Hennessey Performance Engineering just raised the bar for supercars with the first production version of the Hennessey Venom GT. The car, Chassis Number 01, was shipped out this week from their UK facility to its new owner’s garage somewhere in the UAE.
Sporting a body derived from the Lotus Elise, a mid-mounted engine out of the Corvette ZR1 and enough custom work to make you think it was designed on an acid trip, it’s effectively the greatest hybrid car ever produced. Like all high-performance vehicles, of course, the proof is in the numbers.
The first production Hennessey Venom GT features a twin-turbocharged Chevrolet LS-series V8 engine, producing 1,200-hp and 1,135lb-ft of torque, mated to a six-speed Ricardo manual, all on a carbon fiber body with a dry weight of 2,548-lbs. You read that right: just over 2-lbs for 1-hp, which is absolutely ridiculous. It reportedly goes up to 270 mph with a blazing fast 0 to 60 acceleration of only 2.9 seconds. Drag coefficient is 0.36 with the rear wing down and 0.43 with it up.
Beware, though. From the sound of it, this is far from the car of a regular driver. Suffice to say, that insane weight-to-power ratio will have you working hard to keep this thing in check at high speeds.
Hennessey offers different production levels for the Venom GT. The one that Chassis Number 01 came with, the most powerful of the lot, sells for a hefty $1,000,000. Two other versions are available: the base 725-hp supercharged LS9 V8 and a 1,000-hp twin-turbo variant.