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Originally Posted by 45thAnniversary2SS
450 Veyron 16.4's made? What was it like a dozen Venom GTs? I wonder why they didn't just turn around and go back down the runway. Were they running down wind?
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I think there has to be something like 30 cars for something to be considered 'production' (which still seems absurdly low to me). Venom is supposedly limited to only 29 units. If the cross the 30 car mark, they'd probably have to deal with a lot more safety & emissions regulations.
Why was there only one run ... I'm not sure. I've heard that NASA only gave them a small window to use their runway & in that time only a single pass could be made. I don't know if they had a head, tail, or cross wind. They couldn't just turn around & go again right away because the top speed isn't measured directly. The car is timed as it passes between two lines a set distance apart. That speed trap would ideally be in the middle of your testing space (in this case, a runway) but they only had about 3 miles to work with, and it takes over 2 miles for the car to reach its top speed, and nearly another mile to get slowed back down. If they could have gotten onto one of the Airforce's runways in the deserts of the south-west (I think one of them is over 7 miles long) or a giant oval or circular test track it would have been much easier to do a quick pair of runs.