年代年代C's Record-Breaking Tuatara Has Been Wrecked

May. 10, 2021 6:41 AM ET by年代ebastian Cenizo Crash /21 Comments

It was on its way to attempt another high-speed run.

Aftermuch controversy, Shelby Super Cars eventually proved that theTuatarais thefastest production car in the worldearly this year. However, while that record of an average top speed of 282.9 mph is a highly impressive achievement, it remains a little short of SSC's true goal: to gofaster than 300 mph. The team behind the American hypercar is still aiming to get that record under its belt as soon as possible, but things have taken a turn for the worse after a car carrier transporting the very car that holds the current record was subjected to strong winds and tipped over with the special supercar inside.

The Drivereports that the crash happened last month in Utah while the Tuatara was on its way to Florida for another crack at the 300-mph run. It was on Interstate 15 north of Salt Lake City when high winds caused the carrier to flip over, heavily damaging the $1.9 million Tuatara. This was chassis number 001 owned by Larry Caplin, who likely wasn't impressed to hear about what happened to his car. Fortunately, SSC's owner Jerod Shelby says that the damage isn't especially serious and can be repaired. "At first glance, we thought it was going to be pretty severe, but it ended up not too bad at all," said Shelby. "Fortunately, it didn't touch chassis, drivetrain, suspension, any of that."

It's particularly fortunate that this example can be repaired as no other completed Tuataras exist yet, but the best news from the story is that both the driver and passenger in the car carrier were able to walk away from the incident. As for when we can expect to see Shelby Super Cars take another crack at 300 mph, Shelby says that his company is working on the scheduling for another run but did at least say that we can expect news on this in "weeks not months." Shelby had better get cracking before Hennessey'sVenom F5snatches the headlines away.