SSC Just Admitted That the Tuatara Hypercar Never Went Above 300 MPH (2024)

American hypercar company SSC shocked the world when it announced that its flagship Tuatara had achieved 331 mph, setting a world record with a two-way average peak speed of 316 mph. That catapulted the Tuatara into public consciousness, proving it could outrun even the mind-bending Bugatti Chiron. There's just one catch: That 331-mph run never happened.

Suspicion mounted shortly after the announcement, as YouTuber Schmee150 called the record run video into question. He compared it to the Koenigsegg Agera RS' record run on the same stretch of Nevada highway. Based on the spacing of the lines and features of the road, it was clear that the SSC wasn't traveling a full 50 mph faster than the Agera. Engineering Explained followed up with another video, calculating that the SSC could have been traveling as slow as 225 mph in the video.

SSC rebuked the claims, saying that speed-tracking equipment company Dewetron had validated the record. Dewetron, blindsided by this, released a statement denying any involvement in the record. SSC had simply used equipment from Dewetron, but the company could not verify that it was used correctly and had no involvement in the record itself. SSC realized the only option was to make another attempt, during which it went 283 mph. Fast, but far south of its initial claim. If anything, it made the first number look even more fake.

Six months later, SSC has finally admitted that the first number was bogus. In an Instagram post, the company said:

"If it hasn’t been made clear up to this point, we would like to acknowledge officially that we did not reach the originally claimed speeds of 331 MPH or even 301 MPH in October of 2020. We were truly heartbroken as a company to learn that we did not reach this feat, and we are in an ongoing effort to break the 300 MPH barrier transparently, officially, and undoubtedly."

It is unclear what exactly caused the company to believe it hit 331 mph if that never happened. We also don't know how long it has known that the original number was inaccurate. We've reached out to SSC for comment. The company wants to do yet another run, but the car used for the original record attempt was wrecked in April.

Update, July 23, 2021, 11:15 a.m. EST: SSC CEO Jerod Shelby issued the following statement in an email to Road & Track.

When I made my personal statement in October 2020 about the events that transpired after our initial reported record speeds, I believed we had made it clear that we did not stand behind those original speeds after new evidence challenged what we believed we had accomplished. In that October statement I acknowledged that we were unable to validate the claimed speeds and that we were unable to correlate the speeds between the GPS and the video. That is the moment we vowed to re-attempt the top speed runs in an open, transparent, and redundant way. There was a genuine mistake in how the capturing equipment was setup. We did not lie about the numbers and there certainly was no ill-intent or awareness of the mistake when we initially released the speeds. We truly believed we had initially hit those speeds, but when the achievement came into question and we dug into the discrepancies that we saw, we knew we could not validate our speeds in any way so we knew the only choice we had was to put October behind us and prepare to re-run for the record in a much different manner.

Over the course of the last several months we have seen stories, posts, and comments that are contradictory to our retraction of our 300+ mph claims. This has not sat well with us, especially considering the immense amount of time and effort we have been putting into achieving what we believe the Tuatara is capable of in an open, transparent and redundantly validated way we hope will redefine the standard for other manufacturers. Our recent social media post is a reflection of our commitment to ensure the car community’s trust is in our best interest, and that we do not intend to let false claims stand. The reception of our statement has certainly gained more attention than we anticipated, as we have believed our stance has been understood by the public for nearly 9 months. This does not seem to be the case, and we are committed to learning from our mistakes while also focusing on the exciting future ahead. We look forward to continuing to step up our top speed efforts in the coming weeks in the same open, transparent and validated manner that we did in January. We also want to thank all of those who were supportive and understanding of our unexpected incident in April that delayed our April record attempt.

Via Car and Driver.