As early as 1914, speed freaks took to venues like the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to test the speed of cars. Pioneering performance driver Teddy Tetzlaff pushed a custom Benz racecar to a respectable 141 mph, which was a speed demon in 1914. Around the same time, rules began to be established around the sport of land speed racing. The most important of these rules is that a driver must make a high speed run in one direction, turn around, and make it again in the opposite direction. The two speeds are then averaged together to account for slight variations in wind resistance and road surface. Today, the fastest car in the world is the ThrustSSC, which achieved a speed of 763.035 mph in October 1997 and has not been beaten to date. In fact, ThrustSSC was the first recorded land vehicle to ever break the sound barrier, at Mach 1.016. The fastest production car is the 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye Widebody, with a top speed of 203 mph.
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| 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye Widebody |
