Bench Racing: New crop of supercars

It's been a while since we've hypothetically raced a handful of cars around the office; long enough that an entirely new crop of supercars has arrived for us to chart, graph and dissect.

Today we're zeroing in on the $1-$3 million price tag range, which fits the Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1, Pagani Huayra and the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. The first three fit neatly, pricewise, at about $1.3 million. The Bugatti breaks the mold at a stratospheric $2.4 million. The McLaren P1 is the only supercar in the group to sport an eight-cylinder engine, the Pagani and Ferrari get 12s and the Bugatti has 16 pots.

The best argument for “fast” is power-to-weight ratio, expressed here in pounds per horse. The featherweight LaFerrari takes top honors with only 2.91 pounds for each of its 950 horses to pull around. The Veyron Super Sport and McLaren P1 are almost equal at 3.38 and 3.41 respectively while Huayra comes in at 4.17. For reference, the 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo comes in at a comparatively pedestrian 6.76.

Now, if we're looking for value in our north-of-$1-million supercars we need to check the price-to-power ratio, here in dollars paid per horse.

Again, the Ferrari LaFerrari is the best value, costing the buyer only $1,368 per hp. The P1 is next at $1,479 while the Huayra ($1,805) and Veyron ($2,022) come at third and fourth. For more perspective, Ford charges you 74 bucks per pony in the Mustang GT; even train jumpers can scrounge that up from their bindle.

We normally check in on specific output in these situations, but because these supercars are so far out there, and boosted within an inch of their lives, it doesn't give us as good a picture. But just for fun, the P1 nets almost 240 hp per liter. The Ferrari and Bugatti go about 150 per liter and the Huayra comes in at 120 per liter.

To us, this data nearly proves the fact that the Ferrari LaFerrari is the best performing car in the world, and will be for the near future. Based wholly on the numbers the McLaren P1 would be next. Of course, playing in this rarified air guarantees you a vehicle that will decimate anything regularly seen on the street. But if you happen to find yourself at a supercar showdown, say in Texas or Dubai, it's the LaFerrari that will walk away with most of the hardware.

By Jake Lingeman