For most of the last decade, there has been only one “world’s fastest car”, and that is the Bugatti Veyron. While others have come after the title, few have managed to outlast the Bugatti for long, with one new version after another continuing to raise the bar. While 253 MPH used to be fast enough to claim to be the world’s fastest car, the Bugatti Super Sport upped the ante to 269.86 MPH. Say what you will about Bugatti, but that’s damn impressive.
That is, unless your name is John Hennessey. The owner of Hennessey Performance Engineering had one goal in mind; to build the world’s fastest car. He has done that with the Hennessey Venom GT, which earlier this month hit a top speed of more than 270 MPH at the John F. Kennedy Space Center. Unfortunately, it isn’t “official.”
This follows Hennessey’s previous bid to hit a new record top speed earlier in February, where the Venom GT topped out at 265 MPH after running out of runway. It was then off to the longer runway at Kennedy for a chance at the new record, and that’s exactly what he did, with the exact speed being 270.49 MPH. That’s less than 1 MPH more than the Bugatti, but that’s all that really matters.
The incredible acceleration of the Venom GT meant that it took less than 10 seconds for the hypercar to accelerate from 120 MPH to 220 MPH, with a maximum longitudinal acceleration of 1.2gs. Unfortunately, because Hennessey only made one run, and not a second, follow-up run, the record doesn’t officially count for the Guinness Book of World Records. Apparently the NASA folks wouldn’t let Hennessey make the second run, meaning Bugatti is still technically top dog.
But Bugatti, Hennessey, and America all know the truth.