It’s not everyday that you can beat the pants off the Ferrari and Porsche drivers in a vehicle even more insubstantial than your regular owner-type jeep. After all, the multi-million peso cars mentioned above run 1 to 100 kph in around 4-5 seconds, and aside from plunking down the same amount of cash in a similar product to match these cars’ performance, you’d need to be piloting a fast aircraft to beat their speeds.

Which is essentially what Ian Wright has created, for the second time, in the form of the SR-71 electric car. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the SR-71 is the code name of an actual, now declassified piece of military hardware (a spy aircraft to be precise) created in the late 70’s and able to travel up to 3 times above the speed of sound. Appropriate, that.

                                             A press photo of the Bugatti Veyron.

The SR-71 Electric car is the natural progression of Wright’s original X1 prototype car – the same car that beat a Ferrari 360 Spyder and a Porsche Carerra GT in 0-60mph (1-100 kph) races. The SR-71 then is designed to erase the only black mark given to it by a “gas guzzler” – as described by autobloggreen.com. This guzzler is none other than the 1001HP Bugatti Veyron Supercar, which beat the X1 prototype by half a second at the 60mph mark. The SR-71 intends to settle the score with a claimed 0-60 mph time of 2.5 seconds. To put that into perspective, that’s a lot shorter than the green signal of a typical Manila stoplight, and just a bit faster than turning on your (CRT) TV.

                                               Racing jeepneys with their unwilling passengers.

The best part of this is, the “commercial” edition of this electric car should be available in 18 months from now, but perhaps not in the Philippines… which is just as well, as we don’t have that many Ferraris, Porsches or Bugatti Veyrons anyway. Too bad, this would have been perfect for zipping from stoplight to stoplight..