World’s Fastest Car 2015

Published Date: 17th Jan 2015

The Hennessey claims a new production car speed record by beating the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, by just 0.63mph.

 

Hennessey’s Venom GT is now the fastest road car in the world, making it to 270.49mph in early 2014. It beat the previous title holder, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, by just 0.63mph - but the record won't be officially recorded.

Hennessey took its latest rocket ship to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA to run the car on NASA's 3.2-mile Space Shuttle landing runway.

Guinness World Records requires two runs in opposite directions to work out an average speed - meaning tailwinds are taken into account - and since the Venom GT wasn't able to do this on that runway, the top speed record remains the same - the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport is still technically the champion and Guinness World Record holder.

“The Venom GT attained a maximum speed of 270.49 mph as measured by our VBOX 3i GPS system,” explained Racelogic engineer Joe Lachovsky - independently verifying the speed that was reached.

The Venom GT is also the holder of the speed records for world’s fastest car from 0-300 km/h (13.63 seconds) and 0-200 mph (14.51 seconds). That's due to the low weight (1,244kg) and a huge power (1,244bhp) from its monsterous 7.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine.

The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, which reached 269.86mph in 2010, is technically still the fastest road car - and it's the effortless way that the car reaches this top speed that really impresses. Thirty models were produced initially and five of those had the top speed limiter removed to allow the incredible top speed to be reached - and to ensure the car's place in the Guiness World Record books for production cars.

                      

Then there was the original Bugatti Veyron without the Super Sport upgrades, which set a speed of 253.81mph in 2005 - it's a previous winner of the title, and undoubtedly an incredibly fast production car. Sporting an 8.0-litre W16 engine which has four turbochargers and produces a mouth-watering 987bhp - 0-62mph takes just 2.5 seconds.