The Hennessey Venom GT has always been about speed, and with a more powerful version having arrived, they claim they’ve topped themselves.
Hennessey Performance Engineering, the small American automotive outfit, are known for their Venom GT – a Lotus Exige-based monster that’s capable of spine-compressing speed with its light weight and 1200-plus horsepower (894kW+).
In February 2014, powered by its 7.0-litre twin-turbo LS7 V8 engine, the Venom GT was previously able to set a speed record at 435km/h – which was properly bonkers already. And now, the folks at Hennessey claims to have set an even faster one.
Because there has been no official verification or sanctioning (yet) of their new record, the teased top speed run has to be taken with a few grain of salt. And also because the supposition that the Venom GT is a production car is itself on shaky ground.
Still, any improvement to the previous top speed is worth noting. It wouldn’t be surprising that the they could extract more speed from that beast, especially given the right venue and conditions – and perhaps some clever tweaks to make it slip more easy through the air.
At the 2015 SEMA show in Las Vegas, Hennessey had shown off an updated Venom GT, the 2016 Spyder, with more than 200 extra horsepower (149kW). That extra performance could be the nudge they needed to push past their previous record.
This seems to be the season for speed records, just as Nissan set its own benchmark for the fastest drift ever recorded.
