Performance figures. Manufacturers agonize and boast about them. Enthusiasts taunt others with claimed 0-60 times, top speeds and lateral grip. What’s often lost is that seldom are these figures truly achievable in the real world, and that the really impressive feature – especially amongst super cars – is that these cars need to perform incredibly, but then to also start every time, be reliable, comfortable, and have a warranty. Take for example the blistering Veyron; you can poo-poo it’s heady top speed and Saturn V-esque acceleration, but as a feat of engineering alone it’s magnificent. Top that performance with a car that most of the time can be driven like an Audi A8 – up to and including in snow – and it’s simply mind boggling the amount of constraints that were placed on the engineering squad that produced it. Of course, throw those constraints out the window and the performance level of the Veyron is suddenly approachable or in some cases can be surpassed, even by a one-off from a small tuning firm. Such is the case with today’s car that launched a full decade ahead of the Veyron. Built by notable Porsche and Mercedes-Benz tuner Lotec for an extremely deep-pocketed individual, the C1000 pushed the performance envelope to another level. That level – a claimed 268 mph – makes it faster than nearly every supercar even today, 20 years later. Today the one and only C1000 – chassis number 1 of 1 – is available on Ebay:
