Say Goodbye to the Fastest Car in the World

Bad news for supercar enthusiasts, because the world’s fastest car is now at the end of its production lifespan. This week, Texas-based Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE) announced that it will stop producing the Hennessey Venom GT after selling only a dozen cars during its entire run.

HPE marks the end-of-run announcement with the introduction of the Venom GT’s last version, aptly dubbed the “Final Edition.” Characterized by a Glacier Blue body finish and a pair of narrow longitudinal white stripes running down the center, the last of the Venom GT line receives the same twin-turbo 7.0-liter LSX V8 engine that delivers an astounding 1,451hp and a top speed of 435kph. The car has an equally shocking price tag of $1.2 million. It has already been bought by a yet unnamed buyer.

Not a huge seller

Since its release in 2011, the Venom GT only managed to sell a dozen units— the “Final Edition” is the twelfth Venom GT sold. The first six models were hardtop coupes, while the following six were roadsters. The car’s hp numbers grew from an initial 1,000hp to the 1,451hp we now know today. With a 1,245kg total weight, the Venom GT is the first supercar (according to its manufacturer’s claims) to reach and exceed a 1:1 power-to-weight ratio.

The “fastest” car in the world

Many people, us included, consider the Hennessey Venom GT to be the world’s fastest car after it achieved a top speed of 435kph during a run on the Shuttle Landing Runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in February 2014. Unfortunately for the Venom GT, Guinness never made the top speed run official, so technically it didn’t beat the Bugatti Veyron SuperSport’s 427.6kph.

The GT also set the Guinness world record for the fastest 2-seat sports car to cover the 0-300kph sprint in just a short 13.61 seconds. In March 2016, the Venom GT also became the world’s fastest open top vehicle when it hit a top speed of 427kph at the United States Naval Air Station in Lemoore, California, beating out the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse--the previous record holder--by 17.7kph. The fact that the supercar managed to do so with one broken fuel pump makes the run even more impressive.

The Venom GT era draws to a close

“We’ve attained some pretty incredible achievements with the Venom GT,” HPE founder and CEO John Hennessey said in a statement. “It was always my dream to build the fastest car and we did just that. Our Venom GT retires as one of the fastest cars on the planet along with being one of the most exclusive. We look forward to introducing our next car, the Venom F5, sometime later this year.”

Meet the Venom GT’s successor

The carmaker itself isn’t closing shop though, so who knows? Maybe we’ll see the car again somewhere down the road, no pun intended. In the meantime, the successor to the GT which John Hennessey refers to, will be equipped with a tweaked version of the same engine used in the GT. HPE released a digital rendering of the model they called the F5 on their website, which you can see below.

Hennessey Venom GT specs

To help you cope with the sadness that you may feel, here are some specs to remind you of how awesome the Hennessey Venom GT used to be.