300 km/hr!
May 31st, 2008 at 9:20 am by David FarrarTop Gear host Jeremy Clarkson is under attack for admitting he once drove over 300 km/hr on a public road.
Is anyone surprised? It is classic Clarkson.
He was driving a Bugatti Veyron, which has a top speed of 407 km/hr. That is one third of supersonic speed!
Sadly the fuel tank only lasts 12 minutes at that speed, but on the plus side you can travel 80 km in those 12 minutes! This is not a bad thing though as after 15 minutes the tyres have melted!
The acceleration is very nice – reaches 100 km/hr in 2.5 seconds which is equal to 1.2G. And it can brake at 1.3G. It can go from 400 km/hr to a stop in under 10 seconds.
I wonder how much one costs to buy?
Tags: Jeremy Clarkson, speeding
May 31st, 2008 at 9:33 am
Beauitful, I want one. A quad-turbocharged W16 engine!
Vote:But alas you’d have to deface it here with a Fuel economy star sticker (although not a big sticker at half a star)
May 31st, 2008 at 10:27 am
If he was doing 300kph you can be sure of one thing — he wasn’t in Auckland!
Of course, after all the criticism of Helen’s motorcade doing half that speed I am sure that you all absolutely deplore this behaviour. Right?
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 10:53 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT0ou-ZEcx0
This is how it’s done legally.
love this car!!!!
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 11:12 am
jafapete
Sorry no back seat for Helen.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x157l2_bugatti-veyron-at-top-speed_auto
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 11:17 am
Good one Doug! LOL
Great video clip too, but did they really name the website daily motion? Sounds terribly, er, regular.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
>Of course, after all the criticism of Helen’s motorcade doing half that speed I am sure that you all absolutely deplore this behaviour. Right?
Clarkson doesn’t head a government that lectures us about driving issues in just about every television commercial break.
Clarkson doesn’t head a government that fines people if they drive quite safely but over an arbitrary speed limit.
Clarkson doesn’t head a government that is responsible for shockingly dangerous roads that, in most cases, haven’t been upgraded since the early 20th century.
So Jeremy Clarkson isn’t a hypocrite. Whereas Helen Clark is. That’s why she was criticised.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Very good jafapete!
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I probably shouldn’t say how fast I’ve been on NZ roads
I will point out though that the humble Subaru Legacy station wagon with a 2.0 liter turbo engine, in unmodified factory condition, has officially done 270.532 km/h on a (closed) public road in Colorado. There are scads of those on NZ roads, and not a few faster cars as well.
Perhaps more impressively, the original Legacy set a record between Jan 2 and Jan 21 1989, covering 100,000 km at an average speed of 223.345 km/h. That average speed includes all stops, so they were going a good bit faster. They refueled and changed drivers every two hours (450 km) and changed tyres every 20,000 km (4 days) or so. In 2005 Mercedes beat this record by 1.5 km/h with the E320 CDI.
The comparisons to F1 cars are a bit silly.
The changes to the F1 regulations every year or two are pretty much specifically to keep their top speeds during races below 350 km/h. If they get over that then any crash that sends a car up in the air is likely to turn the whole car into a wing and send it flying over the fences. So the highest speeds achieved in a race are around 340 km/h on quite a few tracks. But they get there from an 80 or 100 km/h corner, and back down to similar speeds again, on straights of maybe 2 km length. If someone took an F1 car, cranked down the downforce (which is is what lets them take some corners at 4G sideways acceleration), and adjusted the gear ratios (which they do from race to race anyway) then I have little doubt that an F1 car could do the same speeds as the Veyron, from only a 2.5l normally aspirated engine.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Impressive, but nothing is faster than a Top Fuel dragster. Tony Schumacher owns both ends of the National record in the USA with an elapsed time for the quarter-mile of 4.428 seconds (from a standing start) and a terminal speed at the end of the quarter of 336.15 MILES per hour.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Veyron = about $1million US.
Basically 2 x Audi twin turbo V8s joined together making a w16.
For speeds over around 200 the cars drops an inch closer to the ground. If you want to go over around 280 you must pull over and flick some little lever thingys on the car floor to lower it even further. I think in the 380′s is the highest a real human driver has had it up to on the VW test track in Germany.
Imagine the insurance on it. You’d want to be over 25. Thats for sure.
I’d settle for one of the new Dodge Charger Super Bee’s myself and still have US$930,000 to spend on gas.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I had to laugh today, I received a speeding infringement notice of $80 for doing 61ks in a 50K area. The letter had my name in the box so I figued that I must have got pinged somewhere in the city. I said to my wife ” shit the bastards have sent me speeding fine” the wife then started to lecture me on going to fast. I drive a v8 and she drives a suv, after ten minutes of been told off I looked at the date on the ticket and the rego number of the vehicle. It was her ticket it’s just that the rego is under my name. Talk about humble pie, I think I’ll be in tonight.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Oh yes bob, in order to show how sorry she is for you showing her up she’s going to ‘put out’.
Tui.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Hey Bob, be sure not to go too fast yourself tonight or you might get told off again…
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Gee whizz.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I did take care on state highway number one as acting traffic controller watching for the prime minister speeding in one of these cars so she could jinx the rugger match at Lancaster Park. I’m thankful to say the Ockers got smacked over by the red and black real blokes. What a crusade against the absolute power merchant of Venice PM.
Vote:May 31st, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I understand a Veyron goes for about £760k, and Bugatti does not make a profit on them as it is a loss leader for other products. Only about 130 have been built so far. Of course in NZ in most cases you’ll never get roads suitable for such speeds, but he is does drive for a living, has injured/killed no one through it, and is light years ahead of the inadequately endowed boys who attach ugly plastic to their mum’s hatchbacks and cruise provincial streets to show off to white trash girls for mutual amusement.
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 12:51 am
Clarkson is brilliant at whipping up a frenzy with the PC lefties. The local papers have been full of letters from pissed off people saying he should be taken off the road, while the rest of us are responding in greater numbers saying he is the ONLY reason worth paying our BBC license fee. Which is completely true.
Great publicity for Top Gear mind you, I try to fit in about 3/4 episodes a week in here
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 3:43 am
Jeremy Clarkson freely admits doing 186 mph on public roads. In fact you have seen him do it on Top Gear. He drove a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren at 186 mph on public roads. Those roads were in Germany. Nothing like a bit of unrestricted speed autobahn.
On a completely different topic can you believe that there are eight different Hellraiser movies and they are remaking the original for release in 2009?
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 10:26 am
I sigh with joy when i can drive from Wanganui to Wgtn and drive to work for a week, 5 days and do other side trips and get 40 mpg out of my 2003 toyota corolla, to hell with top speed its about mpg or litres if you are that way inclined these days ,speed is old hat these days. Average 45mpg+ on any decent trip ,100 kw 1800cc vvti motor, try getting that out of a heavy subaru which is now part owned by Toyota
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 11:02 am
A motorbike will give a greater thrill than all but a million dollar car and at a fraction of the cost. PC crap doesn’t cut it with those on two wheels.
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
JSF2008
Wow… 45mpg is very good for your 1800cc, that’s almost 19.13km/L or 5.23L/100km, that puts even the Prius in shame.
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Well, no, 45 mpg is 15.9 km/l or 6.29 l/100km. We are in NZ here, not the USA with its puny gallons.
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Sorry ,born in 1948,still convert to miles/gallons sounds better,im old school,and yes in my youth did 100mph+ on the wellington motorway over railyard ,was chasing a mate in my hotted up 1600cc 1974 avenger alpine, mad youth,GREAT FUN
car felt very light.
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 4:09 pm
David, if you bought a car like that, you wouldn’t live long enough to make the payments. On the plus side, when you dinged it, you would not feel any pain. Silly boy!
Vote:June 2nd, 2008 at 10:46 am
Is it true that Scott Dixon had Hullen in the back seat?
Vote:June 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I love how it is all a bit of a joke when someone drives outrageously fast in a good car, even though there is universal condemnation when (say) some boys from Pukekohe go too fast in their Honda or whatever and cause a horrific crash. As though age and fatness and the pricetag of the particular fast car concerned are guarantees of safety at speed, and we should all just accept that people who own expensive supercars “deserve” to drive them fast around us.
Clarkson seems quite skilled at getting the back end out and sliding high-powered cars sideways around the smooth, flat Top Gear race track. But nothing I have ever seen on Top Gear gives me a lot of faith that he’d be much good at keeping control and staying in his own narrow lane at mega speeds on a real road. (James May is clearly the best driver of the 3 Top Gear blokes by far; Jackie Stewart even said so on the episode where they are working on his lap times in a red TVR!)
Vote:June 2nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Speaking of James May a.k.a Captain Slow. Check out this youtube video of him in a cook off against Gordon Ramsay. Hilarious.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 am
DPF
As they say at Rolls Royce “If you have to ask the price sir, you can’t afford it!”
Mind you, it makes the three lambourghinis in Wellington look a bit slow, even if they don’t get out of their garages much!
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