One of the comments new EV drivers make more than any other when they first get their new car is: “It’s quick, isn’t it?”
EVs give an instant burst of torque – the power that gets cars quickly away from a standstill – with everyday models posting the sorts of 0-60mph times that hot hatchbacks of yesteryear would boast about.
As a lifelong car fan, I’ve always used these standout figures as a measure of how good – or how dull – a car can be. When I first started in journalism, I used to put the data pages of What Car? magazine together, so I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of performance stats and, slightly less exciting, how much metallic paint cost as an option.
My own journey through cars could be measured in 0-60 times. My first slightly rusty Datsun could manage the sprint in around 15 seconds, but with a noise that made it feel so much quicker (I never did get round to getting that exhaust fixed). Next up was a Mazda 323 with a 0-60 time of around 13.5 seconds – but probably slower because of the rear spoiler I inexplicably decided to fit on the boot lid.
I hit the big time in 1988 when I bought my first brand new car, a Citroen AX GT – yes, the legendary lightweight hot hatchback that got from 0-60mph in just 8.8 seconds. Boy, was that car quick.
However, I soon had my eye on something a bit more special, but it took me two years to save up – or more properly, to persuade the bank to lend me enough cash. It was in December 1990 that I took delivery of my pride and joy, a steel blue Lotus Elan SE Turbo that would sprint to 60 mph from rest in 6.7 seconds. What a car that was – and I’m still hunting for it so I can buy it back today if anyone knows where it might be.
Of course, there were car posters all over my wall alongside those of Kylie Minogue, with the Lamborghini Countach and Ferrari Testarossa other favourites. And I was that kid at motor shows almost dribbling over the bonnets if I could get close enough.
Over the course of my career, I’ve been lucky enough to drive many a supercar and measured my own 0-60mph attempts as a road tester on various car mags over the years. But it’s some time since I’ve done a proper drag race on a runway… until now.
A while ago I happened to write about a new Skoda all-electric family SUV, the Skoda Enyaq. The hot version, the Enyaq vRS, claimed a 0-62mph time that I instantly knew was the same as the original Lamborghini Countach LP400: 5.4 seconds.
That seemed to sow a seed in somebody’s head at Skoda because, about a year later, a call came in: “Would you like to see if a Skoda could actually be quicker than a supercar?”
The plan was to let me drag race a new Skoda Elroq vRS against, yes, a Lamborghini Countach, a Ferrari Testarossa and even a Porsche 944 Turbo. To be fair, they hadn’t even got to the Porsche before I said yes, although there was a catch… I’d be driving the Skoda.
So, off I headed to Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey – home of the famous Top Gear test track – on what has so far turned out to be the hottest day of the year. And there, sitting waiting for me, were three of the hottest cars of my dreams.
The Lamborghini Countach was a bright orange 25th Anniversary edition – a car that boasts 449bhp from its 5.2-litre V12 engine, 500NM of torque and a top speed of 186mph.
Next to it was a Porsche 944 Turbo with a mere 217bhp from its 2.5-litre engine, but with much less weight to carry around. It boasts a top speed of 162mph.
Finally, the Ferrari. The striking metallic bronze that the Testarossa was painted in may not have been an original Ferrari colour, but the car was perfect. On paper it was the quickest of the lot from 0-60, with a 5-litre flat-12 engine producing 385bhp and 490NM of torque.
Each car’s driver – and owner – made it clear that it was the Skoda I’d be driving, so I was ushered to the Elroq vRS, Skoda’s fastest-ever production car with 336bhp from its electric motor, powered by an 84kWh battery. On its own, the vRS is a stunning car that looks as cool as all modern Skodas do. But this five-door family SUV was sitting next to three supercar legends – and that’s a tough gig for any modern car.
The challenge was a simple one: a race up the Dunsfold runway. We’d wait on the starting line, our flag man, Pietro, (who didn’t even have a flag to drop) would give us a countdown, then we were off.
I sat in the Skoda, slightly nervous about what the result might be, with my own temperature rising more than that of the Tarmac outside. I prodded the driving mode button on the centre console and selected Sport, put my left foot on the brake and right hovering over the throttle and waited.
Three. Two. One… go.
It wasn’t exactly lights out at Monaco, but I was off, with little drama, just plenty of speed. I was focused on the road ahead, but something caught my eye in the door mirror. It was the sight of an orange Lambo disappearing behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and the Ferrari was well behind, too. I still don’t know what happened to the Porsche – poor thing.
My heroes had been destroyed by the Skoda. I felt a bit like I did when I met one of my musical heroes from the eighties and discovered he had a limp handshake – I was a bit gutted.
But then I took a reality check. I was in a modern Skoda electric SUV that not only had absolutely slayed a bunch of supercars, but it had done it on the hottest day of the year with the air con on! I decided to celebrate with a bit of Shania Twain on the rather excellent Canton car audio via Apple CarPlay. I wouldn’t be able to have done either of those in any of the other cars!
Just purely for the benefit of being absolutely sure, we did the same test twice more – first with a rolling start to give the manual gearboxes of the supercars a fighting chance, then again with the Lambo and Ferrari blatantly going as Pietro was on two. And yet the Skoda won the lot.
On paper, the Elroq’s 0-62mph time is 5.4 seconds – 0.1 seconds slower than the Ferrari, but 0.2 and 0.3 seconds ahead of the Lambo and Porsche. On track, it was some way quicker.
That’s progress, I guess, and one of the benefits of electric power. In fact, look down the list of the world’s fastest cars and an electric McMurtry Speirling will get from 0-60 in just 1.4 seconds these days, while even the rather lovely Lucid Air Sapphire – a large all-electric saloon – will do the same sprint in under two seconds.
The Tesla Model S Plaid will dip just below the two second mark, too, and I once joked with Elon Musk that one day his cars could be so quick they might arrive before they leave. He gave me that look that said he was doing the maths in his head.
For now, though, the Skoda won the battle of the Supercars vs an SUV. And its talents are way deeper than just a sprint up a runway – it won this game of Top Trumps hands down.
