The McMurtry Spéirling Electric Hypercar Just Ran a 7.97-Second Quarter-Mile

Screenshot: CarWow/YouTube

If you have $2.5 million dollars to spend and want the most track-capable car you can legally drive on the street, you may want to give the McMurtry Spéirling a look. It’s all-electric, makes about 1,000 hp, and has an active downforce system inspired by the Chaparral 2J. Oh, and the styling is absolutely wild.

We first saw what McMurtry could do over the summer when the Spéirling set a new record at the Goodwood Hillclimb. With a time of 39.08 seconds, it beat the previous record by more than two seconds. Watching the video, it’s hard to believe it’s a real car that’s actually driving that quickly and that the video isn’t simply sped up. But that’s really how fast it drove. And remember, at least in the UK, this thing is street-legal.

Recently, CarWow got the chance to test the Spéirling’s acceleration at Silverstone, and it’s an absolute must-watch video. The first 16 minutes give you a technical overview of the car and go into all the wild stats such as the 4,400 pounds of downforce that the fan system produces. The acceleration tests begin a little past the 16-minute mark, and as you can imagine, it’s absurdly quick. Based on the driver’s reaction, you might even call it painfully quick.

But don’t stop watching after the first run. A zero-to-60 mph time of 2.27 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 9.34 seconds is quick, but the car was also making “only” 600 hp, and the track was a little damp. A couple of runs later, with the full 1,000 hp, it was able to hit 60 mph in 1.4 seconds and run the quarter-mile in 7.97 seconds, which they claim is an acceleration record for street-legal cars.

That’s just ridiculously quick. You could even argue it’s too quick to be allowed on the street. But something tells us that even if these cars ever do get driven, the owner will probably just have it shipped to whatever track they plan to race on. And as with a lot of other high-dollar cars, that’s a big if. But even so, it’s still cool that this thing exists.

I broke the 1/4-mile world record in this new HYPERCAR!