The formula of putting your biggest engine in your smallest car has always worked, and the Hennessey Venom GT is the logical extreme to which that idea needed to be taken. It's basically a slightly stretched Lotus Elise that's packing a 1,200 hp 7.0L, twin-turbo Chevy V8. Hennessey has, for some time now, been claiming that it's the fastest car in the world.
Now, having set a top speed of 270.49 mph at the Kennedy Space Center, those claims are certainly a bit more legitimate. That said, they're still not Guinness Book of Records official. The Guinness Book requires that all top speed runs be done in both directions, to compensate for potential tail winds, and NASA wouldn't let Hennessey do another run in the other direction, and a car isn't defined as a production car until at least 30 have been made. Hennessey has made 29 Venom GTs.
Hennessey said the wind was a "3 mph quarter-crosswind" so it shouldn't affect the numbers, but it's still not Guinness Book official, especially when the record set is only 0.63 mph faster than the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.
When the Venom GT was starting to run out of space, it was reportedly still accelerating at 1 mph per second, however. Hennessey is going to need to build a new road to test this thing properly.
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[via Hennessey Performance]
