With a top speed of 216 mph, the new Ford GT is the fastest car the automaker has ever made, but it just got whooped by one of the old ones.
A modified 2006 GT became the first street-legal car to break the 300 mph barrier at the Texas Mile this past weekend. The spring edition of the bi-annual event is a straight acceleration run down the runway at Victoria Airport in Victoria, where cars aim to hit their highest speed as they drive through the trap at the end of the mile.
The car was entered by M2K Motorsports, a high-performance car builder based near Houston. Wearing the colors of the classic Gulf Oil racing livery, the coupe is powered by a methanol-burning, 2,500 twin-turbocharged version of the GTs supercharged 550 hp 5.4-liter V8 that’s cooled by an air-to-ice intercooler during competition.
With an official run of 300.4 mph, the car broke its own 293.6 mph record, set in 2017, and still wears its stock bodywork without any aerodynamic updates. From the factory, the 2006 GT was good for a relatively poky 205 mph.
As far as production cars are concerned, the Koenigsegg Agera RS is the current top speed record holder at 278 mph, but the Swedish automaker is launching a new model called the Jesko that it thinks can hit 300 mph.
