From the beginning of this decade, the writing has been on the wall for high-revving internal combustion engines. Turbocharging was anyway killing the high revving nat-asp engine’s glory, and then the world took to EVs like its life depended on it. Yet, there are a few flying the flag high for a 9000+ rpm petrol engine. We must celebrate these heroes, so here are the top 7 highest revving production cars on sale right now!
Gordon Murray Automotive has been building a spiritual successor to the McLaren F1 for quite some time now. The car is now production ready and it has a 12,100rpm redline! And no, it isn’t a superbike engine crammed in like an Ariel Atom of the past. This is a bonafide nat-asp V12 making 664bhp and 467Nm. The engine is developed jointly by Cosworth and GMA, so it is expected to be a hugely promising supercar. You know the T.50 is built by proper petrolheads because the car gets a 6-speed manual gearbox and sends all the power and torque to the rear wheels only. What’s unique in the T.50 of course is the fan at the back, that increases downforce and reduces drag at high speed.
The T.50 too much for you? A 12,100rpm redline way too overwhelming? Then how about a slightly more accessible 11,100rpm supercar? That’s the T.33 for you. GMA is rewriting the supercar rule book with its offerings, and just the fact that a new company is making manual gearbox naturally-aspirated supercars for purists makes us very happy. Either GMA is delusional or is hitting a masterstroke! The Cosworth-built engine is similar to the T.50 but doesn’t have the same stratospheric redline. Then again, would you even know what those additional 1000rpm feel like?
I can’t think of another car in modern times that has been as eagerly awaited as the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Sure, I can write about the aerodynamic trickery of the Valkyrie, that it is an F1 car for the road, that Adrian Newey’s decades of wisdom are weaved into its carbon body, but for the sake of this story, let me stick to the V12 and its maker. Because again, this one is a Cosworth, but unlike the GMAs 4-litre block, the Valkyrie gets a 6.5-litre singing all the way to 11,000rpm. If you have even heard and seen a video of the Valkyrie on Instagram or YouTube, it’s enough to give you goose bumps. Loud, screaming nat-asp V12 backed by a Rimac sourced electric motor, the Valkyrie is as significant to the car industry now as the McLaren F1 was over three and a half decades ago.
Another carmaker to bridge the gap between Formula 1 and road cars, Mercedes-AMG plonked its ‘close-to-F1’ 1.6-litre turbo V6 into a brand new hypercar they were developing, added three electric motors to it and named it simply the ‘One’. Taking the name very seriously, the hypercar makes close to 1000 horsepower and revs up to 11,000rpm! That 1.6 litre engine in itself makes over 600 horsepower. Cars like these remind us that there’s still hope for petrolheads. Two very different formulas in the Valkyrie and AMG One show multiple approaches to the hypercar world that are equally impressive in their own ways.
The F140 V12 engine in the 812 has been around for a while, but never did it rev as high as it does in the 812 Competizione. Ferrari employed finger followers in the valvetrain instead of bucket-and-shim tappets, similar to what Porsche uses in the GT4 RS/GT3/GT3 RS. It allows the engine to rev higher without forced induction and keep the purity of a nat-asp intake note intact. There are fewer joys in life than listening to an 812 Competizione at full chat. The Competizione makes 808bhp and 692Nm from the front mounted 6.5-litre block.
Porsche’s motorsport derived 4-litre flat six from the GT3 and GT3 RS finally made it to a Cayman, and we drove it recently for the Feb 2023 cover of evo India. While its hard and in some cases impossible to get our hands on the other cars in this list, the GT4 RS is a press car. Driving it to the edge of grip is one of the happiest moments we have had in a long time. Imagine Porsche’s best engine revving to 9000rpm in the hills of Lavasa. The GT4 RS is better than sex, as my headline goes. Where else do I shamelessly plug my cover story!
Very soon, we will see Lamborghini unveil its Aventador successor and details of the powertrain have already emerged. The new powertrain, christened LB744, is a 6.5-litre V12 hybrid revving all the way to 9500rpm. The hypercar isn’t here yet so it only makes the list as a special mention, but with a Lamborghini hypercar screaming all the way to 9,500rpm in the near future, we assure you that all is going to be fine with the world. With three electric motors powering the hypercar, the powertrain makes a Ferrari SF90 rivalling 1001bhp!