How Fast Can A Car Drive In Reverse?

To connoisseurs of fine cinematic car chases, there's nothing better than seeing a hot rod roaring down the street in reverse to escape certain doom. What's better? Doing it yourself, but let's be honest — no one wants to test fate with our own vehicle, so most of us will have to keep that hope and dream squarely on the bucket list for now. However, the inevitable question remains: exactly how fast can a car drive in reverse?

At the end of 2023, on the Automotive Testing Papenburg track in Germany (home to the Autobahn, so of course), the Rimac Nevera electric hypercar broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest speed while driving in reverse at an astonishing 171.34 mph. The Nevera is no stranger to breaking records, though. In July 2025, on the way to becoming the fastest-accelerating production car in the world, the EV went from a dead stop to 249 mph and back to a complete halt in just 25.79 seconds.

Since we're talking records — in June 2022, an American with the perfect last name of Burner (Scott is his first) covered 1-mile in reverse while driving a stock manual C7 Chevrolet Corvette, because its reverse speed wasn't hampered by a governor. His "scorching" time was 1 minute 15.18 seconds, averaging 52.1 mph. The fastest drive in reverse at a distance over 500 miles is held by Canadian Rob Gibney, who went 501.69 miles (at an average speed of 41.42 mph) while driving a Ford Crown Victoria in August 2004.

Back in 2011, Car & Driver held a "Rental Car Olympics" (because no one wanted to use their own private cars) that included a reverse-driving test. With a winning lap of two minutes, 50 seconds around the 2-mile road NCCAR course in Garysburg, North Carolina, the winner was a Lincoln Town Car. Interestingly, it had a reverse top speed of 63 mph and could go from zero-to-60 in 9.2 seconds, a mere 1.1 seconds slower than its forward time to 60 mph. 

A convertible Ford Mustang took second (at three minutes, five seconds). An all-wheel-drive Cadillac CTS4 came in third (at four minutes, 12 seconds), thanks to its governed top reverse speed of 31 mph. Bringing up the rear was a Jeep Compass at four minutes 23 seconds and a top reverse speed of 30 mph. In 2017, AutoVlog conducted a real-world test of a 2-liter 4-cylinder turbocharged Ford Fusion (which was unceremoniously discontinued in 2020) with 240 horsepower. The car hit 40 mph before the driver decided to stop the run.

The internet has spawned a cottage industry of car enthusiasts doing wild and crazy things with vehicles to ultimately mess with (and wreck) convention. Enter YouTuber Westen Champlin, who modified a Dodge Ram 2500 diesel to look like it's always driving backwards. Champlin isn't the only one, as a 1985 F150 was observed at an Indiana "Cleetus and Cars" event in 2021 that had also been turned around. At the time, the owner of this preposterous vehicle had been pulled over 22 times.

Meanwhile, in Punjab, India, Harpeet Devin likes to drive his almost perfectly normal Fiat Padmini – backwards. All the time, which one might expect, has caused him back and neck problems. The car has been modified to have four reverse gears and one lone forward gear, with a top speed of 50 mph. The headlights have been moved to the rear of the car, and it's equipped with an ambulance siren to warn people he's coming. Devin claims he's been driving backwards since 2003 and even has special permission from the government to drive in this most unusual of ways.

So, what's better than going in reverse? Finishing it off with a well-executed 180-degree J-hook, a tactical driving maneuver used long ago by purveyors of not-so-fine liquor (aka bootleggers) during Prohibition. When confronted by coppers, moonshiners would stop, throw their car in reverse, and spin the steering wheel, effectively turning it 180 degrees, so the chase could continue. The maneuver became known as the "moonshiner's turn." 

But in the 1970s, Hollywood legend James Garner starred in "The Rockford Files" as private investigator Jim Rockford. To extricate himself from his weekly shenanigans, Rockford would escape in his beloved Firebird Esprit using said "moonshiner's turn." The show became such a hit, and the move was used so much that it became known as the J-turn (or the Rockford Turn). We bring this up because the icing on the cake of Rimac Nevera's record-breaking reverse run was, you guessed it, a Rockford Turn!