.4 seconds.
However, even in those years McLaren F1, let it be the most, but only a little ahead of its contemporaries. The title of the fastest road car, he took away from his compatriot and fellow Jaguar XJ 220 (1992, 540-horsepower 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, nearly half a million pounds).
Top speed with the rev limiter removed reached 349.4 km / h, and 100 km / h conquered “Jaguar” in 3.6 seconds.
Franco-Italian Bugatti EB 110 SS, unlike the British, was conceived as a road car, but it participated in the races, too. How could it be, with such parameters! The 1992 model reached 100 km/h in 3.2 seconds and stopped only at 348 km/h.
The Bugatti engine was something absolutely fantastic: only 3.5 liter V12 was generously fed with four turbochargers. On an output – mind-boggling 612 hp.
In a word, hypercars of those years were like another hello from 90’s – computer shooters. After defeating a bunch of monsters, at the end of each mission you got an audience with the boss of the level, and then a long and hard fought him for life and death. These “level bosses” were exactly what those machines were. They also tried to kill you on occasion, so it was worth getting used to the simpler characters first.
Of course, with passing to a new level monsters became stronger and more evil. In the late 90’s racing series FIA GT gave birth to real monsters. Even the most unscrupulous street racer will think twice and call his mother before coming within ten meters of such a dangerous creature as a Mercedes CLK GTR or Nissan R390 GT1. This is a purely hypothetical situation, though: no one will go anywhere near anything. Monsters allowed on public roads by someone else’s joke are like Winnie the Pooh’s honey: even if they are, it’s still as if they aren’t there.
According to the rules of the racing series, the prototypes had to have road versions. So in 1998, these ultra-small “homologation series” monsters appeared, able to legally drive on the roads (well, yes, they had mirrors, handbrake and reversing light), but adapted only for racing.
However, the 560-horsepower Nissan R390 GT1 never went on sale freely, and the 612-horsepower CLK GTR was produced in 25 copies. It made it into the Guinness Book of Records with a very peculiar record – as the world’s most expensive production passenger car. The starting price exceeded 1,5 million dollars.
It turns out, hypercars already existed at the end of the 1990s, but the word itself has not entered lexicon of automobile fans yet. Nowadays any site, devoted to cars, will give several pages of results on a request “hypercar”. I wonder when did the useless, dangerous but so fast and perfect creations of human hands stand on a par with a robot vacuum cleaner and a food delivery app? Hypercars quietly settled in our minds when he appeared, the Bugatti 16.4 Veyron.
In the late 1990s, it seemed that everything related to the internal combustion engine had already been invented. The car confidently marked the second century, became economical, fast and safe, requiring less and less maintenance. There was timid talk of autopiloting, Toyota started a hybrid program, and General Motors introduced the Hy-Wire concept. A flat platform with wheels contained both a hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system and a control system. Steering wheel, pedals, and any input devices were connected to this platform through a single port. Something like a big USB.