Back in the late 1800s, during the dawn of the motorised carriage, the fastest cars in the world - such as Karl Benz's Patent Motorwagen - could achieve a heady 10mph.

On a good day. With a lightweight driver and a favourable wind. Today, nearly 140 years of development has pushed the very fastest cars past the 300mph mark.

The Benz’s brave driver could cover just 4.4 metres per second; while in 2019, with Andy Wallace behind the wheel, the Bugatti Chiron covered 136 metres per second.

It’s a fearsome prospect, and there are only a handful of places on Earth where cars of this calibre can reach their V-max, yet there’s no shortage of car manufacturers vying for top honours.

These include Bugatti, SSC, Hennessey, Koenigsegg and Zenvo, all of which hail from different countries around the world and are looking to become the successors to the current record holder. As a result, many of these cars are also the world's fastest-accelerating cars. 

With that in mind, here are the fastest production road cars by the numbers, judged against manufacturer figures when they were tested on an airfield or a dedicated test track.

The fastest cars in the world