Absolute World Records are for a given distance or elapsed time, independent of Category, Group, or Class. The current holder of the Outright World Land
The winner of our top 10 – the X-15! Number 1: North American X-15 This aircraft has the current world record for the fastest manned aircraft. Its maximum speed was Mach 6.70 (about 7,200 km/h) which it attained on the 3rd of October 1967 thanks to its pilot William J. “Pete” Knight.
A car with that kind of speed level also requires immense power. The Bloodhound required a total thrust of 20 tonnes to achieve a top speed of 1,000 mph. This phenomenal amount of robustness doesn't come with regular machines. It's no surprise that the Bloodhound harbours a Eurojet EJ200 jet engine.
On September 15, 1938, the Railton Mobil Special took the land speed record with a run of 353.3 MPH, and also became the first car to break 350 MPH. Years later, in 1947, the same car came back to become the first car to break 400 MPH, with a one-way run of 403.1 MPH.
So far, the fastest anyone has run is about 27½ miles per hour, a speed reached (briefly) by sprinter Usain Bolt just after the midpoint of his world-record 100-meter dash in 2009. This speed limit probably is not imposed by the strength of our bones and tendons.
At the record-winning event, Usain Bolt's average ground speed was 37.58km/h, whilst reaching a top speed of 44.72km/h in the 60-80m stretch – numbers fitting for the world's fastest man.
Changes in speed are expressed in multiples of gravitational acceleration, or 'G'. Most of us can withstand up to 4-6G. Fighter pilots can manage up to about 9G for a second or two. But sustained G-forces of even 6G would be fatal.
Peel P50 (Top Speed: 38 mph)
At 38 mph top speed, the Peel 50 is the slowest car in the world, but it also holds the Guinness World Record as the smallest production vehicle ever made at 54 inches long and 39 inches wide.
Not only that, but the Chiron Super Sport 300+ also became the first car to break 300 miles per hour on the track. The final record was 304.773 mph with racing driver Andy Wallace at the wheel on Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany.
The current world record is held by this car, the Thrust SSC, which obtained it in 1997.
ThrustSSC is a British-designed and built World Land Speed Record car. ThrustSSC holds the current World Land Speed Record which was set on October 15, 1997, by accomplishing a speed of 763 mph. By doing so, the supersonic car became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier.
Model S Plaid Does the Quarter Mile in 9.3 Seconds
Tesla's Model S also laid down a blistering quarter-mile to earn the title of the fastest car MotorTrend has ever tested. The blue Plaid devoured the quarter mile time in 9.3 seconds.
Top Gun: Maverick has achieved Mach 10. In fact, if you've seen the film, you know that Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise, of course) does achieve the previously unthinkable when he hits Mach 10 in the opening sequence of the film, working as a test pilot for the Navy.
While the human body can withstand any constant speed—be it 20 miles per hour or 20 billion miles per hour—we can only change that rate of travel relatively slowly.
That being said, is it possible for the human body to be able to withstand such acceleration? The most likely answer is a resounding no. Mach 10 speed has never been achieved by a manned aircraft, though, so it has never been tested.
The RWE Bagger 288
Upon its completion in 1978, the Bagger superseded NASA's Crawler-Transporter, made for moving space shuttles, as the world's largest land vehicle. As of today, it's the largest vehicle out there, with particular characteristics that make it stand out.
Of the vehicles featured, the Chevy Corvette logged the fewest average miles driven, tallying right around 4,500 miles in a given year.
On Dec. 9, 2022, the Gas Monkey Garage-sponsored 2006 Ford GT known as the “BADD GT,” achieved a top speed of 310.8 mph (500.1 km/h) at Space Florida's Launch and Landing Facility, located in Kennedy Space Center, Florida, making this car the fastest street legal car in the world.
The Aventador LP 700-4 is one of Lamborghini's fastest production cars, with a top speed of 217mph (350 kph). Now, if you're wondering what's under the hood, it is a 6.5-liter V-12 engine churning out an impressive 740 horsepower.
So why can't you travel faster than light? The faster an object travels, the more massive it becomes. As an accelerating object gains mass and thus becomes heavier, it takes more and more energy to increase its speed. It would take an infinite amount of energy to make an object reach the speed of light.
Based on rates of survival (or lack thereof) during crashes, it became accepted wisdom that no pilot could withstand more than 18 G's, or 18 times the force of gravity at sea level. So cockpits were designed to withstand only 18 G's.
We can never reach the speed of light. Or, more accurately, we can never reach the speed of light in a vacuum. That is, the ultimate cosmic speed limit, of 299,792,458 m/s is unattainable for massive particles, and simultaneously is the speed that all massless particles must travel at.