There’s an old saying in the car world: “Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?”
I can attest to the hard truth of this statement: I once spent a month of my mechanic’s salary on a set of Weber DCOE carburetors that probably raised the top speed of my modified VW Beetle by about three km/h .
The cost of speed is even more obvious when you apply it to new cars. Out of interest, I created a spreadsheet that breaks down the price-to-performance ratio of a wide range of machines. The numbers were sobering, to say the least.
Let’s start with the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport, the fastest production car ever made. The Veyron’s top speed is 431 km/h, and it costs about $3 million, so you will be paying $6,950.56 for each km/h of speed (and unless you own a test track with a really long straightaway, you’re never going to hit 431.)
Compared to this, a new Porsche 918 Spyder looks like a bargain (at least technically.) The 918 costs $1.149 million, and it will do 345 km/h. The 918’s price-to-performance ratio works out to $3,331.01 per km/h, which means that each speed increment is going to cost you less than half as much as it would in the Veyron. (Another way of looking at it: the Veyron’s extra 86 km/h of top speed will cost youmore than $1.85 million compared to the Porsche 918.)
But if you want to go fast for far less, have a look at the Porsche 911 Turbo S: it sells for $214,800, and has a top speed of 330 km/h. The 911’s price-to-performance ratio works out to $650.91 per km/h – a discount of more than 90 per cent compared to the Veyron.
The law of diminishing returns is definitely at work here - the higher you climb on the speed scale, the more you pay for notch on the speedometer. Several forces are at work here. First is the incontrovertible law of aerodynamics: drag increases as the square of velocity. What this means is that you want to raise your speed from 100 km/h to 200 km/h, the drag increases by 400 per cent. If you want to go 400 km/h, drag increases by 1600 per cent. And so on…
Then comes the economics of design and manufacturing. The market for ultra-fast cars is tiny, so they’re made by boutique builders (like McLaren and Ferrari) who don’t enjoy economies of scale, and charge accordingly. It takes vast power and sleek aerodynamics to go fast, and developing those technologies isn’t cheap.
There are quite a few cars on the market that will do 220 km/h or so. Once you go past that point, the costs rise exponentially. Here are a couple of examples:
Pagani Huayra: top speed 383 km/h, retail price $2.2 million. Cost per km/h - $5744.13
Hennessey Venom GT: top speed 427.6 km/h, retail price $1.632 million. Cost per km/h - $3816.65
If you’re willing to give up a little speed, there are some real bargains to be had. I ran the numbers on my own Lotus Evora S, for example: top speed 270 km/h, retail price $127,000. Cost per km/h - $470.37.
Not bad. But as values go, the Lotus (and every other car in this ad hoc list) pales in comparison to the humble Toyota Corolla. Look upon the Corolla’s numbers and despair, ye supercar owners: top speed 200 km/h, retail price $15,995. Cost per km/h - $79.98.
So yes, speed costs money. Is it worth it? You decide.
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