So to mark the occasion, the Houston, Texas-based company, Hennessey Venom, is building a last, commemorative model called, rather fittingly “The Final Edition”. It boasts a glacier blue external paint finish with white racing stripes. However, beyond the external detailing, the car remains “stock.” It has the same 1451hp force-fed 7-liter V8 engine that propelled it to into the Guinness Book of World Records and into an ongoing dispute with Bugatti.
“We’ve attained some pretty incredible achievements with the Venom GT,” said company CEO, John Hennessey. “It was always my dream to build the fastest car and we did just that.”
In January 2013 the hardtop set a Guinness World Record for the fastest accelerating 2-seat sports car by accelerating from 0-300km/h in 13.61 seconds.
Then, in February 2014, it hit 270.4mph (434km/h) on the Space Shuttle’s Landing runway at the Kennedy Space Center. That feat made it very briefly the fastest street-legal production car in the world, beating the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport’s record (431.072km/h or 267.8mph) by 3km/h.
However, Bugatti pointed out that it’s only a record when there are two runs and the average taken (the Venom had done just one pass). And that a car can only be deemed a production car if more than 30 examples are built or plan to be built.
Hennessey in turn pointed out that the Bugatti’s speed limiter had been removed for the record attempt and that the production model Super Sport’s top speed is actually capped at 415km/h. As a result, the record was briefly suspended but Guinness eventually decided in Bugatti’s favor.
Indeed, a statement on Bugatti’s website reads “The Super Sport fulfilled the strict requirements of Guinness World Records and set a new world speed record for road cars of 431.072 km/h. Despite numerous attempts to dethrone the Super Sport from its status as the fastest production supercar, the Bugatti remains unbeaten to this day.”
Nevertheless, Hennessey had the last laugh. When his team took the open-top Spyder to the United States Naval Air Station in Lemoore, California, they did everything by the book and set a new record for the world’s fastest open top car — 265.6mph, 11mph faster than the Bugatti’s open top Grand Sport Vitesse. But of course, Bugatti can still claim that its convertible is the world’s fastest open-top production car as it built 150 examples compared with Hennessey’s six.
And although it will be sad to see the Venom go, it’s also a chance to get excited about its replacement, the F5, which promises to pick up where the outgoing model left off.
The Venom GT Final Edition is already sold and fetched a $1.2 million premium.