Hennessey Venom GT hits 265.7mph for new world top speed record (+ video)

The Hennessey Venom GT – an American, Lotus Elise-based supercar – has clocked 265.7mph for a new world record top speed for a production car.

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Somehow, the fastest production car in the world title seems pretty irrelevant when there’s almost nowhere you could actually manage to emulate top speed claims in the real world. But that doesn’t stop car maker trying for new speed records.

The world top speed record for a production car has been held by the Bugatti Veyron (well, the Veyron Super Sport) at 258mph, but that’s a ‘limited’ speed for its production cars. The Veyron Super Sport actually hit 267.81mph at VW’s Ehra-Lessian track (it actually hit 269.8mph one way) but because production cars are limited to 258mph the higher speed doesn’t count.

Which left the way open for John Hennessy to take his eponymous Venom GT – a supercar built on the Lotus Elise but with a GM LS9 7.0 litre V8 with 1244 horses – to a Naval Air Station in Lemoore, California, where it hit 265.7mph, thus claiming a new production car world speed record.

The new top speed record for the Venom GT can now be added to the record it set of 13.63 seconds to 300kph in January (beating the Koenigsegg Agera R’s 14.53 seconds) and giving John Hennessey plenty of bragging rights for the Venom GT.

If you want a Hennessy Venom GT it will cost you $1.2 million. That’s about £800k in real money, but by the time you add import duty and vat you’ll be looking at over £1 million. Which is more than a McLaren P1 or Ferrari LaFerrari.

Your choice.