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Timing cars as they sprint from zero-to-60 mph is a slippery business--literally and figuratively.

Though car makers such as Porsche, Chevrolet and Lamborghini sell autos boasting under-four-second zero-to-60 times, some say it's not as simple as putting the pedal to the metal. That's because often the world's most powerful cars have more horsepower than their tires can handle.

Picture this: If a driver simply floors the gas from a standing start, he will probably smoke the tires and skid in place. Either that, or traction control will intervene by slowing the engine and applying the brakes, until the tires stop skidding. The car will stutter-step until the tires get a grip on the road.

In Pictures: Fastest Zero-To-60 Cars

"With these cars, it’s all about how much grip there is on a given day, on a given street, in a given location," said Wayne Corley, who co-owns RUF Auto Centre in Dallas, the sole U.S. dealership for Germany’s RUF Automobile GmbH.

That means that it’s hard for anybody, even a professional driver or a talented amateur, to duplicate a given zero-to-60 mph.

Yet shoppers for high-performance cars often check out zero-to-60 mph times before they look at other, seemingly more important specifications, even including price.

Buyer beware.

Besides repeatability, there are several other, more figuratively slippery aspects of "official" zero-to-60 mph times.

Numbers Game
For one, manufacturers obviously want a low number--but not so low that no halfway ordinary customer can ever achieve it. Therefore, many companies offer conservative official times, says Corley.

"That makes these official numbers sort of a worst-case scenario," he said. The RUF CTR 3 can "almost certainly" top its listed time of 3.2 seconds, zero-to-60 mph, Corley says.

Another apples-to-oranges factor is that many European brands, even ones that sell more cars in the U.S. than they do in their home markets, have stuck with the metric system when it comes to on-track testing.

Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari, for instance, only keep an "official" number for zero-to-100 kilometers per hour, or about 62 mph. Mercedes-Benz spokesman Rob Moran said a rough rule of thumb is to shave off about one-tenth of a second for the difference. Ferrari spokesman Toscan Bennett agreed that’s probably about right, so that’s how we estimated brands that only provided numbers for zero-to-62 mph.

In some cases, a difference in ranking on the list is literally a matter of rounding one way or the other.

Lamborghini says its Gallardo coupe goes from zero-to-62 mph in 3.95 seconds, whereas other brands round up to the nearest tenth of a second. For consistency's sake, we rounded 3.95 seconds to 4.0 seconds, and subtracted one-tenth, to come up with a conservative estimate of 3.9 seconds zero-to-60 mph.

One thing's for sure: In a 55-mph zone, any one of these cars could earn you a speeding ticket in less than four seconds flat.

In Pictures: Fastest Zero-To-60 Cars

Find the car that’s right for you. Compare any vehicle at ForbesAutos.com.
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