Turbo lag has been the bane of performance engineers ever since forced induction made the jump from farm equipment to sports cars. The frustrating pause between planting your right foot and feeling the boost arrive has cost lap times, race wins, and more than a few moments of driver confidence — and the industry has spent decades engineering its way around it. Today, solutions range from Ferrari’s gear-driven patents to the electrically assisted turbo spinning inside the latest Porsche 911 GTS, and the story of how we got here is one of the more fascinating chapters in modern automotive history. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4, the first road-legal, series-production car to surpass 250 mph, used four turbochargers to help force a massive amount of air into its 8.0-liter W16 engine, while the Chevrolet Corvette C8 ZR1 leans on a pair of turbos to produce a whopping 1,064 horsepower.
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