By Tom Buckley, Staff Writer
In lieu of the recent winter Olympics, the United States has claimed another “Gold Medal.” On Feb. 14, the Hennessey Venom GT claimed the world record for world’s fastest production car, theoretically speaking. The world record isn’t official because Guinness World Records rules say that Hennessey would have to make at least 30 Venom GTs to consider it a production car, but Hennessey has only planned on making 29 of them. Guinness also requires that the car go one way and then be able to come back the same way at same speed, but NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the car was tested, didn’t allow another run.
Hennessey is to Chevrolet as is AMG is to Mercedes Benz. Hennessey Performance Engineering is a car tuner, which means that they fine tune cars to modify and get the best speeds and performance out of them.
Previously, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport held the world record by reaching a speed of 269.86 mph, but the Venom GT broke the record when it was clocked going at 270.49 mph.
The Hennessey Venom GT was first introduced in 2010 and priced at $1.2 million. It is a sports car built on a Lotus Exige chassis. It has a V-8 Chevrolet Corvette engine, which Hennessey has fine tuned and modified to give it 1,244 horsepower. Although the Venom does not hold the record for world’s fastest production car, according to Guinness World Records, it does hold the world record for being the fastest accelerating car from 0 – 186.4 mph, which only takes the Venom GT 13.86. No big deal.
