catapult

If you're at all into cars you no doubt recall the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious, perhaps better known for catapulting Vin Diesel's popularity as an actor than for its technical accuracy. Hey, it's Hollywood, so we can overlook a few glaring inaccuracies as long as there's flashy eye candy and some cool stunts. But one thing that they keep bringing up in the movie, is the idea of a "ten-second car", a car with the ability to run the quarter-mile from a standing start in ten seconds or less. Well in the real world, such a car is pretty damn rare, and almost never an actual car that you would be able to drive on the street. We're talking specially prepared race cars, made of flimsy ultralight materials that would probably never even make it out of your driveway without scraping a piece of bodywork off, let alone something you'd consider driving to the grocery store.

But if you were indeed looking for such a ten-second car, and you were hoping to drive it down to the local Quick-Mart so you could impress the gaggle of 14-year old boys who hang out there, look no further. Witness the SSC Ultimate Aero TT, a 1183-horsepower car that rips the 0-60 run in 2.8 seconds and goes on to tag the quarter-mile in 9.9 seconds. And no, you don't even have to drop the $1.2M in coin that you had saved away for the Bugatti Veyron, which by the way takes 10.8 seconds to complete the quarter-mile. Oh, no, you can be the real-world Dom Toretto for $550,000.

I personally don't feel the need to travel the 1320 feet in ten seconds. If I'm looking for a stylish way to impress the 14-year olds, I would actually save about $450,000 and get a Porsche Cayman S Design Edition 1 instead. It's black, it's sexy, and it comes with a matching briefcase, watch and pocket knife. Sign me up.

Ok, for those of you who, like me, don't have the dough for a ten-second car yet, try the ten-second burger challenge instead. "I live my life one Quarter-Pounder(TM) at a time ... for those ten seconds or less, I'm free." - Ronald McDonald.