Hennessey Celebrates 270 MPH With Venom GT World's Fastest Edition

There are all sorts of contests in the world, but few are as hotly contested as who makes the world's fastest car. In the late 1980s and early 90s, it hovered around 200 miles per hour: the Porsche 959 was clocked in 1986 at 195 mph, the Ferrari F40 beat that the next year at 203 mph, followed by the Bugatti EB110 at 209 mph, the Jaguar XJ220 at 213, and finally the McLaren F1 at 240 in 1993. The record stood until Bugatti moved it up to 254 mph in 2005, which was broken by American startup Shelby SuperCars with the Ultimate Aero TT at 256 mph, before Bugatti took it back again at 268 mph with the Veyron Super Sport. Koenigsegg thinks it can break that speed with its new Agera One:1, but until that can be properly tested and verified, the new king of the hill is the Hennessey Venom GT.

Built by Texas-based tuner Hennessey Performance Engineering, the Venom GT is a highly modified Lotus Exige with a 7.0-liter twin-turbo V8 driving 1,244 horsepower to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox made by Ricardo — the same outfit that makes the transmissions for Bugatti and McLaren. The Hennessey Venom GT had previously set a top speed of over 265 mph on the runway of a US Navy air base in California, but recently eclipsed even that speed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it was clocked at 270 mph.

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