VW's Record-Smashing Pikes Peak Car Looks Mind-Bendingly Fast
The fearsome Pikes Peak International Hill Climb has a new record holder: French Le Mans winner Romain Dumas, who did the deed aboard VW’s bonkers fast ID R. The time? Seven minutes, 57.148 seconds - some 16 seconds that the previous outright record set by Sébastien Loeb and the Peugeot 208 T16 in 2013.
But you won’t get a decent impression of the speed of Dumas and the ID R from VW’s own video from the event (below), which is all aerial shots, Hans Zimmer-style orchestral music and deep voiceovers. Nope, you want to look at road-side footage like the Twitter-posted video above. Doesn’t it look astonishingly fast?
The purpose-built race car is powered by a pair of electric motors, giving an output of 671bhp and 470lb ft of torque. Plenty in a car that weights around a tonne. 0-62mph is predictably brisk: it’ll do it in under 2.25 seconds.
Now we know the ID R can last for at least eight minutes at full chat and going uphill, we can’t help but wonder how fast it might go around the Nurburgring. Well, VW hasn’t announced any future plans for the thing, so why not?
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
VW is coming back again next year. They said it a 2 year thing. It’s gonna be even more insane!
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Please have in mind that the electric engines don’t suffer from diluted air. That’s how the record was set.
the engine isn’t but, the downforce is.
5% Lemon Powered !https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1D-fZP8qJk
sounds like a jet engine jeez
Ricers be like
“Close enough”
Even more when you charge it with lemons
Now let see how it preforms on dirt roads.
Koenigsegg: “Hold my beer!”