Over the last few years, there has been a drag ‘em out war for the sole title of Guinness’ fastest car in the world. The competitors: Bugatti’s Veyron and John Hennessey’s Venom GT.
According to the official records at Guinness, the Veyron is the current king of the land, clocking in with an official top speed of 267.8 miles per hour.
Earlier this year, though, the Venom DID hit an unofficial top speed of 270.49 miles per hour at the Kennedy Space Center runways (see video below). This, unfortunately, did not count because the Venom only made the run going downwind when Guinness requires an average of both the upwind and downwind speed.
Nevertheless, the run gave mad scientist John Hennessey a reason to be optimistic about the future. But no one was expecting him to be so optimistic!!
Since the run, Hennessey has been hard at work producing the new upgraded Venom, which will be known as the F5 (which is also the name of an extremely destructive tornado). And according to Venom, he believes this new vehicle will be able to hit a top speed of 290 miles per hour!!!
Hennessey says, “We are very excited about this next chapter of the Venom, which brings forth an all-new design that is not only a powerful and unique statement that our clients are looking for, but a vehicle that will achieve even higher performance through improved aerodynamics.”
“We learned a great deal during the development of the Venom GT in breaking the 270 mile per hour barrier, and we bring that experience to this new design as we look toward raising the performance bar even higher.”
So far, there has been no exact figure on just how powerful this vehicle, but Hennessey believes that he will be able to upgrade the predecessor 7.0 liter twin turbo V-8 engine from 1,244 horsepower to over 1,400.
In order to meet all of the Guinness requirements, the company is also planning on making approximately 30 cars that will be available for purchase in 2016. There’s no word on just how expensive this car will be, but it will most likely be even more than the $1.2 million price of the Venom.
As far as official speed testing goes, we can expect the car to be put through the ringer sometime soon.
Hennessey says, “With the F5, we definitely want to validate its top speed potential. We’ll probably go to Bonneville. But running on the salt flats is a challenge, for sure.”
4Wheel Online Blog - Automotive News 