Here's one I submitted to the new Murphy's Rules artists. It's an oldie but a goodie, let me know if the errata fixed it!

MUST BE THE FUEL ADDITIVES
In the Shadowrun supplement Rigger 3 (FanPro) it is possible to design a
diesel-powered sports car that can reach Mach 1 by using turbo-charged
engines and drive-by-wire.... it can go really fast if you add nitrous
boosters and customize the engine!!

Rules: Take smart materials and Drive by Wire 1, so you can get 25% more
maximum speed. So you get a max speed of 500. Take eight turbo-charging
levels - Max is increased to 620 km/h. With full power (150% of max speed)
you get 930 km/h. Without engine customization!

With nitrous oxide injects you can get 250% of the max speed, 1860 km/h! And
THEN take the customization...

A) the speed is in meters/turn, not kilometers/hour; your highest mentioned speed is actually less than 1550 kph

B) the speed of sound is approximately 343 meters/second or 1029 meters/turn; your pre-nitro speed is a little short

C) I dare you to take a sharp turn in that thing

Tweaked a bike up to about 550 m/combat turn once... was ashamed of myself...

Lesse. Diesel Sports car.
Chassis DP: 125
Base Speed: 240
Max Speed: 400
Design Points: 90

Drive-by-Wire 1
Increase Speed 10% (applied after all design options)
Design Points: 218.75

Smart Materials
Increases Max Speed 15% (to 460)
Design Points: 100

Turbo-Charging 8
New Base Speed: 360
New Max Speed: 575 (I think, cue unclear rules on p. 126)
Design Points: 540

Speed Increase 272
Design Points: 544

Vehicle Speed: 632 (474 mph)

There's probably a much more efficient way of doing this.

Lesse... I'm gonna acknowledge the power a diesel engine can put out, especially if you combine it with a few turbochargers, perhaps a jet turbine, and so on and so forth -- I should know, I live here in Cat Central, and I know how powerful thse monsters are. If you were to take one of those engines, compress it enough to fit in a sports car, and so on, you probably could make a car that would need spoilers the size of aircraft wings to stay on the ground.

However, I wish to point out a flaw in this vehicle: It's all pre-customization. Meaning it has been made by a factory, perhaps for a specific reason. Therefore.. one must consider the cost. And I'm only gonna calculate that, although I could bring up stress and vehicle tests and the full stat block.. but for now... =)

I am taking your math on good faith; it is obvious from your sig that you revel in munchkinizing the Rigger 3 rules, no? So why should I question the math of such an individual? Therefore, we get to the design points spent: 1617.75. Yup.. Many will find you can build almost milspec on that much. The sports car chassis has a mark-up factor of 1, so that doesn't change anything. However, as this is obviously a prototype, it should have an additional mark-up of either 2 or 3 -- to be fair, I'll calculate both.

(realize I am using R3, not revised, so if any calculations are changed, forgive me.)

Design points - conservative = 3235.5 points. Final cost: :nuyen:323,550. Street index = 2, Availability 17/17 days.

Design points - full-up: 4853.25 points. Final cost: 485,325. Street index = 3, Availability 25/25 days.

TBH, I'd also apply some milspec in there too, just to represent that this is not a "standard" chassis, even for a sports car. These numbers also do not represent anything beyond the chassis and engine -- tires, handling, acceleration, seating, and other customizations to fortify the body/armor are not present.

And just for reference: The power of a collision at that speed would sit somewhere around 64... no matter how you slice it. At that level, I would instantly consider it to be one deadly collision, neh?

*sighs* Yes. Rules can be bent over and beaten until they are raw. My question is simple: WHY? I've always asked this... It is a tradeoff between realism and flexability... nad in R3's case, flexability won, while allowing for as much realism as possible. Is that so wrong?

Athenor

For completeness, after consulting the R3r errata, the availabilities should be changed:

Conservative = 21/21 days
Full up = 35/35 days.

If your player can roll up those numbers, more power to 'em. And again, this is before any other mods. Have fun. =)

Athenor

From the R3 errata:

p. 195 Power Plant Table
The Sports Car entry under Diesel Engines should actually be under Jet Turbines (p. 199).

Actually I don't particularly revel in doing anything with Rigger 3. It became a bit of a train wreck. I'm pretty happy with some of the rules fixes though (I wrote the new collision rules I should note). The supersonic car was actually pointed out to me by another individual about oh... 2 years ago I think. It's actually on the old DS forums if someone has it archived.

Thanks, Sceptic. Guess I should've checked that to begin with -- makes more sense.

Athenor

The errata kind of fixed part of it. Since the diesel sports car engine is supposed to be under jet turbine(I like to think of the bat mobile for this), it can't have nitros added to it. You can do the same thing with a gasoline engine though.

Frame: Sports car
Engine: Gasoline
Pertinent things for top speed: Smart materials for +40 more possible speed, +150 speed for 310 speed before anything else.

If your mechanic happens to be God or a close relative of his, you can take a total of 7 levels of Engine Customization for +203 speed. If you instead calculate from the post-smart materials top speed(You can interpret the rules on engine customization to mean you calculate maximum improvement based on pre-smart materials or post-smart materials speeds), you can scrape up +233 speed instead, which requires 8 levels of engine customization. So we're either up to 513 or 543, depending on how you interpret the rules.

Slap on one level of Nitrous Oxide Injectors but keep in mind, you should add nitros post-creation. It costs 5,500 nuyen at creation and 3,500-post creation for level 1 nitros.

Now we have turbocharging. Because you're just aiming for maximum speed and not just an off-the-rack car, you'll want to do the turbocharging post-creation. You'll either have a new maximum speed of 770 or 815. Adding this many levels of turbocharging is actualyl more expensive than the vehicle frame itself, which puts you back 82,300 nuyen before street index.

Drive-by-wire 1 will be added on last for 847 or 897 speed.

All told, it will set you back 251,515 nuyen for the slower one, 262745 nuyen for the faster one, before street index.

Now turn on your nitros, multiply either of those speeds by 2.5, and start accelerating until you hit 2118 or 2243 speed. Keep in mind, speed refers to how many meters it can go in 3 seconds. So this little beauty is capable of 706 or 748 meters per second. 706 * 60 = 42,360 meters per minute, 748 * 60 = 44,880 meters per minute. 42,360 * 60 = 2,541,600 meters per hour or 2,541 km/h, 44,880 * 60 = 2,692,800 meters per hour or 2692.8 km/h.

The main use for this thing would be blowing stuff up. Seeing as how a vehicle can go through any barrier that is less than it's speed multiplied by 0.05, the slower one will go through rating 105.9 barriers, the faster one rating 112.1 barriers. The vehicle is almost assured to be scrap metal though, but the passengers, if any, will not be harmed. The barrier will also be dust. If you want to breach a building and want a REALLY cool entrance, here's your ticket in.

The power of a crash is equal to speed divided by 10. 212 for the slower, 224 for the faster one.

This is what REALLY killed Dunkie.

Cool Post!

I was up with ya until ya hit the nitros, as you were going 600+ MPH... which I can.. um.. somewhat believe, if you were to put the right engine in there.

I do think this stresses some issues, though -- there are obviously some issues when it comes to attaching -too- many speed enhancements and engine mods to a vehicle.. A structural limit, perhaps, or even just a hard limit would be nice. Current after-market parts, including nitro, can get muscle cars and imports up to about 180, and Indy cars, which would be similar to what is represented here, get up to 240-260.. Beyond that, though.. you have friction kicking your rear (until you get to higher altitudes), or just the fact that pistons can't go that fast, without melting into slag.

So ya... hard limits would be nice. Not necessary, but nice.
(I still like that whole common sense concept coming in. =P )

BTW: Can you figure out the handling on that vehicle? Like, shouldn't it be around 12-13?

Athenor

Athenor: Surprisingly, there are no driving mods for high speeds. That car would have a handling of 3. The only negative one that exists is for Positioning and even then it only applies if you're exceeding your speed rating, a mere +1 TN. In fact, if anything psychotically fast cars are more maneuverable than other vehicles. In vehicle combat, your maneuver score is based on terrain, the frame of your car, and your current speed. Terrain gives no more than -10 points, your frame can give +20 or -25, and your speed gives +(Speed/10) in points.

It's signature however, would be something like -16 or -17, so a missile that was never made that didn't have an intelligence rating that was fired from an imaginary missile launcher could still blow it up.

It's also notable that the car itself is only 82,300 and everything after that can be bought piece by piece. I deliberately made the cost of the car low for the purposes of turbocharging and the drive-by-wire system, both of which are based on percentages of the list price of the car.

If you want to really mess with the head of a physics student, add level 5 nitros to that vehicle and consider for a moment how accleration/braking works. The only actual limit is how many dice you can throw at the test and how many actions you have in a round. A starting level rigger could have 18 dice for accelerating/braking and an init of 4d6+13 for 27 average init. For the sake of this, let's assume this rigger got lucky and got an average of 4 on init and so has an init of 31. The acceleration of the faster vehicle would be 28. You could conceivably go from 0 to 336 meters/second and back to 0 in under 3 seconds. You would cause the head of every physics student within a 100 mile radius to violently explode when their brain attempted to comprehend the g-forces you would have been subject to.

Just so you guys know, there are people attempting ( and getting damn close, one actually made it *unofficially* but blew apart at the sonic boom, hence the unofficial part) to reach the speed of sound. Also, the speed of sound changes depending on altitude (actually relates to the atmospheric pressure).

with jet engine yes, with pistons no...

allso, i think i observed someone on #shadowrun makea van go past the sound barrier, alltho that was based on the funny wordings of the engine customization rules (some say it can go speed*1,75 + speed, others say its speed*1,75 at design)...

what the rules need are a hard and fast what goes first and a real readthru by munchkins on a chain. other then that they work, within the framework of SR that is never seen gurps vehicles...

Take a look at the vehicle shape you get when designed to exceed the speed of sound: 1997 Mach 1 Land Speed Record Holder. I think lonestar would notice this on the streets.

Some describe a Mach 1 car as a "jet plane dragging its landing gear".