History The Fastest Car in the World That Never Ran.

This is arguably the most beautiful streamliner ever made.

The car pictured below is the Mercedes-Benz T-80 that was finished in 1939 and was intended to break the world land speed record at the time. It's goal was to reach 465mph on a 6.2 mile course. The car never made an attempt because of the start of WW2, and was stripped of it's engine and put into storage never to run.

The T-80 was 27 feet long, weighed 3 tons, had three axles with two of them driven, and produced over 3000 horsepower from it's heavily modified 44.5 litre DB-603 V-12 aircraft engine.

The car still exists to this day, and it is on display minus its engine at the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart.


More info can be found HERE.

 

Look at that damn turbo!!!!

 

holy christ!

Im in love!

3000 hp from 2715.5 CID!

 

looks like a hellof a grocery getter!!!

cool history though

 

Holy ****! Do you guys realize how much 465mph are? Are we sure it wasnt 426kph?
Fkn beautiful anyway! Display is pretty good too. Someone should take on a mission to finally have it runnin.

 

Supercharger.......

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AHH ya got me im a lowrider. Looks like a big ***ed turbo to me

 

Not a typo 750 km/h (465 mph)

 

Thats about three miles from me right now.

 

That's a damn sweet looking car for sure. Too bad it never got to run.

 

Glad it survived the war. It's amazingly awesome.

 

Looks for all the world like a cuttlefish...

 

yea that supercharger is HUGE!!!!!!!!!

 

Its probably best that it never ran, because I doubt if they had tire technology sufficient for that speed in 39........?

 

at 465mph that's only 23.225796 seconds

 

Yeah, and with the way that engineering of automobiles is going (and if this streamliner had influenced car building) you could possibly do it in a mere 20 seconds. Or you could build one of these. You know, for the autobahn. Haha, p***ing a guy a 400 mph. Totally safe... totally.

 

Wow, that is F-A-S-T!
The supercharger tricked me into thinkin it was a turbo too.....whats the diffrence anyway?
Maybe i know, supercharger its a blower......and?

 

Turbocharger is driven by exhaust gases, a supercharger is driven mechanically by the engine.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages - broadly speaking the SC kicks in from low revs straight away and the TC works best at high revs. Some production cars in Europe and Japan have used both turbochargers and superchargers to get the best of both worlds.

The nautilus shape of the supercharger on the Mercedes doesn't necessarily mean it's a turbocharger - if it's mechanically driven then it's a supercharger. That's probably why it's so big. Incidentally, the VW Polo G-lader used a similar design of supercharger. There are various websites that show how to convert large turbos to superchargers.

 

Love those GIANT flywheels at the end of each axle! Good for rolling rolling rolling! Rawhide! Probably bad for acceleration and stopping stopping stopping! Those things can't be brakes, can they? Gary

 

Amazingly beautiful car,,but it's projected speed is just that,,PROJECTED.

The technology,both in aviation and automotive,at work during the late 30's in Germany was second to none and I'm sure it would have made news with the speeds it COULD have achieved.

Hans Stuck was going to be the driver,,,But in my minds eye see the driver as Buck Rogers. HRP

 

Who knew they were rockin' 20+ inch Dayton wheels back in '39.


But seriously, that thing is really cool.

 

Were they really gonna try to transmit 3000 HP through wire wheels

 

I believe teh supercharger if for an aircraft motor,,have seen similar before

 

Unbelievable! Makes you wonder what else might not have survived the war....

 

Looks like a death trap to me

 

Just what I was thinkin', beautiful car though...

 

My friends dads uncles cousins nephew has one just like that... except his runs and drives.

 

I think 465 kilometers per hour is what they were shooting for.

In 1938, Mercedes ran 432 kilometers per hour on a public road (268 mph) in a different streamliner.

 

what I want to know is, if the motor got pulled, what lucky thing got it!