First Drive: 9ff GTurbo 900 Bioethanol

9ff boss Jan Fatthauer admits he drives his own cars on record runs only because he can't find a test driver crazy enough to do it. As the GTurbo 900 Bioethanol -- the world's fastest biofuel car -- sparks into life and threatens to blow the windows out of a neighboring building, I start to understand why. The noise is otherworldly -- just frightening. The car is effectively a modified version of 9ff's gas-powered GTurbo, but it has been honed for top-speed duty, optimized to run flat-out on a high-speed oval. This, then, is a barely road-legal racing car.

I'm here to drive the GTurbo on the public road, but it's a stretch to say this is anything other than a record car. I burble, lurch, and bunny hop out of 9ff's Dortmund, Germany, base. And when I hit a manhole cover, it feels like my teeth might crack.

It pretty much will. According to 9ff, it hits 62 mph in 2.8 seconds, 124 mph in 7.1 and 186 mph in around 19.5 seconds. That's not far behind the Bugatti Veyron, in a car with less power, rear-wheel drive, and the kind of finish that suggests it was put together by mad men in an industrial unit rather than by an automotive powerhouse.

Under the hood of the 900 Bioethanol is 9ff's massively massaged, 4.0-liter twin turbo with stronger hoses to take the bioethanol fuel. Titanium connecting rods, new pistons coated with Nikasil, an advanced intercooler, two 9ff turbos, and a 100-cell sport metal catalytic converter are all part of the mix. The engine mapping proved a nightmare with the switch to biofuel, but it is running close to smooth for a car with this much power, bile, and sheer anger.

Thankfully it stops well, too. 9ff retained the GT3's brake calipers, but fitted them with pads from the Porsche Supercup race car. They screech and grind until the heat gets into them, but they're designed for high-speed use, so that's hardly a criticism.

It is produced primarily from wheat, barley, corn, and sugarcane, and while bioethanol-powered cars would inevitably produce some emissions, the fuel has the potential to be carbon neutral over its lifespan, if you include growing the crops. Brazil, with its sugarcane based program, has used the fuel to great effect.

And Fatthauer intends to go farther. He says 249 mph was always the goal, and he has a rather typical answer for how that will happen. "We just need more power," he says with a wry smile. "Next year we will go with 1100 hp, or 1200 hp, and we'll get 400 kph [249 mph]."

Rear engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe 4.0-liter/900 hp/700 lb-ft 24-valve flat six

View the original article here