This 2009 Beast Has Been Forgotten
What happened to the SSC Ultimate Aero supercar from the mid-2000s?
Written by Andrew Kidd
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
What happened to the Ultimate Aero? After breaking a speed record in the late 2000s, this
supercar
(or a possible hypercar for the time, if you're nitpicky) seems to have disappeared completely without a word.What's the Ultimate Aero?
Right, you probably haven't heard of it unless you were paying attention to the Guinness Book in 2007.
The
SSC Ultimate Aero
was a supercar originally produced between 2004 and 2013 by SSC North America, formerly known as Shelby SuperCars.The SSC Ultimate Aero briefly held a world speed record; Guinness named the 1,287-horsepower Ultimate Aero the world's fastest production car in 2007, hitting 255.83 mph during its record-setting run. That made it 3.11 mph faster than the Bugatti Veyron.
The Ultimate Aero held this record until July 2010, when Bugatti's 1,200-horsepower Veyron Super Sport hit 267.8 mph, stripping the Ultimate Aero of its title.
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Future ambitions
Not content with sticking to gas-powered vehicles, SSC originally planned to branch out into electric propulsion.
But the Ultimate Aero EV, which was announced in early 2009, never came to fruition. It's a shame because SSC really hyped the electrified version of the "world's fastest production car"
The Ultimate Aero EV sported a twin-motor "all-electric scalable powertrain," which produced an astounding-at-the-time 1,000 horsepower and 800 lb.-ft. of torque. That made it capable of hitting a 0-to-60 time of 2.5 seconds and a top speed of 208 mph.
It also advertised a range of up to 200 miles on a single charge—still in the upper limit for some contemporary EV manufacturers—but was allegedly able to charge to a full battery in 10 minutes on a 220-volt outlet.
It featured a three-speed automatic transmission to transfer power to its wheels with electronically controlled shift times of .24 s. The entire electrical framework was liquid-cooled, allowing it to run for long periods at peak performance with no overheating issues.
SSC's green car division was initially slated to produce "packaged solutions" of its all-electric scalable powertrain for economy and midsize cars as well as light trucks and SUVs.
It also had ambitions to electrify delivery vehicles and heavy-duty equipment like buses and military vehicles.
What happened to the Ultimate Aero?
The SSC Ultimate Aero was refreshed for the 2009 model year and its production run ended in 2013 with the introduction of the Ultimate Aero XT. Not content to go out with a whimper, the Aero XT produced 1,300 horsepower and 1,000 lb.-ft. of torque.
But SSC is still kicking, and it's still attempting to break records. The 1,750-horsepower SSC Tuatara hypercar tentatively won the title of world's fastest production car in 2020 when it hit
316.11 mph
, which internet skeptics hotly contested. SSC performed a retrial of the Tuatara, which was then confirmed to reach a speed of 282.9 mph.
You can still get your own Tuatara for a cool $1.6 million. As far as the Ultimate Aero, we've heard no talk of a revival, but maybe we'll see it back on roads one day.
MORE: The 5 Fastest Cars in the World in 2021
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