Motoring / Cars and Bikes

Venom GT Spyder Hits Convertible Record

American-based Hennessey Performance goes up against supercar records with their own model.

Apr 17, 2016 | By Staff Writer

Up against supercar giants such as Ferrari, McLaren, Lamborghini andĀ Bugatti, Hennessey Performance came up with the Venom GT as a speed-demon contender hypercar in 2010. Now, for their 25th anniversary, Hennessey took the Venom GT Spyder variant for a run to check its open-top speed, and hit a record breaking 265.6mph peak, beating the 254.04mph record for the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport Vitesse.

Unfortunately, the record isnā€™t official, even though the speed was independently verified by Racelogic Vbox. Guinness only considers cars as valid production cars if more than 30 identical examples can be built. Still, itā€™s quite an underdog victory for a car that was built off a Lotus Exige, with a bit of extra American engineering knowhow. On the other hand, the Bugatti Veyron was a car that cost billions of euros and 10 years of development.

This phenomenal speed for the Spyder comes from its 7-liter turbocharged V8. The car was driven down the runway by Brian Smith, the director of Ford Performance’s Driving School. Itā€™s only 5mph slower than the hardtop Venom GT. This achievement will be celebrated with Hennessy building three World Record Edition models of the hypercar, each with a $1.3 million (plus tax) price tag.

Although we can be sure that a future version of the Bugatti Chiron will have something to say about this, for now, you can catch the thrill of the moment in the video below.


 
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