From day one, it’s been clear that the Porsche Taycan Turbo S is a powerful car. But now the German automaker’s electric sedan is also a Guinness World Record holder after setting a new land speed mark.
No, the marque’s 750 hp EV hasn’t managed to best the SSC Tuatara just yet, but it can now claim the title of world’s fastest indoor car. The mark was set last November by a Turbo S piloted by race car driver Leh Keen that reached a top speed of 102.65 mph inside New Orleans’s Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
We know what you’re thinking—who cares about topping 100 mph indoors when there are cars nearing 300 mph outside. But this is actually an incredibly tough record to set because you need a car that can accelerate in the blink of an eye and a space that’s big enough to allow the car to come to a safe and comfortable stop. Fortunately, the all-wheel-drive Turbo S, which can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds, and the Morial Convention Center, which covers 1.1 million square feet and is more than half a mile long, were a perfect match. The EV’s powerful carbon ceramic brakes and pre-heated tires certainly didn’t hurt, either.
Leh Keen and the record-setting Porsche Taycan Turbo S Porsche
As for the record, Keen didn’t just break it; he shattered it. The 102.6 mph top speed easily bested the previous mark of 86.99 mph by more than 15 mph. And that record, which was set by Mikko Hirvonen, had stood for more than seven years. Keen and the Turbo S broke the record on the first try, after just a few practice attempts.
“I didn’t really appreciate the scale of the record attempt until my first exploratory run,” Keen said in a statement. “The surface is so unpredictable, so slick, that you have to have complete trust in your car. It truly was like ice—and you’re accelerating flat out, facing a really hard wall at the end. Suddenly, even in a massive space like the one we had, it seems very small.”
It remains to be seen if the Taycan Turbo S’s record will hold up for another seven years. It will likely get plenty of competition. Just last month, Tesla announced the upcoming Model S Plaid Plus, an EV which comes with more than 1,000 hp and the ability to zoom from zero to 60 mph in under two seconds. It’s hard to imagine the Tesla team passing up another opportunity to take on the Taycan. Stay tuned.
