Wait—I changed my mind. You know what gets me wetter than a V8? A twin turbo charged V8. Just when you were asking yourself, “Can America do something successfully? Please?” John Hennessey comes out with the 1,200 horsepower Venom GT, which goes 272 miles per hour (manufacturer estimate). Hennessey Performance, a well-respected in-house performance auto workshop located in Sealy, Texas, took a Lotus Exige and stuffed it with a Chevy small-block Corvette engine. They added two ceramic turbo chargers, new heads and gaskets, aluminum gaskets, new cylinder sleeves to deal with the extra 16 pounds per square inch of boost, and an $895,000 price tag.
So you think the Germans make the fastest car on the road, perhaps the $1.7 million Bugatti Veyron? You’re wrong. Both the Veyron and the Venom GT go from 0–60 mph faster than it’s taking you to read this sentence: about 2.5 seconds. Where the Venom truly outperforms the Germans is in the race to 200 mph; the Veyron takes a whole 24.2 seconds to hit 200, but the Venom only takes 20.3. The reason why the Venom is so astoundingly fast is because of its low, 2,685-pound weight, which makes for a pound-to-horsepower ratio of only 2:6.
Let’s take a car you would typically think of as “fast”: a Lamborghini Murciélago. A 2010 Murciélago weighs 3,671 pounds and has a V10 that makes 640 horsepower. That’s a ratio of 5:7—almost twice that of the Hennessey. You might recognize Hennessey’s past work from Tony Hawk’s 600 horsepower Jeep Cherokee or Jesse James’ Hennessey Ford F-150, because the tuner works primarily in upgrading American cars and trucks to the point of absurdity. And then they make an armored Cadillac Escalade with 1,000 horsepower. America is totally going to win the future.
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