The battle for the fastest car seems to be never-ending. While the spot has been held strongly by Bugatti for a while now, many other supercar manufacturers have made their own attempts at breaking the record. No matter how fast we go, Donut Media made a good point: it would be impossible to drive 1,000 mph. Producing a car that can go fast while being safe and without the risk of things falling apart has proven to be quite a challenge. Since we aren’t even close to breaking 350 mph, is there any reason to believe we will make it 1,000 mph?

The current fastest cars

The current fastest confirmed production car is the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. It tops out at a reported 304 mph, a speed that you would have to triple to get near 1,000 mph. In the past few weeks, another competitor for America, SSC, attempted to break the record with their new supercar, the Tuatara. The SSC Tuatara reportedly reaches a top speed of 331 mph, according to SSC North America, though they will need to prove it again to prove that the car is truly capable.

Almost to 1000mph

While the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport might be the fastest production car, you won’t be surprised to know that there are some cars faster. In fact, the current record for fasts cars is more than double the Chiron’s top speed of 304 mph, but it doesn’t get as much attention because it isn’t a production car. The fastest single car on earth is the ThrustSSC, which can make it an impressive and terrifying, 763 mph. Even at that, it’s still a few hundred mph short of 1,000 mph.

Not quite there

It might seem like we are getting close with the ThrustSSC hitting almost 800 mph, but that record hasn’t been beaten since. In fact, that record was set in the Guinness World Records 23 years ago, and regardless of the new developments and technology in the automotive industry, it hasn’t been beaten yet.

Going fast isn’t just about making higher horsepower engines. There is a lot of physics and engineering behind making fast cars, and the engine is just one component. In fact, when you’re talking about going hundreds of miles per hour in a land-bound vehicle, the importance of the other factors, such as the aerodynamics of the car, is crucial.

There are so many aspects of physics working to prevent cars from reaching a top speed of 1,000 mph. The car must overcome mechanical resistance, rolling resistance, and air resistance in an effective manner in order to reach an impressive top speed, and the chances of making it up to 1,000 mph are pretty slim when you look through the math of it all. But, then again, I’m sure there was a point in time where 763 mph seemed impossible, too…