One of the greatest joys in driving is being able to max out your vehicle, be it hitting apexes or clocking in low numbers at the drag strip. We often champion the idea of “slow car fast,” or a vehicle you can push to its limit without hitting Warp. Still, the far end of a speedometer is a temptress, and sometimes a car enthusiast just wants to register triple-digit speeds. What’s the fastest you’ve driven? What were you driving or riding when you hit it?
Now, to be clear here, we are not the police. At least, when I pinched myself this morning I was pretty sure I still work at a transportation publication. I’m not going to tattle on you. That said, you should always be careful what you say on the Internet!
I’ve lived with slow vehicles all of my life. My first car, a 2001 Kia Rio, wouldn’t go any faster than 110 mph indicated, which was probably closer to 105 mph actual. Things got slower from there. The fastest I’ve gotten in my 2012 Smart Fortwo was 98 mph, beating the electronic limiter by 8 mph. GPS confirmed that as well as uh … the police officer who pulled me over. As a twist, he was laughing way so hard at the thought of my car going that fast that he didn’t even give me a ticket for it. The Honda Prelude driver that blew by going even faster wasn’t as lucky.
Ok, so Peter made this as the original topshot and I have to put it here. It’s not a 2012 Smart but it makes me giggle:
I’m generally familiar with the far end of the speedometers of everything I drive. I’ve hit 83 mph in my Honda Beat, 70 mph in my Suzuki Every, 70 mph in my bus, and about 130 mph in my Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI.
The absolute fastest I’ve been in a car was about 155 mph behind the wheel of the second-generation Acura NSX. Sadly, the course was too short for more, but there’s only one other time in life when my heart pumped that hard, and that had nothing to do with cars.
Weirdly, I have owned some fast-ish motorcycles, but haven’t gone that fast on them. At one point, I owned a Honda CBR600F3, which could theoretically hit around 173 mph. However, mine never went faster than the speed limit during my ownership. Instead, the fastest I’ve been on a bike was my Triumph Rocket III, which hit a touch over 130 mph before my senses kicked in and I slowed down. Before that, it was 120 mph on a modified and naked 1980 Honda GL1100.
A part of me is afraid to own my “unattainable” dream car, a first-generation Audi R8 V10. Will I bury the needle and end up under a jail somewhere? Will I become an insatiable speed junkie and have to tie myself to faster and faster vehicles? I don’t have the answers to these questions right now. For now, I will happily continue putt-putting around on 20 HP Royal Enfields and giving myself occasional blasts of speed via Triumphs with threatening auras and supercharged Ford trucks that exist to convert rubber into smoke.
What about you? What’s the fastest you’ve gone and in what vehicle?
110 in a rental Corolla in the early 90s on an deserted Kansas interstate. Returning from an NCAA second round game in KC.
Meh. It’s easy enough to do 130 in an 8 cylinder german vault on wheels. I’ve done 125 in my e91. Whatever.
But what really puckered my butt was doing a century in my nearly 20 year-old (at the time) 1986 Toyota Van LE. Two liters redlined directly behind/under my ass. The forward control seating giving me the sensation of being at the leading edge of ludicrous speed. Wind buffeting that threatened to push me off the road. It’s 100% true: Driving a slow car fast is a shortcut to cheap thrills.
An E46 M3 is limited to 155. It will do it. Also an 04 Cobra blew by us while it was doing it, allegedly. I can also confirm that a an 04 Mach 1 speedometer goes to 160mph…with 3.55 gears it can reach that.
120 MPH in an 87 Camry…on a straight stretch back highway at night…great car and engine and it was trippy and scary at the same time how fast the side of the road moved & how easy it would have been to lose control- it takes a lot of focus just to look straight ahead
2006 Corvette Z06, 150mph at Road America. At least that’s the highest I saw glancing at the HUD but I was paying more attention to the rapidly approaching braking zone than my speed.
272 kph (~170 mph) in a 2022 911 Cabriolet on the Autobahn! Germany really is designed for driving the way they utilize priority roads etc
Don’t ask me how I know this, but a ~2016 Mustang Ecoboost convertible rented from a sketchy outfit in Las Vegas will top out at ~144 mph on the highway at night when you’re having a mental breakdown.
Lucky you weren’t in a similar-year V6 Mustang Convertible
Because their driveshafts tend to shatter at over 110.
Gotta outrun the bats
My 2009 Mercedes-Benz CLK350 Convertible –
110 on the 10 between Banning and Palm Springs.
With the top down.
Because due to Friday LA traffic I was late meeting friends for dinner.
I know it can do 135 – but its never been necessary.
132 in my 740ld on an empty highway in Utah. Saw something that mighta been a deer and decided I didn’t want to push the governor to the limit at 155.
Not the most fun I’ve had, though. 20-odd years ago I did the pursuit course at FLETC in Las Cruces, which required considerably more thought, both in terms of driving dynamics and the fact that the car in question was a spectacularly janky Crown Vic.
Whilst on an 18 year sojourn in Germany, I drove our 1970 Porsche 2.7 litre to its top speed of 140 mph. Then I rode a BMW K100 to an indicated 152 mph. Then we returned to the states and bought another 911 which I drove to digital 170 mph.
I love screaming at the very top end of every vehicle (63 so far) I have owned over the years. Now that I have gotten a bit older and slower, I still get a rush from our Cadillac CT6 twin turbo that max’es out at !55 (meh) but does a truly great “bum’s rush” between 60 and 90 mph!
I used to do that, with all my cars too, but not the latest one. I “only” got that one up to 151mph or so before backing off…
Well I know the hood wobbled on my 92 accord above 100… my 08 Civic coupe I hit 100 in a few times. Riding with my brother in a BMW 8 series…well the HUD was showing 140+ when he braked to have us take a turn at 90+
1993 300ZX in 2000. Best high speed long distance car I’ve ever owned.
AVERAGED 130 mph for most of the trip from Cincinnati to Chicago in the middle of the night. Periodically slowing to 80 for a few minutes because I thought I saw something while zipping through Indiana weirdly felt like I’d stopped.
I once averaged 173km/h (107mph or so, indicated on the trip computer, picture taken after stopping which lowers your average dramatically for such high speeds) over a 50 mile stretch of motorway late one night in a diesel Giulietta.
That meant usually hitting 220-230km/h (135-143mph) and cruising at over 200km/h (124mph) all the time.
It was… interesting.
I’ve seen 120-130 in a variety of cars – but the fastest was 155 in a mildly modified 1989 Porsche Turbo. It was my friends car, and we were on our way to an autocross early on a Sunday morning. The road was clear for miles, and he said I should open it up if I felt like it…
Of the cars I owned:
-Mercedes 300 SDL, modified with a taller rear-end and tuned to send more fuel to the engine: 130 mph
-Ford Contour with a Diablo performance tuner and governor delete: 128 mph
-Triumph GT6+ with modified engine: 110 mph (it had more to give, but my 120 lb twig-boy self couldn’t keep the steering straight)
I’ve gone faster in cars I didn’t own, but I won’t post those in public. Once I get a chance to properly test the GT6 as an EV conversion, it will probably be much faster regarding top speed than as an ICE.
Sadly to your point the fastest I’ve gone was in someone else’s car, hit 131 mph in my dad’s Audi A8 many years ago. Fastest in my own car was 126 mph in my ’89 Mazda 626 Turbo.
Forcing my 07 gold-beige old man shitbox Sonata to 125 indicated just because one night in 2017. Shuddered and shook like I was hitting turbulence.
There’s a speed governor on a 1998 cavalier at 105mph. End to end on a 137mi freeway in approximately an hour and fifteen.
Sorry Aaron. I was a shitty friend back then.
A bit over 130 on the Autobahn in a Saab 9-3. The more memorable part is that I got passed by a 5 Series while doing it. It didn’t crawl past either, it had to be doing at least 150.
I pinned the needle on my ’83 Starion, as the speedometer maxed at 85, but there was still plenty of space before it pinned. So, probably 100mph.
I’ve gotten my Matrix up to 110. I probably should not drive that fast.
116 mph, in a 1999 Toyota Camry with the 4 cylinder. Probably just a tad faster than it was desgined to go.
I’ve also gotten a Beetle up to 90 mph, which wow that feels like absolute insanity inside.
Second that. 74 Super Beetle downhill. The rearend starts lifting around 80–after that day, I never hit 80 in one. Teenagers do stupid things….
120 in a Fiat 500 Abarth. On studded snow tires.
He had more to give, but I became aware that anything going wrong meant certain death
259 kph. I’m not doing the math. You can all just read the review: https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/42024/2021-porsche-taycan-turbo-s-cross-turismo-review-the-autobahn-queen-of-the-future
Good parsh, could go faster if parsh hadn’t limited it. (It was probably smart that they did, but. But. We need a faster, sillier Taycan.)
160.58 mph. (kmph x .62)
danke
When I was young and dumb, I got my ’98 Trans Am M6 up to 140-ish. My 88 GTA would only go about 130, at that point more pressure on the gas caused the trans to kick down. I remember racing my buddy’s SHO and killing him in the quarter but not being able to keep up to him when he kept going. He could not believe the GTA was quicker than his SHO, we raced 3 times and I won all 3.
My girlfriends brother had a Pontiac GTA and it was an impressive car. Way better than any other F-body I’ve driven. It pulled hard and I was shocked at how stable it was at speed – as good or better than any of the BMW 3s and 6s I was familiar with at the time.
People love to dog on the ‘turd gens”, but they really were good cars in a lot of ways, especially when compared to the Mustang of the day or even the 2nd gen F-Body. I think my 3rd gen actually handled better than my 4th gen, the GTA had the WS6 package that included some good hardware. If I recall correctly, when the 3rd gen debuted in ’82, one of the car mags did a big comparison test and it was called the best handling car in America (at that time).
120-130 for about 60 miles
In the late 90’s I was in my 1988 S-10 with a fuel injected 350, heading south from STL on I-55, just past the Hwy 67 interchange. I wanted to get home fast, but I was chugging along as fast as I dared. Then a 4th gen Camaro passed me going faaaast. I figured he probably had radar detectors and knew the lay of the land better than I did so I decided to floor it and keep pace. We cruised at 120+ all the way to Cape Girardeau before I lost my nerve. The steering in that black brick I was driving was soooo light it was super scary. I had to pull over in Cape and have a cookie after the adrenaline crash.
A 350 S10 sounds like so much fun! Was it TPI? I always liked the idea of a TPI motor in a truck, Soooo much low end torque. I had the L98 in my 3rd gen, and it ran out of breath around 4500 but was a monster off the line.
Fun doesn’t even begin to describe it. Smooth, powerful, fast. It wasn’t a beast or anything, but there were few cars on the road as fast as I was off the line, which is a heady thing. It was pretty rad driving around with that kind of confidence. I miss that truck so much.
I want to say it was TPI, but I honestly can’t remember. What I remember more than anything was that it kept eating left side engine mounts. Eventually I had a muffler shop weld a log chain to the frame so I could bolt it to the accessory bracket on that side to supplement a new mount. Every time I’d floor it from a stop I’d loose steering for a while because the steering shaft went through the header and when the engine mount gave up the engine would jump up and the header would grab my steering when the torque hit.
Haha! Sounds like a blast. I forget about the chain trick, my buddy did that to his Foxbody Mustang back in the day.
My GTA was like that, great at stoplights but nothing special in the quarter. The thing barely broke into the 14’s but FELT so fast. I thought my auto LS1 car felt slower than the GTA, till I ran a 13.7 first time out at the track.
The fastest car in the world- a rental.
It was a 2014 Camaro v6 convertible, in southern Utah. It was a straight road for miles, no traffic. Layed onto it- topped it at 134mph. I.made sure to reset ‘highest speed’ before turning it in. It also had a transmission noise after.