Fast sedans aren’t anything new. In fact, go-fast sedans have been some of the cars that have impressed me the most doing this job. The BMW M5 CS, Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, W223 Mercedes-AMG S63, and most recently the Lucid Air Pure all blew me away. I haven’t driven a Lucid Air Sapphire yet, but it’s reached the top of my to-do list after seeing what it just did in the hands of Car and Driver’s team. During their instrumented testing, the Sapphire not only surpassed 200 mph—impressive enough for an electric sedan—it did so and then came to a stop before both the Corvette ZR1X and McLaren 750S.
Just getting to 200 mph is a massively impressive feat for any car. It takes immense power and slippery aero to overcome the aerodynamic drag constantly trying to slow you down. And yet the Lucid Air Sapphire, a five-seat, four-door luxury sedan, reached 200 mph seven seconds faster than the Corvette ZR1X did. Seven. Seconds. In the gap it took the Corvette to catch the Lucid at 200 mph, the Sapphire could have gone from 0-60 mph almost four times.
Photo by: Lucid Motors
That’s the same ZR1X that holds the title of the fastest car C&D ever tested, by the way. How did the Lucid beat that 1,250-horsepower hybrid V8 monster to 200? Well, the ‘Vette’s big wing likely had something to do with it. The ZR1X isn’t exactly designed for pure straight-line speed, as it’s also meant to be a track weapon. So its aero needs to apply heavy downforce at high speed.
Even wilder is that the Lucid was 13 seconds faster to 200 mph than the McLaren 750S, one of the very best supercars in existence. OK, so the McLaren only uses a V8, with no hybrid all-wheel-drive trickery like the Corvette has, and only 740 horsepower. Its lone advantage is that it’s about 2,300 pounds lighter than the Lucid.
After reaching 200 mph, all three cars had to hit the brakes. Both the Corvette and McLaren were able to brake from 200-0 faster than the Lucid, but only by less than a second. That means the Lucid Air Sapphire went from 0-200-0 mph in 25.7 seconds; 6.1 seconds faster than the Corvette ZR1X and 12 seconds faster than the McLaren. That’s positively wacky.
Photo by: Lucid Motors
Sure, both the supercars would almost certainly be faster on track, where their massive weight advantage would come in handy. But the Air Sapphire is no slouch in the handling department either. Big luxury sedans shouldn’t be able to move the way the Sapphire does, and Lucid’s engineering team needs to give themselves a massive pat on the back. This sedan is freakishly quick and shockingly agile.
