It’s not that easy to achieve the production car speed record.

TWO misconceptions about the Tuatara.

First, in respect to the scaly reptile. Don’t call it a lizard. That’s wrong. Our national treasure, found only in our land, is in fact the last survivor of an order of reptiles that thrived in the age of the dinosaurs.

Second point, in respect to the SSC Tuatara, the made-in-America 1305kW hypercar. You likely know all about it, on strength that of claims made just over a week ago about how this machine raised the production car land speed record by racing down a desolate highway in the Nevada desert, with an average speed of 508.7kmh in both directions, fast enough to blow past previous marks held by Bugatti and Koenigsegg.  

Too good to be true? Within days, the legitimacy of that achievement was being cast into doubt.  

Based on the known distance between set points along Nevada’s Highway 160 – and the amount of time it took for the car to reach them – on-line observers including a high-profile YouTuber, Schmee 150, estimated the Tuatara’s peak speed was no higher than 450kmh. 

What's more, when maxing out the revs at 8800rpm the sixth gear ratio of 0.784 should theoretically achieve a top speed no higher than 470kmh.

Analysis of the tachometer shows the car fell slightly short of the redline, which would be consistent with the 450kmh approximation.

What’s also not helped SSC is that the road was also used in 2017 by Koenignegg, when it ran the Agera RS to what was then a 447.19kmh max. That effort was an intensely filmed as this one, so people have been comparing the footage. In comparing how long it took the Tuatara to get from landmarks on the road, they say it was actually traveling slower than the claimed speed throughout the clip.

If that wasn’t enough,  Dewetron, the data analysis firm whose tracking and timing gear was used in this and other brand’s efforts, has now come out and contradicted SSC’s inference they were on sight on the day or were involved in preparation. Dewetron says it was not. Nor has it validated any of the Tuatara’s data.

Anyway, the end result of all this hoo-haa is the video here, from SSC founder Jarod Shelby. There’s contention that some of the confusion results from SSC’s media partner for the October 10 event somehow released two different cockpit videos from the day—at least one of which was "not an accurate representation of what happened."

 He has also decided the car will repeat its run, in the very near future,this time with all the proper checks and balances.

“No matter what we do in the coming days to try to salvage this particular record, it’s always gonna have a stain on it … we have to rerun the record, we have to do this again,” Shelby says. “And do it in a way that it’s undeniable and irrefutable.”

Next time, the Tuatara will have multiple GPS units from different manufacturers in the car. They will have the GPS companies’ staff onsite. Additionally, Shelby invited some of the YouTubers who called the record into question with video analyses in the beginning.

There’s still no announcement on who will be doing the driving in this second run. Oliver Webb drove the Tuatara in the first run, but he has yet to come forward as the driver for the second run.