The 1,244-horsepower Hennessey Venom GT has been established as the world’s fastest production car from zero to 300km/h (186.45 mph) by the Guinness World Records (GWR).
Under the supervision of a Guinness representative as well as VBox officials, the street legal Venom GT performed two runs made in opposite directions within one hour, which were validated by a VBox 3i GPS-based data logging system, at the Ellington Airport (also used by NASA) southeast of Houston, Texas.
In its first run, the Lotus Elise based model that is powered by a heavily reworked version of the Corvette ZR1’s 6.2-liter V8 LS9 fitted with twin-turbochargers, completed the sprint in 13.18 seconds with a 4 mph (6.4 km/h) tailwind, while the second run was made in 14.08 seconds with a 6 mph (9.7 km/h) headwind.
The resulting two-way 0-300 km/h (186.45 mph) average was 13.63 seconds, thus affording the Venom GT the title of world record holder.
“We are exceptionally proud of our team at HPE [Hennessey Performance] who helped to make this new Guinness World Record possible,” said company founder and president, John Hennessey. “This is just the first of several validation tests designed to show the world what our special car is all about – being the fastest. Period.”
Even though Guinness only recognizes records made in kilometers per hour (km/h), Hennessey officials made good use of their time at the Ellington Airport to set an unofficial acceleration record of 0-200mph (321.8km/h) in 14.51 seconds, which the brand said was previously held by the Koenigsegg Agera R that required 17.68 seconds time. By comparison, the 1,200-horsepower Bugatti Veyron Super Sport completes the same sprint in 22.2 seconds, or…7.7 seconds slower than the Venom GT.
The $1.2 million Venom GT is powered by an LS9-based 7.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 pushing out 1,244hp and 1,155 lb-ft of peak torque, and tips the scales at just 2,743 pounds (1,244kg). Hennessey plans to build 29 cars, with one-third of the production run already been sold.
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