Rimac Nevera is world’s quickest production car

The Rimac Nevera has claimed a new production-car acceleration record after clocking an 8.582-second quarter-mile time in the US last week.

The incredible Croatian hypercar, which is claimed to produce a staggering 1408kW of power and 2360Nm of torque from its four electric motors, completed the feat at the Famoso Raceway strip in California.

It was piloted by Brooks Weisblat from the DragTimes YouTube channel enroute to Monterey Car Week.

Rimac representatives were on hand for the run and say the Nevera in question ran stock Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber and completed the blistering time on a hot day with 37-degree Celsius air temperature and 65-degree track temperature.

Incredibly, the record was achieved on the Nevera’s 11th and final run of the day.

In the record-breaking run, the Nevera blasted to 100km/h in exactly two seconds flat – beating the 2.1sec claimed time of the Tesla Model S Plaid – on its way to 268km/h at the quarter-mile mark (402 metres).

While several US outlets have already debunked Tesla’s claim that the Model S Plaid can hit 60mph (96.56km/h) in under two seconds because it excludes the first foot of rollout, DragTimes has shown it is quicker than the Porsche Taycan Turbo S and plans to pit the Plaid against the Nevera on track soon.

The Rimac’s gob-smacking 8.582sec run bests the previous record held by the Tesla Model S Plaid at 9.23sec. In a plot twist for internal combustion, the 16-cylinder Bugatti Chiron sits at number three on the list, at 9.4sec.

Perhaps more convincingly, though, is the ease in which Weisblat is able to extract the performance. He makes it look like a walk in the park.

“Having lifted a foot off the brake, the Nevera’s advanced control systems, including Rimac All-Wheel Torque Vectoring 2, constantly monitored which wheels had the most grip, portioning out the power to minimise wheelspin and maximise acceleration as it launched down the strip,” Rimac said in a press release.

Rimac test and development driver Miroslav Zrncevic said the hot track conditions posed a challenge during the record run, and is confident the manufacturer can go faster again.

“This was our first test on a VHT (glued) surface, so we did not know what to expect. At first we were hitting less than expected quarter-mile times (8.7 and 8.8 seconds) than we did on a normal, non-prepped surface in Europe,” he said

“The track temperature was 65 degrees and we had to do some adjustments. Our traction control learns the surface on each run and adjusts the torques on the wheels. After some adjustments and different tire warm up strategies we managed to get better results.

“Brooks helped with his experience of staging the car and we managed to set the world record for the fastest accelerating production car and also beat our own quarter-mile record.

“Still, we are confident that the Nevera has much more to give and that we can go even quicker with more experience and testing on this kind of surface. We will be back.”