Okay, this gets even weirder now: At 265.7 mph, Hennessey Venom GT claims

Not sure who the author's source is for this article, but I found this bit quite a bit interesting: According to Guinness, to qualify as a production car one must build “at least 50 mechanically identical vehicles, and these vehicles must be on sale to the general public.”

Personally I don't know why the number would be arbitrarily set at 50, but if these are in fact the guidelines that Guiness is using , that means even if Bugatti were to run the Super Sport again (unrestricted), the record would be void because there are not going to be 50 Super Sports built.

So the record falls to SSC - whoops, they only built 15 Ultimate Aeros.

So we go back to the Koenigsegg - oops, they didn't build 50 CCRs either.

So the current holder of the World's Fastest Production car record is... The McLaren F1???

 

You do understand every one of your posts are full of misspellings. Jesus dude, spellcheck if you can't correctly post. And that would be "I let some testosterone steam off in my latest posts." And it's belief.

If you want to convey a strong position on a said topic that you will never have the ability to produce or the means to afford and probably the skillset to utilize at the very mimimum argue your point with proper spelling and punctuation.

 

You actually have a very valid point there. If regarded as a manufacturer, which you and the dolt disregard, there have not been 50 Venom's produced. Therefore it would not be accepted.

 

The regulation of Guinness is also unclear as to the speed test should be run in two directions to be valid, the test was Venont gt in one direction only, that was not achieved record under world record conditions. Although they are allowed to make exceptions, do not think this is a case, but could be for the case of 50 units of production.

Maybe John can not disclose all the information. I ask John about performance data in the other thread and he replied: "Detailed performance data may be coming out in a magazine article at some point in the future".

At the end of the video, thank "Top Gear magazine" among others. Maybe John can confirm something about this.

 

Doesn't anyone else find it suspicious that every post is littered with "Maybe John" and other such things but we never get an answer. For a man that built a million dollar car that is "the fastest production car in the world", he sure does disclose as little information as possible. I mean seriously, I bet if I asked Mr. Koenigsegg just about anything about his cars, he would give his best effort to fill me in. John just posts links to the very very VERY limited magazine reviews.

Maybe he knows he shouldn't hold the record

 

I know what it takes to set a Guinness world record as we did this back in January when we ran 0-300 km/h. Each record category has its own set of rules and Guinness has been very upfront about what their requirements are. In the case of attempting our 0-300 km/h record, here is what they required and I am paraphrasing from my recollection:

1. Test surface must be reasonably flat and cannot be a road that is open to the public for obvious safety reasons. We chose an 8000 ft. runway which was more than long enough to reach our intended speeds.

2. Runs must be made in 2 directions to cancel out any wind factor. The 2 directional runs must be made within one hour. There was a cross-wind on the day we were running so wind did not effect us that much. We ran 13.1 sec. in one direction and 14.1 sec. in the opposite direction. And the averaged time was 13.63 seconds. Our slower run was not due to wind but due to an issue with traction. We thought about making another run but did not since we had beaten the previous record by 9 tenths of a second.

3. Time and speed must be independently verified by a GPS based measuring system. We hired VBox USA to bring in an engineer and fit our car with 2 VBox systems. The engineer gave the data to us and the Guinness representative after each run.

4. Guinness requires that we are building a series of identical cars in a production sequence. The car we tested had our optional Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires (did not give us much better traction than the Pilot Super Sport tires as straight line testing does not put much heat in the tires). We gave them documentation showing that we had built 7 Venom GT's to that point and were finishing an 8th car. We originally set out to build just 29 Venom GTs. Why only 29? Because Bugatti had stated that they were only going to build 30 of their Veyron Super Sport models. In the future, if Guinness requires us to intend to build 51 then we will do so. Guinness does not require that we build all 29 cars before being allowed to make a record attempt. In my opinion, I think that they are just trying to establish that the car being run for a record is not some sort of a one-off vehicle that was only built to set a record.

5. That is about it. I will disclose that we did pay to have a Guinness representative come be present during our tests. It was expensive. And it was also clear to me after speaking to their rep., that even though we paid to have them be there, that there was no expectation on their part of giving us or anyone else a record unless we met their criteria. He told me that in the majority of adjudications, the applicant comes up short. This was tough to hear after we already spent the money to have them come in! But at the end of the day, we properly prepared for our record runs and met all of their requirements. Even to go as far as having 2 media outlets there to witness and video / write about what happened.

Now that you have this foundation, let's talk about our recent 265.7 mph speed test at NAS Lemoore. The Guinness requirements for "fastest 2-seat vehicle" are even more stringent. And in my opinion give Bugatti / VW an even bigger "home field advantage". The above rules apply plus:

** The vehicle must average it's speed in each direction over a flying kilometer. Yes, that's right, to beat the Veyron SS 267.8 mph speed we are going to have to accelerate to 265-270 mph then carry that speed over 6 tenths of a mile, then have enough room to slow down. GWR also requires that the speeds be measured by timing lights which is much more complex than just utilizing a GPS based system like VBox.

Bugatti / VW has a 5.6 mile long straightaway - the longest in the world. Nobody else does. No whining, just the facts and the very reason why small companies like ours, Koenigsegg, Pagani, etc. have not gone after this record. Or even big companies like McLaren, Ferrari or Porsche. Christian tried to take an earlier car to Nardo and had a difficult time running 241 mph on the bumpy surface. Bonneville has the distance, but the salt surface and unpredictable mountain weather make that place the toughest to set a speed record of this kind. Most cars are far slower at Bonneville than they would be by running on a paved surface over a similar distance.

Thus, when we got the opportunity to test on the 2.9 mile long runway at NAS Lemoore, we knew we did not have enough room to hit our speeds over a flying kilometer. So we just went their to test and see what our car would run in 2 miles. We thought we had a chance at hitting 270 mph but we just did not know. Whether we ran 240 or 270 mph, we never planned to go there and attempt a Guinness world record. But speed is speed and we figured that this would be a good opportunity to learn more about our car while proving some of its capabilities. We hired VBox to come out and also had a video crew there to document. It was important to me to have the video show the VBox speed display during the run.

Also, TopGear Magazine was there to witness the runs and their story just came out in the UK in their May, 2013 issue. We made 4 runs over 260 mph with our best run of 265.7 mph. The Navy would only let us run in one direction and we did have a tail wind of 4-6 mph during our best run. We also ran 264 mph with no tail wind.

We did not go there to set any acceleration or time to speed or distance records. Thus, we are not publishing 0-200 times, etc. We already did that when we did the Guinness 0-300 km/h record. I told our driver just to shift easy and keep himself and the car safe. You have no idea what kind of balls it takes to run 265 mph and then have to hit the brakes to pull 1.1g of decel so you can go from 265 to 0 in less than 4000 ft. I would love to see what the Veyron SS would have ran in 2 miles. I'd bet that it would have been hard pressed to break 240 mph out there on the same runway and same day. No disrespect to the Bug as I have great admiration for what they have built. But I am just trying to give some of the internet experts some insights into how this game really gets played. This is a high stakes, real life, win, lose or die game of speed. Very few attempt what we are doing based strictly on risk. Anything could happen that these speeds. A critter could cross the runway at the wrong time and place. Take a look at what happend at the Texas Mile a few weeks ago. A guy who used to work for me nearly lost his life crashing a Camaro at 230 mph. Bugatti / VW knows these risks. Our company knows these risks. And others who seriously look at attempting the same, at some point, gain an understanding of what is at stake by trying to go out and run these types of speeds in a street car.

We are very happy that we were able to attain 265.7 mph in such a relatively short distance. And we look forward to going back out again at some point, hopefully on a longer stretch of highway somewhere in America, and going a bit faster. And if we feel that we can meet all of the Guinness requirements, then they will be there too.

Now I will take a few reasonable questions and will answer them if I can. But I am not going to play 20 questions either. I am a reasonable guy and like to connect with reasonable enthusiasts. But I do not feel obligated to answer any and every question just because somebody has a keyboard and an internet connection. So if I dont answer your question, please dont take it personally. Thanks for your understanding and have a great evening discussing. I will check back when I have time. Thanks.

John Hennessey

PS - I was just as shocked at the Guinness decision to strip Bugatti of their record. And I take no joy from this. Bug ran the number and it is not in dispute even though all SS models are speed limited to 258 mph. But it just goes to show that GWR is very serious about their world records.

 

Let me preface my question with a statement: The Venom GT is a fantastic car in its own right.

My question is: Why do you constantly compare the Venom GT to the Veyron and Agera as if it is an apples to apples comparison?

 

I haven't had as much time lately to be messing around online and I check forums even less frequently, but pretty much everything I read on here these days is someone with a bug up their ass about Hennessey.

Make your own record book, don't invite him, and be done with it already.

 

Reasonable question: In your post you said "Test surface must be reasonably flat and cannot be a road that is open to the public for obvious safety reasons." Does this mean it must ALWAYS be closed to the public, or just closed temporarily? I know SSC did their test on a public highway that they closed down, does that count or no? Because that seems to be the only way to do it, unless magically VAG opens up Ehra-Leisen to all companies.

 

I am certainly not a spokesperson for Guinness. But the point I was making was that the speed tests need to be done on a controlled road or test track, runway, etc. More specifically, Guinness told me that we could not attempt such a speed run on the Autobahn or other road that would put the public at risk. Temporarily closed if it was a county or state road / highway. The Guinness rep did also tell me that they wanted to allow the rules to be fair and broad enough such that others can attempt to break existing records. My overall experience in dealing with Guinness was very good. They really went out of their way to explain their process and I learned a lot from them. Are they perfect? No. And they do need to get some more specific help when it comes to the technicalities of setting speed records. Hopefully they can keep it simple and make use of modern technology like VBox GPS instead of timing lights.