Eighteen hundred horsepower. Two hundred and sixty point one miles per hour. These are the numbers that are rocketing the Keating TKR supercar, potentially into the Guinness Book of World Records. That 260.1-mph top speed is based on a two-way run at El Mirage Dry Lake, and unofficially knocked the crown from the head of the Shelby Aero TT (257-mph). The runs will need to be repeated for the car to make the record books, and the company plans to take the car to the venerated Bonneville Salt Flats next September for the confirming runs.
After rocking the Salt, the Keating debuted at the Top Gear Live show on November 5th at Earls Court. Keating is tight-lipped about its prime motivator, but the 7.0-litre V8 is rumored to be based on the LS7 motor from GM.
The Keating is the latest in a long line of cars the meld European engineering, design and manufacture with pavement-shredding American cubic inches. Despite the red, white and blueness of the powerplant, the company still thumps their chest as britons as the company’s founder relates in their press release:
“The Keating TKR realises our ambition to take on the world’s finest supercars and win. This car rivals them all for looks, handling, performance and exclusivity. And best of all, it’s British.”
All that speed comes at a price, which in the case of the TKR it’s £400,000. That’s a lot of fish and chips for a company that doesn’t have a history of track or road exploits to leverage, but does give you the potential bragging rights of having a Guinness record holder in your garage. That price buys you a car that, at 995kg, is nearly half the weight of the similarly powerful Bugatti Veyron, and makes for zed to sixty dashes in under 3 ticks. Company president Tom Keating says that the 10-mile course at Bonneville will give them a better opportunity to wind the car out than did the 4-miler at El Mirage. He hopes that the extra miles in Utah will allow the car to get up to 300-mph. That’ll be one for the record books.
Image & Info source: [streetdrift.net, Times of London]
