Last week, I spent some time in the 717-horsepower Aston Martin DBX S. It’s a romping, stomping performance car that’s nimbler than any SUV antagonist wants to admit. (It makes slightly more sense once you realize it weighs 555 pounds less than a new BMW M5 while making exactly the same power.) It ties the Bentley Bentayga Speed for the fastest production SUV in the world with a 193-mph top speed, and although I didn’t get anywhere close to that, I can certainly see how it would keep pulling to such an astronomical vmax.
That said, it makes me wonder. Where’s the 200-mph SUV?
It’s been 37 years since the Ferrari F40 became the first production car to cross that vaunted line. Decades later, 200+ mph is no longer the exclusive domain of supercars; I mean, you can get a Dodge Charger that’ll do 203. Do we need an SUV to join that club? No, of course not. But in a world where SUVs are dominating the market, baseline power figures are rising dramatically, and car companies are running out of wholly new bragging rights to claim, is it worth exploring why no one’s given it a shot yet? I think so.
The biggest issue, far and away, is aerodynamic drag. If it’s a hurdle for low-slung supercars, you can bet it’s a far bigger one for lifted family haulers. I’ll try not to get too scholarly here, as if I’m anything close to an aerodynamicist, but power requirements to beat drag increase with the cube of speed. (I know, it’s starting to sound a lot like math class.)
Let’s use some nice, round numbers so it’s hopefully easier to understand. Say you’re trying to double a vehicle’s speed from 100 mph to 200 mph. That requires not twice the power, not four times the power, but eight times the power. This is because the air the car displaces is being pushed aside at twice the speed, which requires four times the kinetic energy, and you’re displacing double the amount of air because you’re covering twice the distance per second.
When speed is doubled, work is done twice as fast. And because power is the rate of doing work—check the definition of horsepower, if you haven’t before—quadruple the work done in half the time requires eight times the power. Phew.
So if a car needs 500 hp to reach 200 mph, then 1,000 horsepower will get it to 252 mph with no changes to the vehicle’s basic shape. You can see that, in this case, doubling the power results in just a 26% speed increase. It takes some real engine-building magic to increase performance that much without the powerplant itself growing a ton in size.
We can look to the Bugatti Veyron as an example. That car is huge in comparison to Lamborghinis and Ferraris because it’s built around a quad-turbo, 8.0-liter W16. That big ol’ lump contributes a lot to the car’s roughly 4,300-pound curb weight, which, by the way, is right around 500 pounds less than the Aston Martin DBX S. And yet, the early Veyron only needed 270 horsepower more than the Aston SUV to reach 253 mph—a whole 60 mph faster than the Brit’s top speed.
Because these high-riding four doors are already larger than supercars, they need even more power to defeat aerodynamic drag, plus a lot of cooling. That also makes the aero headache way harder to solve because you need a lot of air to flow into your engine intakes as well as up and over the vehicle. Building a powertrain that’s large enough and potent enough to do all this in an SUV while still being drivable and civilized in normal situations is simply a massive task.
Now, historically, there have been SUVs hit 200 mph, but they aren’t what you’d call production models. One is the Toyota Land Speed Cruiser, a special project that used 55 pounds of boost to make 2,000 hp and eventually hit 230 mph. Another is the Brabus Rocket 900 Edition, which is based on the Mercedes-AMG GLE 63 S and limited to just 25 units. But I don’t count those, and I don’t think you should, either.
Still, we can learn from those projects to understand why neither Aston nor Ferrari nor Bentley nor Lamborghini has built a 200-mph SUV of their own. Toyota’s land speed effort shows just how much re-engineering is required to achieve the feat. It not only needed a massive power boost compared to what we see in today’s $350,000+ offerings, but also an all-new gearing configuration with a three-speed automatic transmission. Top luxury marques aren’t willing to sacrifice drivability for a 200-mph top speed, and really, the cars are better for it.
You then have to consider what else is required to certify a car for such speeds. Automakers set incredibly high marks that their equipment must reach before they’re comfortable saying a product can do X, Y, or Z. They not only have to ensure that the car can go a certain speed without the bodywork flying off, but the chassis and suspension have to be able to take it as well. This challenge is only exacerbated by the fact that cars shaped like bricks need a lot of downforce to be stable at those speeds, which compounds the effect of an SUV’s already hefty curb weight. This puts incredible stress on every component—most of all, the tires.
Having Michelin or Pirelli provide a tire that can safely handle 5,000 pounds at 200 mph isn’t as simple as snapping your finger. It’s a whole song and dance for suppliers to develop highly specialized components like that. Doing so would require more development, which would take more money from the manufacturer, which would result in an even higher sticker price than the already obscene MSRPs we see on performance SUVs today.
Finally, we need to zoom out and realize that top speed simply isn’t as important to car companies as it once was. There’s still the all-out record chase at the highest level between Koenigsegg, Bugatti, and the like, but manufacturers lower on the performance scale simply don’t have to hit those numbers to appeal to people. The BMW M5 that I mentioned earlier actually has a lower top speed than the DBX S at 190 mph, and even then, you have to spec the M Drivers Package to unlock that. Otherwise, it’s limited to 155 mph like so many other cars are for the sake of safety.
I fully believe that a true production SUV will reach 200 mph someday. It likely isn’t far off, even. But this just shows that there’s a lot more to it than turning up the boost, and when an automaker finally accomplishes it, you can bet it will get people talking.
Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com
From running point on new car launch coverage to editing long-form features and reviews, Caleb does some of everything at The Drive. And he really, really loves trucks.
