This Lotus-Corvette Frankenstein Is the World’s Quickest Car
By Damon Lavrinc, Wired, 25 January 2013.
By Damon Lavrinc, Wired, 25 January 2013.
What happens when you stretch a Lotus Exige just enough to squeeze a 1,244-horsepower Corvette engine into it? You get the Hennessey Venom GT, and a new record for the quickest car in the world.
With a Guinness judge in attendance, Hennessey Performance made two back-to-back runs down the 8,000-foot runway at Ellington Airport in Houston and did zero to 300 kmh (186 mph) in an average of 13.63 seconds. That’s enough to topple the previous “production car” records held by the Koenigsegg Agera R, which hit 200 mph in 17.68 seconds, and the rolling nuclear reactor known as the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, which hit the double century mark in 22.2 seconds.
The Hennessey Venom GT is now the Guinness World Record holder for quickest
production car.
“We are exceptionally proud of our team at HPE who helped to make this new Guinness World Record possible,” said company founder John Hennessey. “This is just the first of several validation tests designed to show the world what our special car is all about - being the fastest. Period.”
More impressive than the sheer speed of the Venom GT is the fact it’s street-legal, running a 7.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 pulled from the Corvette ZR1 (Hennessey swapped the supercharger for a pair of turbos) that burns 93-octane gasoline and shreds DOT-approved Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires.
“I have never ridden in anything this fast,” said Guinness adjudicator Philip Robertson. “The acceleration is absolutely amazing.”
It should be, for the price. Hennessey will build just 29 Venom GTs at a price of $1.2 million each.
Video: World's Fastest Production Car from 0 - 300 km/h: 13.63 sec.
Video: World's Fastest Production Car from 0 - 300 km/h: 13.63 sec.
Top image: Hennessey Venom GT
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