Are you ready for this?He that craves speed must for speed fall
he words used to describe the fastest cars of this era are proliferating with wild abandon. Where once the "supercar" of the '60s was a mix of futuristic madness, poor visibility, and what many of us might euphemistically refer to as "character", now we have "supercar" to designate your "typical mainstream" fast car that only rich people can purchase, but we also have "hypercar" to describe the new generation of hybrid petrol-electric madmobiles, namely the Porsche 918 Spyder (with it's crazy geometric AWD power redistribution), the McLaren P1 (with active aero), and the Ferrari LaFerrari (which you can only
borrow to drive if you already own 5 other Ferraris... typical Ferrari). Though we must not forget my personal favourite which never made it to the dealership, the Jaguar C-X75. Go look it up, it's a beautiful thing.
These cars apparently redefine the way we think about speed and fast cars. They (and you may have read several iterations of this) epitomise a consummate but diverse approach to how to make a car go fast etc. etc. And Swedish car manufacturer Koenigsegg reckons it has them beat with the Agera One:1, the first production car to boast a 1hp:1kg ratio. It also has some ridiculous tricks like a 3D printed turbo that
changes shape throughout the rev range, yielding almost no lag and a torque of >1000nM from 3000-8000rpm. It also has a carbon fibre frame so light it weighs just 60kg, and of course, adaptable aero. What sorcery is this!
In short, there's a lot of redefining going on, so much so that we may run out of superlatives with which to prefix our cars. One might think that in order to get any more extreme with road car performance, you'd either have to reinvent the wheel... or sell your soul to the devil.
...allow me to digress for a moment...
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In 1922, a nutjob by the name of Ernest Eldridge somehow crammed a
plane engine into a car (after lengthening the car with bits from a bus). Two years later, he
drove the car-bus-plane thing to a land speed record of just about 235km/h. If you imagine what post WW-1 race cars were like: rickety narrow things with an open cabin and no harness, you can imagine that 235km/h in one of these death traps would have been quite the thing!
The car's name was the Fiat Mefistofele. It's still in working condition, having featured in the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Mephistopheles himself is a well known literary figure of legend: the agent to the Devil himself, the one whom a certain Faust sold his soul to. Mephistopheles even warned Faust against signing the deed, but Faust insisted, already corrupted by his desires for pleasure. So it was proclaimed by a fallen angel, in Christopher Marlowe's reworking of the legend, as Faust lay on his death bed terrified of his impending fate, that "He who craves pleasure must for pleasure fall."
In the opening statement for this company, I have written in brief of the visceral nature of our desires for speed and power. There are those who are gripped by this need, that has them dicing with death, to the point they cross the threshold in a fiery inferno. Yet that does not stop us from tempting ourselves, perhaps damned by our inescapable urges.
What I shall present to you next, is the epitome of all these things. The unholy covenant that unifies the hallmarks of modern performance: it will easily out-drag a Hennessey Venom, 9ff GT-9R, you name it. It will match the top speed for the fastest world production car in the world.
And it will lap Nordschleife in less than 7 minutes, all on sports compound road tyres. That is, if it doesn't drag you to Hell first.
Behold, the
Ascension Mephisto!
Don't be scared, she won't bite. Wait, who am I kidding LOLOLOLOLOLOLIn name, it pays homage to the legends that preceded it. In design, it takes visual cues from the raw aggression of American Muscle, to the sleek seduction of the European Supercars, to form a malevolent speed demon. The side profile shows you the elongated teardrop shapes the frame is based on, and looking at the 3/4 rear view will demonstrate how the rear wheel arch and flare has been shaped in the form of a demon wing. This car
looks evil. There's no way it isn't up to no good.
Perhaps the proof lies in the showpiece of this car, the untamed dual turbocharged 6.8L V8 I managed to squeeze into the engine bay, which I simply named the
Power 68f8T
Yes, it runs hot. But as some would say, so does HellThis would actually be like cramming a plane engine into a car, because that's the kind of power output you'd see on a turbo-prop. I care not for simply achieving the magical One:1 ratio, rather, I just wanted to squeeze as much power out of the biggest possible engine, and came up with this total badass. It originally put out 2373hp, then I detuned it slightly, and fixed the turbo so that it had more useable power and spooled a little earlier, with good effect on the car's acceleration. Too bad I don't have the technology to make this fast
and economical at the same time,
then again really when an engine's built to put out 2300hp since when was it ever going to be about economy... You could say from the engine alone I have Wrath and Gluttony covered, but there was never any room for Sloth and Envy is for the others.
This all said and done, it's now time to show you what the Automation model looks like.
That's right, this car is doing 324km/h by the quarter mile at 8.5s. So that means that the 0-300 time...Forget Megawatt, this is more like Mega-WHAT? The Power is coupled to a 6 speed original (a quadruple plate wet dual clutch system we had to develop in-house because nothing previously existing could handle the torque) fully customisable transmission set to tall low gearing (the GG tuning preference) that directs over 2000hp to all four wheels (because we figured that 2300hp to only two wheels on the road would be so deadly it'd be illegal). If you wanted to shave a few hundredths off the 0-100 time you
could change the ratios, but we wouldn't advise it since the car would then wheelspin through the first three gears
with the TC on, and frankly, in a car that does 0-300 in 8.0s and actually
reaches its top speed of 437km/h along Döttinger Höhe, we don't see the point in a 0-100 time. Though that said in its factory preset, it'll easily match a Hennessey Venom off the line, so there. It's more the fact this car's 100-200 and 200-300 times are almost identical to the 0-100 time that makes this car truly terrifying. Not to mention, with the same kind of custom composite ceramic disc brakes that stop the
Nightfury TDS, this demon stops even faster than it goes.
Technicalities aside, what I'm truly proud of is the utterly unique styling of this car. While it follows a very similar design language of big grilles and aggressive lines that reflects
Gryphon Gear's racing roots, it takes style as an entirely new entity. But rather than rest at that bold claim, I'll take you for a tour of its features, and you can judge for yourself:
This is just a detail showing the daytime running LED lights, as shown in the original concept sketch.
The ultra-aggressive styling of the bonnet is actually purely strategic, to maximise airflow to the engine. Truth is that the venting is
almost enough to keep up with the engine, but the 437km/h top speed is achieved with the Drag Reduction System activated (i.e. closing the vents slightly). When fully opened, the top speed drops to 434km/h... but the MTBF doubles.
We recommend only using the DRS when you actually want to break a landspeed record.
Detail of the door handle abutting the sweeping "demon wing" flare of the rear wheel housing. I can tell you now that the inspiration for this styling actually came from the Nissan 370Zm though I was hoping to achieve a bit more subtlety, or congruency, seeing as subtle isn't really a word I'd ever use in the vicinity of the Mephisto.
The rear bodywork sweeps downward towards the exhaust housing, which packs four massive pipes coming from giant 6" twin exhausts. I took the liberty of lighting up the LED array to show you the format.
Finally, a side profile to show you how the body comes together. I decided against flaring the front, mainly because on this chassis, maximum performance is achieved with sub-maximal front tyre width (245mm to be precise). That's because this car isn't just a straight line sprinter, but can also go around corners, so balancing contact grip with friction with weight loads became equally important.
Having said all that, I assume you'd be wanting some proof that this car can mix it with the very best, right? Well, here you go:
This is after I added some actual cabin trim and properly moulded racing seats (which came to 7kg all up, so there's no niceties like cup holders or vanity mirrors or woodgrain dash or all that dash, just the carbon fiber the whole chassis is made up of, and an actual attempt at proper dials and central console where you can set the Electronic Stability Control settings), and put in some safety (though, er, I would hasten to add that it's fairly perfunctory since if you crash in a car this fast chances are you'll probably die anyway...) actually on that note, what ARE the stats on this car?
That's... not that bad actually. In prototype form, with the 2373hp engine, this car had a tameness of about 12. Of course, a tameness:sporty ratio of 24:107 is still pretty extreme... even more than the Nightfury's ratio of 64:157, but that's mainly the work of an extreme turbo torque curve for you.
Supercar, hypercar, megacar, whatever! The only thing that matters is: Will this car match all the other supercars out there, or prove much more? Might it be too much to handle? These we cannot answer for you, only you can grapple with the question yourself, if you dare. All in all, should the
Nightfury TDS achieve its commercial goals and our upcoming plans for racing involvement (as yet unannounced) bear fruit, we may be able to announce a limited production run in a similar fashion to that of the Nightfury... if there are more than 25 certifiably insane people in the world however, we may have to get creative with the customer preorder selection process, unless we can be persuaded that it would be viable to produce more...
We estimate a starting price of 2M AUD, keeping in mind that our technologically superior benchmark (that the
Mephisto would hang onto in the bends, then blow away on the straights), the Koenigsegg Agera One:1, sold for approximately 2.4M USD. Should the car proceed to production, we shall publish a full specification sheet on release.
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The eternal question remains: to succumb to temptation and receive eternal damnation, or to resist it and never know the pleasures within? The prospect tantalises, even tortures the poor souls whose eyes alight upon the frame of the
Mephisto, and then linger... The heart quickens, the mouth goes dry and the palms sweat imagining what lies beneath the bonnet, beyond the gas pedal, within the chariot that will deliver you through the gates of Hell.
Sun May 25, 2014 5:35 am 
Ahhhhhhhhhh.....
Ascension - Rev - 7.lua
