Hennessey Performance’s Venom GT has become the fastest supercar in the world. The company, based out of the Houston suburb of Sealy, TX, registered a top speed of 270 mph in the vehicle on Valentine’s Day.
Hennessey had been working diligently to beat the previous record of 269 mph set by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. After gaining access to NASA’s space shuttle runway in Florida, the 1,200 bhp Venom GT sped off to a top speed of 270.49 mph. In comparison, the average F1 car travels at 200 mph.
According to test driver Brian Smith the car is capable of going even faster. “At the very top end, there was a little wandering, but hey, we’re going 270mph,” he told TopGear.com. “It was still pulling. If we could run on an eight-mile oval, we could go faster than that.”
Smith claims he could have gotten another 5-10 mph out of the car, but he ran out of room on the 3.22 mile runway.
The $1 million Venom GT is powered by a twin turbo, 7 liter V8 that puts out 1,244 bhp. The vehicle has a 0-62 time of 2.7 seconds and can launch from 20 mph to 120 mph in just 7.71 seconds while pulling a maximum of 1.2g longitudinal acceleration.
Only 11 people have taken delivery of the vehicle so far, including Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
