SSC said Thursday that the Tuatara—its first new supercar since the second Bush administration and the company’s second car ever—would be delivered to its first customer sometime in the third quarter of this year. This comes after many, many stops and starts, and has, needless to say, been a longtime coming.
The Tuatara has been in the works since at least 2011, when a version of it was seen in China. A couple years later, we had a look at the engine. After that, nearly five years passed and, still, no car. Finally, in 2018 SSC said the Tuatara was, in fact, still happening. And last August they released some figures, claiming the car would make 1,750 horsepower from a tuned 5.9-liter twin-turbo V8, and also showing up to Pebble Beach with it.
Let’s have a quick look at that engine:
Thursday’s announcement is our first real confirmation that all of this might actually be happening.
There will be a CIMA seven-speed AMT transmission through which all that power will run, SSC says, and the all-carbon fiber body has a drag coefficient of 0.27, “the lowest of any production hypercar to date,” according to SSC.
That last part, well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but SSC—short for Shelby SuperCars, no relation to Carroll Shelby—does have a chance to prove the haters wrong and deliver this thing. The company has said it plans to make 100 examples.
