World’s Fastest Car Named for Sluggish Terrestrial Dinosaur

The tuatara is a scaly reptile that lives on a remote archipelago off the coast of New Zealand. It has three eyes, no ears, a spiky spinal crest, and freaky dentition consisting of two rows of teeth up top and one below. An adult tuatara doesn’t reach sexual maturity until it’s 20, mates only once every four years, and occasionally eats its young. And while it looks like the kind of iguana your annoying goateed neighbor might keep in a stinky tank in his living room, it actually belongs to a distinct genus, one that’s existed since the time of the dinosaurs and is the common ancestor of all contemporary lizards, snakes, crocodiles, and birds. In other words, it is one fucked-up little Sphenodon.

Similarly unique is the vehicle named for this charming creature, the Shelby SuperCars (SSC) Tuatara. The angularly swoopy, be-canopied asphalt-Hoover more closely resembles the graphite musings of a precocious high-schooler sketching his vision of the fastest car in the world, circa 2023, than it does other vehicles on the market. Interestingly enough, the American-built Tuatara was actually designed by a precocious 37-year-old wunderkind named Jason Castriota, who, during his time at the legendary design house Pininfarina, penned vehicles for the likes of Ferrari, Maserati, and Rolls-Royce. And the Tuatara is intended to be the fastest car in the world, when it makes its market debut sometime in 2012, or thereabouts.

How will this finny, sublunary rocket accomplish this task, snatching the mantle from the 267 m.p.h, $2.4 million Bugatti Veyron Super Sports? The same way the U.S.A. wins at everything, through technological ingenuity in the service of hegemonic brute force. In this case, getting this thing to a projected clip of 275 m.p.h. will involve a combination of advanced lightweight materials; aerodynamic innovations that will allow the car to slice through the tremendous wind resistance that builds at these insane speeds while simultaneously creating enough down-force to prevent it from becoming airborne; and a twin-turbocharged V-8 engine that produces in excess of 1,350 horsepower.

All of which prompts the question: Why? Well, because SSC has been manifestly invested in the oscillating juggernaut that is automotive top-speed records for years: the automaker snatched the title from Bugatti with its previous supercar, the Ultimate Aero, in 2007, only to have it re-appropriated by the Veyron in 2010. And like a W.W.E. superstar or a petulant Republican presidential contender, the guys at SSC seem to be fueled by the querulous drive for a rematch.

Can they win? As with everything presented here on Four-Wheeled Future—where vehicles exist solely as chimeras, prancing through the minds of obsessives and madmen—we have no idea. But at least 10 petrogarchs placed a deposit for the $1.2 million vehicle at the recent Dubai Auto Show, an act that is either a vote of confidence or a testament to the delusional nature of a people whose phenomenal wealth is predicated on the extraction of a dwindling resource, the burning of which is destroying the earth we all share.

Consult’s car column, Stick Shift, every Monday for vehicle reviews, road trips, top-five lists, Stars & Cars interviews, and Four-Wheeled Future—a monthly glimpse into the automotive crystal ball.
