You may remember that roughly two years ago, Koenigsegg claimed the title of the world’s fastest-revving production engine with the twin-turbo V8 in the Jesko. Thanks to nearly nonexistent inertia from the lack of a flywheel (the GMA T.50 also lacks a flywheel), the 5.0-liter V8 can rev from idle to its 7,800 rpm redline in just 213 milliseconds. In roughly the same timeframe (give or take a thousandth of a second), the T.50 has found another 4,300 rpm.
To put those figures in perspective, the Lexus LFA, which had to use a digital tachometer because a physical needle couldn’t swing fast enough to match the Yamaha-tuned V10’s speed, would rev from 900 to 9,000 rpm in 0.6 seconds, a speed of roughly 13,500 rpm/s. The T.50’s V12 revs nearly four times faster.
Koenigsegg’s figure translated to an average of 31,700 rpm/s in neutral, but under load, Angelholm’s engineers recorded peaks of up to 46,000 revolutions a second. Perhaps GMA’s initial measurement of the Cosworth V12 was also recorded in neutral, which would explain the sudden jump in recorded speed.