Motor Trend: Speeding! Top-Speed Shootout

"How fast?" The question is as old as the automobile itself. The answer depends on your criteria: 0-60, the quarter mile, road-course lap times, or, the ultimate bench-racing fantasy number, top speed.

Ascertaining a car's flat-out max isn't easy. Factors insignificant at 60, 80, or even 100 mph--the soundness of a car's hardware and the driver's software, aerodynamics, road surface, even local wildlife, for example--can become downright grave as you reach for 200.

Dusting off the lower-right quadrants of speedometers has been a Motor Trend staple for more than 30 years. Given all the hot, new hardware already here or arriving shortly in our market, it was again time to round 'em up and head for the big track. But to run just for the top-speed number, however, would be to squander this outstanding automotive cast. So we ran the usual regimen of performance evaluations (acceleration, braking, slalom) and added something new: a figure-eight test. About the size of those that've been running at bullring racetracks and county fairs for decades, our figure eight ran one car at a time on grippy pavement, for obvious reasons. With the right proportions, a large figure eight is the simplest expression of a road course, requiring that cars accelerate, brake, and turn hard and long in both directions. The process and results are as entertaining as they are enlightening.

Like exceptional cars? Need speed? Interested in enough performance data--and even some new record-breaking runs--to keep you and your gearhead buddies buzzing for weeks? Then we gotcher story right here.