Back in the day, getting from zero to sixty was all about how many cubic inches you had under the hood, and how wide those rear tires were. Fast forward to 2021 and electric vehicles are starting to show their dominance, especially in terms of acceleration times. Take the Tesla Roadster: this all-electric hypercar boasts an insane 0-60 mph time of below two seconds and will complete the quarter-mile sprint well below ten seconds. That is pretty impressive, but what if we told you that there's an RC car that can beat the Tesla Roadster? YouTube channel Engineering After Hours has built an RC electric fan car that delivers out-of-this-world performance. If you see this thing pull up next to your Chevy Corvette at the lights, just look away.

So what does it take for a toy car to beat a Tesla Roadster? The key ingredient is the two fans on either side of this RC that suck the air out of a special chamber underneath the car, creating immense levels of downforce. Without the levels of downforce created by the fans, this little racer would simply flip over at higher speeds. After some interesting calculations, it is revealed that the fan system creates 19 pounds of downforce, which is 2.4 times the weight of the car. To match the Tesla, this little RC also has to exceed 2 Gs of acceleration. To increase traction, the tires are covered in a sticky compound which drastically reduces tire spin. The drivetrain is also switched from the original rear-wheel-drive setup, to an AWD configuration to handle the 3-horsepower output. A mid-engine layout helps with weight distribution.

During test runs, the car's slipper-clutch almost immediately blew out, but the whole setup was replaced with strengthened bits, including stronger steel axles. The final drive was also changed to reach 60 mph consistently. Finally the RC is ready for its official runs. The GoPro footage of this little beast is absolutely insane: it hops and skips over the uneven road surface, and can be seen pulling up to 3 Gs of acceleration, in a straight line! Some of the first runs show times in the mid two second range, but after some more tweaks, the car finally manages a run of 1.73 seconds, beating the Tesla Roadster (not including the Space X variant that might never be sold to the public). The adjusted rollout time (the method Tesla uses to measure 0-60 mph times) shows that this little RC car actually managed a time of 1.46 seconds. Now that's quick.