Venom GT Spyder does 426km/h to beat Bugatti

Hennessey Performance has been known for pushing boundaries in the motor world, notably against Bugatti, and 2016 is just another year with the same objective in mind for the American company. Hennessey recently managed to set a new, and somewhat offbeat, world record for the world’s fastest convertible.

Clocking a top speed of 426km/h, the Venom GT Spyder shattered the current convertible record of 408km/h held by the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse. .

The updated Venom GT Spyder is powered by a redesigned 7.0-litre twin-turbo V8 which is good for 1082kW, and effortlessly allows the hypercar to run a 0-100km/h time of 2.4 seconds and a 0-160km/h time of 4.4 seconds.

To celebrate the newly set world record, Hennessey has decided to build three Venom GT Spyders, with each one costing a little over R18 million.

The slightly less powerful Venom GT Coupe clocked its confirmed top speed of 435km/h back in 2014; however the Guinness Book of World Records refused to acknowledge it as a record because the speed run wasn’t completed both ways.. This resulted in the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport clutching the coveted title of the world’s fastest car, achieving a speed of 430km/h.

Hennessey is still determined to win the ultimate prize in the performance car world, however, and if the latest Coupe version of the Venom GT can’t eclipse the Bugatti’s record, perhaps the new Venom F5 will when it finally arrives. Hennessey has previously claimed that the F5 will be capable of 466km/h, which might even be enough to keep Bugatti’s new Chiron hypercar at bay.