Alexandre Prevot/ShutterstockWhen people think of raw, unfiltered speed, one name usually towers above the rest: Bugatti. The reputation started in September 1991, when the Bugatti EB110 rolled onto the Champs-Élysées with a top speed of 218 mph — quicker than anything else on sale in 1991. A decade later, the quad-turbo, 16-cylinder Veyron hit 253.81 mph on Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track in 2005.At that time, the run was so absurd it had Jeremy Clarkson calling it the best car we'll see in our lifetime. Then, in 2019, the Bugatti went further still: the Chiron Super Sport 300+, a stripped-out prototype built on the Chiron, launched in 2016 and then became the fastest car on record for the time, smashing through the 300 mph barrier with Le Mans winner Andy Wallace at the wheel, and hitting 304.773 mph.Numbers like these are why Bugatti still sits at the summit of automotive engineering, a brand whose entire purpose seems to be answering one question: how fast is too fast? Yet Bugatti has never had the field to itself. The EB110's claim didn't last — McLaren's F1 took it in 1998, hitting 240.1 mph on nothing but a naturally aspirated V12. AdvertisementAdvertisementEven the Veyron's and the Chiron Super Sport 300+'s record have since been beaten, both by gas-powered cars and EVs. So, Bugatti has not consistently been the fastest car ever made over the years. The top end of the car world has always been fiercely contested, and Bugatti is part of the story, not the whole of it. Here are four cars that are quicker than a Bugatti.Read more: Why Is Ford's Modular 4.6-Liter 2-Valve V8 Engine So Reliable?Yangwang U9 XtremeGustavo Molinari/ShutterstockBugatti held the outright top-speed crown for most of the last twenty years, with a brief interruption from Koenigsegg in 2017, but it took an electric hypercar from China to finally break it for good. The record run happened at Germany's ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg circuit, where BYD's Yangwang U9 Xtreme touched 308.4 mph — 496.22 km/h — in September 2025, edging past the Chiron Super Sport 300+'s 304.773 mph mark.Each of the four motors spins up to 30,000 rpm, and together they're rated above 3,000 PS. The whole system runs at 1,200 volts, 400 more than the standard U9. German endurance racer Marc Basseng was behind the wheel for the run, and BYD executive vice president Stella Li called it "terrific that the fastest production car in the world is now electric."AdvertisementAdvertisementIt's worth noting the run was a single-direction pass rather than the two-way average traditionally used to certify speed records. Even so, nothing else with a number plate has gone faster in a straight line. What's even crazier is that BYD wants to push the U9 Extreme even further. Last year, Top Gear reported that Basseng "could have stayed on the throttle for another second and a half," meaning that the car still had more to give. Only 30 units of the U9 Xtreme will be built, and none of them are headed to American driveways — one more entry on the growing list of the coolest cars we don't get in the States.Koenigsegg Agera RSBrandon Woyshnis/Getty ImagesKoenigsegg put a customer-owned Agera RS through two runs on a closed stretch of Nevada's Highway 160 on November 4, 2017. Getting the highway shut down for the run required sign-off from Nevada's Department of Transportation and organizational help from the Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Factory driver Niklas Lilja posted 271.2 mph heading one way and 284.6 mph on the return leg, with Racelogic on hand to confirm both runs as they happened. Averaged together, the two runs worked out to 277.87 mph (446.97 km/h), per Koenigsegg's own figures. At the time, the Veyron Super Sport had held the record since 2010, at 267.8 mph.AdvertisementAdvertisementPower came from a twin-turbocharged 5.0-liter V8 good for 1,360 hp and 1,011 lb-ft, per Koenigsegg's specs, and the price tag, a mere $2 million. The coolest part was that Michelin itself "wasn't sure its tires would hold up at 280+ mph" going into the run. Koenigsegg still calls the run "the still-undefeated top speed record for a homologated production car on a public road." Although these numbers are ludicrous, the Agera RS is far from being the most capable current Koenigsegg. The Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut broke two world records recently with an 8.54 second quarter mile time and a 12.76 half-mile time. The fastest quarter mile time the Agera ever recorded was 9.96 seconds. Only time will tell, but theoretical top speeds of the Jesko Absolut are reported in the 330 mph region. SSC TuataraBrandon Woyshnis/ShutterstockSSC North America's first stab at the record came in October 2020, when driver Oliver Webb ran the Tuatara down Nevada's Highway 160 to a claimed two-way average of 316.11 mph. However, CBS News reported shortly that the number fell apart once SSC's own team pulled the onboard video files and noticed the speeds shown didn't match what the timing data said. SSC founder Jerod Shelby later admitted on the SSC North America YouTube channel that, "We were seeing different speeds for the very same run." SSC went back out on January 17, 2021, this time at the Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds on a former Space Shuttle runway at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Tuatara owner Larry Caplin drove both passes, and the northbound and southbound speeds worked out to a two-way average of 282.9 mph. AdvertisementAdvertisementThis time, to make sure the runs are legit, four separate tracking systems were mounted on the car. Shelby credited the higher number to Caplin's driving style which kept his foot pressed to the floor for 40 to 50 seconds, instead of the previous 20 to 25 seconds. The Tuatara's twin-turbo V8 makes 1,750 hp, with a price that climbs to $1.9 million fully loaded. A later attempt at Kennedy Space Center got the car up to 295 mph in one direction, but the driver botched the return pass, so the two-way average that would have made it official was never recorded. As such, properly assessing the SSC Tuatara's true top speed is rather difficult. Either way, the "proper" 282.9 mph record beat the Veyron Super Sport's 267.8 mph comfortably.Want the latest in tech and auto trends? Subscribe to our free newsletter for the latest headlines, expert guides, and how-to tips, one email at a time. You can also add us as a preferred search source on Google.Read the original article on SlashGear.
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