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.
Fatthauer converted his GTurbo to Bioethanol to show just what "green" cars are capable of, and earned another record to add to the eight his company has racked up over its nine years in existence. At the Nardo high-speed test oval in Italy, Fatthauer stormed to 241 mph. It must have felt like the world was coming to an end.
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.
There's a huge, hand-beaten diffuser and a high rear wing. Then there are those, um, interesting wheel covers and seemingly wraparound rear end that helps to stop the car from picking up off the deck as it screams toward its top speed.
The 900 Bioethanol also employs lightweight carbon-fiber doors and hood, and its windows help strip weight high up in the frame, adding to the high-speed performance. Inside is a racing seat, a rollcage, an exposed gear linkage, and not much else. There is a switch to take the edge off the exhaust note, but that's about the only creature comfort.
It takes two hands to engage reverse, and the clutch feels drawbridge heavy. But something funny happens as soon as we get to the local straight road that serves as 9ff's unofficial test track. This thing is so utterly violent that the 'green-orange suppository' labels on the garish paint job suddenly make sense. It genuinely feels like the car's trying to climb inside me.
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.
The 900 Bioethanol shakes, clatters, and just swallows up the world, it's absolutely more intimidating than the Veyron, the Koengisegg Agera R -- just about anything. There's no sound insulation, and it feels like my ears are about to explode. Every gear change brings another insane onslaught of acceleration and a shimmy from the rear as the turbos spool and slingshot the car down the road. Hit the throttle hard enough and the Continental VMax rubber will even shift on the rim -- there's that much latent power here.
It still handles like a gem, though. Sort of. The original Porsche 911 GT3 this car is based upon is famous for its huge window of correctability mid-bend. If you know what you're doing, you can smear the standard Porsche all over the road without serious consequences. Not so with this car...
Fatthauer himself admits that the 900 Bioethanol is on a knife's edge. Go in at 75 mph and the car takes the corner, go in a smidge faster and it's liable to spin in to the nearest tree. And while this car is slightly more forgiving than the 1200-hp variant 9ff also offers, this FrankenPorsche is a totally different animal than the GT3.
Suspension components come primarily from the Porsche RSR race car, and race team H&R helped perfect the setup. So it predictably cuts into corners every bit as effectively as the GT3. But push too hard midcorner and you're effectively poking a lion with a stick, so you better be good enough to catch the lightning-fast reaction from the back end.
But you know what you're getting when you knock on 9ff's door. This is like riding big waves, a fight club for cars. 9ff is about pushing the limit every time you turn the key. That's what brings a hard-core group of customers coming back for more.
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.
Of course the green credentials of bioethanol are a different thing entirely. It has found its way into the general fuel supply with up to 10 percent in modern unleaded. But it has been overtaken, usurped, and otherwise conquered by other alternative fuel sources when it comes to the long-term future.
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.
But it comes with caveats -- big ones. Biofuel produced in massive quantities has the potential to increase food supply prices. You also need more of it than gas to travel the same distance. The world appears to have fallen out of love with biofuel and gone for battery and hydrogen-powered cars instead. Still, the 900 Bioethanol is a stark reminder that biofuel still could have a place in the world, if we want it to.
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]."
Knowing Fatthauer, he will not only break his own record; he'll show just what can be achieved with the Betamax of the alt-fuel brigade. Perhaps bioethanol has more to offer after all...
