Rimac Nevera Drags Bugatti Chiron, Tesla Plaid – It's a Premeditated All-Out Carmaggedon

All it takes is the ownership of two hypercars, a vacant strip, and a few moments to spare. A hypercar is already a condition few people can meet, but two is even more so. And the fastest two on Planet Speed – this is already starting to feel like a James Bond movie, where one of the characters is a mysterious figure that controls the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, the weather, and his temper when plotting to set Time itself on fire.

Most definitely, such a persona can easily exist on the silver screen, but in real life… well, let’s just say we live in some exciting times. Or we can simply look up ‘Mate Rimac’ and cross out all fictitious incarnations of imagination.

The genius behind some of the fastest production cars in human history (in street-legal attire) can double-pat himself on the back for making the Chariots of the Gods drag race possible: a Nevera versus a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport.

The planet-dividing moral dilemma of Internal Combustion versus Electricity has absolutely zero effect on Mr. Rimac since he owns the eponymous carmaking company from Croatia and is the CEO of Bugatti. What more of a win-win situation can you ask for?

Well, it turns out, in a drag race, there can be only one winner, so the win-lose paradigm is superseding the ubiquitous success formula described above. But Mate Rimac did not stage a 440-yard competition between his two crown jewels (that would have been epic and maleficent simultaneously).

Instead, a couple of YouTubing car guys from the practical side of the Atlantic stepped in and video-documented the following real-world scenario: a Rimac Nevera pulls up along a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport at the stoplights, and when they see green, they floor it.

Mathematically, the chances of such an encounter are slightly worse than hell being struck by a blizzard, but let’s assume the hypothesis. The Triple F Collection vloggers imagined the (im)possibility, so – in theory – the event could, one day, become a spontaneous coincidence (probably in a perpendicular universe, since a parallel one can't duplicate our reality).

Until then, we’ll have to settle for the next best thing: a premeditated drag race between two of the fastest, quickest, rarest, and most famous cars in production today. The surreal Nevera and the incredible Chiron Super Sport settle the dispute in the old-fashioned style every gearhead has been waiting for a drag race.

Just to have a common knowledge yardstick for everyone, a Tesla Model S Plaid is used as a reference (if ever there was a need for a third-party common denominator, this would be the high-speed equivalent of it).

Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: the Nevera beat the Bugatti and the Tesla. Practically, no surprise here, but the visual impact of seeing those two torpedoes with windshield wipers being mauled is devastating.

The Nevera crossed the finish line whizzing at 170 mph / 274 kph after a phenomenal 8.72-second sprint on an unprepared surface. Just for fun, note that the F-22 Raptor’s take-off speed is 143 knots / 165 mph / 265 kph. The Chiron needed 9.39 seconds to cover the same distance – and the aerial footage of the race is the best possible illustration.

Not many cars can brag about pulling away from a Bugatti Chiron, but the Nevera does it effortlessly. The quad-motor electric wonder leaves the quad-turbo combustion patriarch two car lengths behind after a 1,320-foot joust.

The Croatian lightning bolt was going 16 mph / 26 kph faster than the Chiron at the end of the quarter-mile sprint – the German-owned W16-engined Bugatti ‘only’ managed a 154 mph/248 kph trap speed. The Tesla didn’t do a better job overall – with 9.5 seconds, it fell far behind the Rimac. It did, however, get the start right, getting ahead – for about three-quarters of a second. After that, it was a clean one-way fight without a cry of drama.

The loudest noise in this blitz dash is the air being cleaved by the two aerodynamically-abusive all-electric surface-to-surface missiles. Sharing almost 3,000 hp between them (1,888 for the Nevera, 1,020 on the Plaid) and some 2,800 lb-ft/3,800 Nm (1,740 lb-ft and 1,050 lb-ft/ 2,360 Nm, 1,424 Nm), the electrics’ seven-motor chorus highest pitch comes from the wind rapidly flowing over them.

As for the elitist Chiron Super Sport, it just proved every high-octane addict wrong: its 1,578-hp power output puts it in the middle between the Plaid and the Nevera, and the 30-limited-edition hypercar showcased the limits of firepower in the face of electricity.

Although its 8.0-liter, four-turbo powerplant is a masterpiece of engineering, it’s simply not enough. It’s like comparing the best automatic wristwatch with an atomic clock: it may look better, but it’s catastrophically inferior in timekeeping.