Many companies don't make it to see their 25th anniversary.
With this year marking the 25th year of Hennessey Performance, the company wanted to commemorate the occasion with a one-of-a-kind celebration.
That's precisely why it pulled the Hennessey Venom GT Spyder out of the garage and revved it up at the Naval Air Station Lemoore in Lemoore, California, setting a new world record for fastest convertible sports car. How fast did the turbocharged supercar mash the dash to? A mind-boggling, blazing speed of 265.6 miles per hour (427.3 kilometers per hour). Good grief!
Hennessey Performance reports that the independent speed testing firm, Racelogic and its technical director, Jim Lau, officially clocked and confirmed the world record-setting top speed on March 25, having released the amazing footage of the feat on Monday. The max-out speed was achieved by driver Brian Smith and also witnessed by U.S. Navy commander Darren Fouts.
Seeing is believing. Auto enthusiasts will especially get a kick out of watching this Venom GT Spyder scream down Lemoore's Naval Air Station's strip.
"I’ve wanted to test the top speed of our Venom GT Spyder, without the roof, ever since our coupe ran 270.4 mph on the Space Shuttle landing runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2014," said Hennessey Performance founder John Hennessey. "This was a great way to validate the technical excellence of our car, which includes high-speed stability with an open roof."
Technical excellence must be a politically correct way of saying a roaring beast on wheels. How else would you explain the GT Spyder's ridiculous output of 1,451 horsepower, a zero to 60 clock-in time of under 2.4 seconds and the ability to reach 200 miles per hour in less than 13 seconds from a standstill start?
The company said that it will build three World Record Edition Venom GT Spyders to further celebrate this feat and 25th anniversary. Each vehicle will be equipped with a $1.3 million price tag. Well, the soaring price has to match the soaring speed, right?
Hennessey added, "We look forward to the next chapter of the Venom with the F5 as we keep making fast cars faster for the next 25 years."
We are going to go ahead and believe him.
