So what should you buy? Well there are a number of different situations you could find yourself in, and you’ll want a different car for each. If you're interested in the performance of those or future cars, vehicles from other classes, or what's below fifth place in these lists check out these videos covering lap times and top speeds for all vehicles in the game, as well as tier lists for the raceable classes. Notable exceptions are the Rocket Voltic, Scramjet, Vigilante, and Arena War vehicles with nitrous boost upgrades.
This article has also been updated in July 2021 to be correct as of the Los Santos Tuners DLC, and only focuses on 'normal' cars (those that don’t get a benefit from external boosts and can be used in regular races). Check out these lap times and top speeds docs for an overview of my methodology. The following results come from the very detailed and scientific car testing I carried out on this YouTube channel. Listed below will be the five fastest non-rocket-powered cars around a regular circuit in GTA online (where braking, cornering and acceleration all play a part in getting a quick lap time), followed by the five fastest non-rocket powered cars on a long straight piece of road (when all cars are travelling at their maximum speed).
There are a lot of variables, but for the purposes of this article I'm going to focus on two of the most useful-lap times and top speed.
