The Hennessey Venom GT has set a new world record to become the quickest street-legal production car ever to make the dash from 0-300km/h.
With Guinness World Records officials and VBox timing specialists on hand, the Venom GT set an official time of 13.63 seconds for the stratospheric sprint – the average of two runs completed in opposite directions along the runway at Ellington Airport in Texas (the first 13.18sec with a 6.5km/h tailwind, the second 14.08sec with a 9.7km/h headwind).
The Hennessey Venom GT’s time bettered that of the previous record holder, the Koenigsegg Agera R, which stopped the clock at 14.53 seconds. The Bugatti Veyron rolls the needle around to 300km/h in a similar 14.6 seconds.
The Venom also set an unofficial 0-200mph (0-321.9km/h) acceleration record of 14.51 seconds, smashing the old record – again held by the Koenigsegg – by more than three seconds.
Hennessey Performance plans to build just 29 examples of its US$1.2 million ($1.14 million) Lotus Exige-based Venom GT hypercar, which is powered by a Chevrolet-sourced 928kW/1566Nm twin-turbocharged 7.0-litre V8.
While planning further performance tests for the Venom GT, the California-based manufacturer is already hard at work on the car’s successor, the Hennessey Venom GT2, which is rumoured to produce up to 1119kW of power.
