Hennessey Venom GT Is The Fastest Car In The World At 435km/h

By Ganesh

Updated: Monday, May 5, 2014, 11:30 [IST]

America's Hennessey Venom GT is now the fastest car in the world with a top speed of 270.49 miles/h (435.311 km/h). That beats the top speed achieved by Bugatti Veyron Super Sport of 267.81 mph (430.998 km/h) by a narrow margin.

However, the Guinness World Record title is still held by the Veyron SS because the Venom GT does not qualify as a production car under the rules set by the Record authorities. Nevertheless, this is an incredible achievement by Hennessey which says the car would have reached even higher speeds had the tarmac not ended.

The story continues in the next section. Click through the slides for more:

Hennessey achieved the new top speed of 435.311 km/h on Feb 14 on the 5.18 km long runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Driving the Venom GT was driver Brian Smith who took the car to the top speed in 4.18 km, but had to start applying the brakes soon after to bring it down to 112.6 km/h which took another 1 km.

What's more amazing is that the Venom GT achieved this velocity in 4.18 km while the Veyron required the 8.85 km long Ehra-Lessien to reach its top speed.

Speaking to Top Gear Brian Smith said, "It was still pulling. If we could run on an eight-mile oval, we could go faster than that..."

Though the top speed was confirmed by a Racelogic Vbox telemetry system, the feat was not recognized by the Guinness World Records for the following reasons.

1. A car must do two runs in opposite directions with the average of the two top speeds becoming the record speed. (NASA only gave permission for a single run)
2. At least 30 examples of a car should be built to quality as a production car (Hennessey has only built 29 Venom GTs).

However, the Venom GT is still the world's fastest accelerating car with a 0-300 km/h time of 13.63 seconds, which is recognised by Guinness.

Hennessey Venom GT is a modified Exige that is powered by a GM sourced 7.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine rated at 1244 HP. Hennessey's next goal is to set lap times around famous tracks world wide.