The Fastest Cars in GTA Vice City, Ranked by Top Speed
The Infernus is the fastest car in Vice City, but the Cheetah is the one most players should actually be driving, and the quickest thing in the game is technically not street legal. Here is the real speed order and where to find each one.
Vice City's car list is small by modern standards, which makes the pecking order easy to learn and surprisingly hard to argue with. A handful of cars are genuinely fast, everything else is scenery, and the fastest thing in the game is one you cannot simply find parked on a street.
The Infernus is the fastest car in Vice City
The Infernus sits at the top. It is commonly measured at around 149 mph (240 km/h), and it is the car the game treats as its halo vehicle. Mid-engined, wedge-shaped, and unmistakably a 1980s supercar fantasy, it is the quickest thing you will drive in normal play.
It is also the least forgiving. The Infernus is light in the rear and will step out if you provoke it, so its advantage is real on Ocean Drive straights and much less real in tight downtown blocks.
The Cheetah is the one to actually drive
The Cheetah is the second fastest, generally measured around 230 km/h, and for most players it is the better car. The gap to the Infernus at the top end is small, and the Cheetah is noticeably more stable to place through corners.
If you are doing anything that involves traffic, corners, or being chased, the Cheetah usually gets you there sooner in practice despite being slower on paper. It is also the more iconic silhouette of the two, which matters in Vice City.
The Hotring Racer is quicker, with an asterisk
The Hotring Racer, around 137 mph (220 km/h) by common measurement, is the game's stock car. It corners flat, it is stable at speed, and it will out-run most things over a long enough stretch.
The asterisk is availability. It is tied to the Hyman Memorial Stadium races rather than being a car you stumble across in the wild, so it does not fit the same "grab and drive" role as the Infernus or Cheetah. Anyone building a "fastest car" list from what you can realistically drive around town should mentally set it aside.
Banshee and Sabre Turbo round out the list
The Banshee is the sensible pick just below the top tier. It is quick, widely available, and far easier to handle than the Infernus, which makes it the practical choice for most of the game.
The Sabre Turbo is the interesting one. Some sources rank it at or near the very top, and there is a long-running community argument about where it truly sits. It is undeniably fast and it puts its power down well, but the consensus places the Infernus first. Treat the Sabre Turbo as the best muscle car rather than the outright fastest.
A note on the numbers
Vice City predates the era of published vehicle stats, so the top speeds circulating for these cars come from community measurement rather than official figures, and sources disagree at the margins. The ordering is consistent across sources even where exact numbers are not, which is why this list leads with the order and treats the mph values as approximate.
One more caveat: the Definitive Edition changed handling and physics compared to the 2002 original, so a car that felt untouchable on PS2 may behave differently in the remaster. Rankings by raw top speed hold up; feel does not always.
Quick reference
- Infernus: fastest overall, roughly 149 mph, twitchy
- Cheetah: a hair slower, much more usable
- Hotring Racer: very fast and stable, stadium-tied
- Banshee: the practical everyday fast car
- Sabre Turbo: best muscle car, disputed placing
The bottom line
Take the Infernus for a top-speed run, drive the Cheetah for everything else, and do not let the Hotring Racer's numbers fool you into thinking it is a street option. For the same breakdown in the other games, see our lists for GTA 5, GTA IV and San Andreas.
