The quickeset road-legal EVs and why Targa Tasmania’s return is bigger than electric hypercars
This is important in the only race that matters: the daily 0-60km/h from the traffic lights.
Imagine you’re on the front row of the grid in your $120k Genesis GV80 (a lot of car for the money). A MG4 XPower pulls up alongside. It’s about half the price and about half the car.
The lights go green and you push the loud pedal flat to the carpeted floor. If you were breaking the law, you would hit 100km/h in 6.8 seconds. Nice.
But the lout in the MG got there three seconds quicker and you feel like, well, no offence but a pot plant with legs.
The five fastest Christmas takeoffs
As usual we have the answer (for a price). Here’s the five fastest accelerating road cars you can buy before Xmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Bodhi, Kwanzaa, Guru Gobind Singh Jayanti, Zarathosht Diso or an early Eid.
They are all faster off the line than Lando’s McLaren.
The Aspark Owl: 1.7 seconds, or about the same time as it takes you to say “quick off the mark”. Japan designed, Italian made and $5.5m plus LCT, freight, taxes and dealer delivery. It will do 438.7km/h if you can find a quiet stretch of road outside Lorne.
Rimac Nevera: 1.8 seconds. $5m plus the usual. Pride of Croatia and 412km/h down the E71 from Zagreb to Split.
The Lucid Air Sapphire: 2 seconds. Pride of Newark, New Jersey but the company is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. It’ll do 329km/h down Route 66. A steal at $500k plus. Proper tyres are a $16k option.
Tesla Model S Plaid: 2.1 seconds. Pride of Fremont, California. 321km/h on the road to Las Vegas. $200k plus you have to sit in the passenger seat to drive it in Australia. And everyone will laugh at you for driving a Tesla no matter how quick it is.
Porsche Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach package: 2.2 seconds. Pride of Zuffenhausen, Germany. 289km/h. Crook town name but great car and $550k delivered to your door. “This is a robot assassin,” wrote Road and Track editor-in-chief Daniel Pund while sitting in the Porker. “It’s a car that does all the car things well. The seating position is great. The steering is really good. It handles nicely and can carry stupid speed.”
Sin City banana skin, McLaren’s Vegas problem
The Las Vegas Grand Prix is the third race in the US, second time round under the new Strip layout, and the spiritual home of the phrase “what could possibly go wrong?”.
On points, it’s all going McLaren’s way: Lando Norris leads the championship on 390 points. Oscar Piastri sits 24 points back. Max Verstappen is another 25 behind Piastri.
But the Las Vegas bookies have the finishing order as: Mad Max, Leaping Lando, Gorgeous George, Anto, Oscar, Chuck and Hamo.
In bad news, our two favourite drivers – the Senior Citizen (Fred Alonso) and the Pensioner (Nico) are at 4000:1.
Younger readers and kiddies who don’t normally follow the nags: odds of 4000:1 give Fred and Nico the same chance of winning Las Vegas as the Sultan and I have of winning the doubles championship at the Australian Open.
The Flying Finnette joins McLaren
Talking of F1 drivers with surnames starting with H, 14-year-old Ella Hakkinen, daughter of two-time world champ Mika, has joined the team’s McLaren driver development program. She’s the youngest on its roster and will start testing single seaters as she targets a step up in 2027.
Kiddies, forget what your parents tell you. There is no future in staying at school or going to university. Take Uncle John’s advice and hop straight into karting full time.
Bottas, net zero, and the LAX economy cabin
As for drivers with surnames starting with B, it’s good to see Val Bottas up the front on the commercial flight from LAX to Vegas.
Given The Bot is the InsiJets ambassador, this can only means he’s a net zero fan. The Bot’s dad owns a small cleaning company, mum is an undertaker and his partner is Aussie cycling ace Tiffany Jane Cromwell.
Anyway, will it be the same old person on the podium tomorrow? Not quite. McLaren has traditionally liked higher-grip, warmer tracks where the tyres are alive and the car can lean on its aero. Vegas is the opposite.
So, you’ve got a championship-leading car turning up to arguably its weakest environment, under lights, with Verstappen in full “I’d like my title back” mode. What could go wrong?
You don’t need the best car of the season to win this race – just the car that works best in these specific conditions on the night.
Alpine’s bad Monday
What should have been a quiet Monday evening for Alpine after the Brazilian Grand Prix turned slightly surreal when their engine base at Viry-Châtillon was broken into.
No, they didn’t steal horsepower – that went missing years ago – but it’s never a great look when your power unit facility ends up on the crime blotter. File it under “F1 headlines we didn’t see coming”.
Brisvegas calling
Talking of the world’s most exciting cities like Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, you have to be in Brisvegas in two weeks’ time. Head straight to the buzziest place in town, the State Library of Queensland, for the expo, Driven: Every car has a story.
Highlights include a life-sized inflatable car by artist Robert Moore, a temporary Drive-In theatre for a special screening of Mad Max: Fury Road, and Dr Ryan Story co-owner of Dick Johnson racing, the longest-running team in Australian motorsport. Ryan is a true legend. Worth the price of entry.
Adelaide becomes the world’s biggest tarmac rally
While carmakers try to convince us that 0–100 in three seconds is what we need to get to Woolies, real enthusiasts are going back to basics: fast cars, closed roads and a strong chance the navigator gets blamed for everything. This year’s Adelaide Rally has pulled a record 471 cars. Organisers are calling it the biggest asphalt rally on the planet – bigger even than Italy’s Mille Miglia – and for once that might not be marketing spin.
The real stars (allegedly)
Among the headliners:
Four-time Bathurst winner Greg Murphy in a Holden VH Commodore in the Main Tour.
Sandown 500 winner and Triple Eight co-driver Scott Pye in a McLaren Artura on the Zagame Tour.
Ex-WRC driver Hayden Paddon and Supercars young gun-turned-rally driver Alex Rullo in their Hyundai i20 N AP4 weapons.
Rally royalty Alistair McRae in a Ford Escort.
And, of course, the biggest name of all: The mighty 1989 BMW 3 Series with Alpina bits, questionable wiring, and more Weekend Australian stickers than sense. Supported, as all great campaigns are, by the world’s greatest tyre retailer, North Terrace Tyres.
Targa Tasmania returns from the wilderness
At the other end of the country, Targa Tasmania is finally back after nearly three years of silence, a coronial inquest and more sleepless nights than you can count.
Four competitor deaths in two years forced everyone – organisers, competitors, the Tasmanian government – to stop and ask the hard questions about whether modern GT-spec rockets and narrow, unforgiving roads could coexist safely.
Between Targa’s reboot, Adelaide’s growth spurt and the ATR events, the message is pretty simple: reports of Australian tarmac rallying’s death were greatly exaggerated. Our money is on B&S Engineering’s Andrew Clingeleffer in his custom Daytona sports car.
jc@jcp.com.au
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