Cars like the Hennessey Venom GT are designed with one thing in mind: going fast on four wheels to speeds that no one would have thought possible. So obviously when Bugatti posted a 408km/h top speed record with their Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse as the world’s fastest convertible, Hennessy would just have to do something about that.
And to max out their Venom GT Spyder, Hennessey had taken their mutated Lotus to the Lemoore Naval Air Station in California where they will attempt to topple the Bugatti’s record on this 4.66-kilometer runway. With a 7.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine pushing out 1,451-horsepower and mated to a six-speed manual gearbox, can the Venom GT Spyder actually break the record?
Certified by engineers at Racelogic who were at the run to witness the event, the Venom GT Spyder left the Vitesse far behind as it had clocked a 427.4km/h top speed. Surprisingly, the Venom GT Spyder only blasted through the runway once, rather than fulfilling the Guinness World Record’s requirement of two runs.
Hennessey however did not seem to care much because the Grand Sport Vitesse’s open-top record was not verified by Guinness as well. Bugatti did their top speed run at the Ehra-Lessien test track and their run was certified by the German Technical Inspection and Certification Association, so this is sort of an “apples to apples” comparison, said Hennessey to Autoblog.
