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Richard Hammond has a complicated history with very fast, very powerful cars. From a near-fatal crash in a rocket-powered Vampire dragster to a famous “off” in an electric Rimac that left him with a broken leg, the former Top Gear host knows better than most the fine line between thrill and disaster.
So, it was with a mix of professional duty and personal trepidation that Hammond recently climbed into the Yangwang U9 Extreme. Why the nerves? Because with nearly 3,000 horsepower and a top speed well over 300 mph, it is, by his own admission, “the fastest car in the world.”
“That Rimac had 1,277 horsepower,” Hammond recalls in his new video. “This has well more than double that.” The 20th anniversary of his Vampire crash is also looming, a milestone he has chosen to mark by doing something “equally stupid.”
The result is a visceral, expletive-filled. Acceleration from a standstill is so violent that Hammond describes it not as motion, but as “relocation.” It’s a force so immense that your internal organs are sent a “follow-up email” explaining what just happened. The numbers 0-60 in a meaningless blink, 1,200 horsepower per ton are so far beyond comprehension that they become abstract.
But the Yangwang U9X, built by Chinese automotive giant BYD, isn’t just about straight-line insanity. Its party trick is a 1,200-volt electrical system and four individual electric motors one at each wheel delivering 747 brake horsepower per corner. This, combined with a revolutionary active suspension system called DiSus, allows the car to not just absorb bumps, but to actively push back against the road, leaning into corners and managing its 2.5-tonne weight with shocking agility.
“It is constantly negotiating with physics and winning the negotiations against all the odds,” Hammond marvels, as he throws the colossal machine through corners with the ease of a video game.
As the first Western journalist to drive the car, Hammond frames the U9X as a pivotal moment for the automotive world. “This feels like China turning up and just saying, ‘Um, yeah, we’ll have all the records. Thank you,'” he observes. It’s a revolution, an evolution that redefines where the most exciting, technologically advanced cars come from.
And yet, for all its calm, sci-fi composure, the U9X retains the one essential ingredient of a true hypercar: fear. “It still scares you, which it absolutely should,” Hammond concludes. “That’s the job of a hypercar. Hold on tight, wherever you are, because this thing is coming.”
