The Ligier JS50 quadricycle has set the record for the slowest official Nürburgring lap.
Image: Supplied / Ligier
When it comes to Nurburgring lap records, there’s only one that grabs the headlines. Fastest of this. Fastest of that. Quickest hypercar. Best time for an EV. And so on.
But until now no one has ever celebrated the slowest time achieved on the storied 20.832km German circuit.
That distinction now belongs to French automaker Ligier. Two automotive journalists, Nicolas Meunier and Martin Coulomb, have taken a diesel‑powered Ligier JS50 quadricycle around the Nürburgring Nordschleife in a time of 28 minutes and 25.8 seconds, setting a record that now stands in the books for leisurely pace, Motor1.com reported.
Unlike the high‑performance cars usually associated with Nurburgring lap records, the JS50 is a microcar, or quadricycle, classified in the same lightweight segment as vehicles such as the Citroën Ami.
Power comes from a 500cc diesel engine that produces just 6kW, allowing a top speed of around 45km/h.
Meunier and Coulomb’s effort beat the previous slowest recorded lap of the circuit, a 16‑minute, one‑second time logged by a Trabant P50 back in 1960.
The JS50’s ability to complete the full Nordschleife journey on just a single tank of fuel was another point of interest. Ligier estimates the quadricycle achieved fuel consumption figures of around 3.0 litres per 100km.
For Ligier, a company with roots that include F1 competition in past decades, the experiment was both a display of engineering creativity and a light‑hearted way to draw attention to a vehicle category that emphasises efficiency and urban practicality over outright performance.
Speaking of performance, the current Nurburgring production car record is held by the Mercedes-AMG ONE, which lapped the “GreenHell” in 6:29.090 minutes in October 2024.
The all-time record belongs to the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo prototype race car, which set a scintillating 5:19.546 lap time, albeit after the car was stripped of racing restrictions.
IOL Motoring