UPDATE: Watch the Hennessey Venom GT Hit 270.49 MPH

For some time now, John Hennessey and his team have been making fast cars much faster. In 2011, the Hennessey Venom GT was created in order to offer John's customers something that was capable of going from hyper-legals speeds into hyperspace. It's a wildly powerful and fast machine, and it's been nipping at the heels of the speed record of a behemoth known as the Bugatti Veyron. In order to make a rip at a record run, however, a car needs plenty of room, and that's just something Hennessey hasn't been able to find.

Until now.

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Thanks to NASA (yes, freaking NASA!), the Hennessey team was allowed to take the Venom GT for a blast down a runway large enough to get up to record breaking speed. The official VBox recorded speed is 270.49 miles per hour, or 435.2 kilometers per hour if you prefer larger numbers. That's just enough to best the 267.8 mph figure posted by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, the official production car land speed record set by the Bug back in 2010.

Of course, this run isn't without a bit of controversy in the eyes of folks who keep track of record runs. In order to qualify for the production car record, at least 30 cars have to have been built. Hennessey has built 29 orders and has delivered 11. Additionally, the run must be made in both directions, and John and his team were only allowed to push the car in one direction per the discretion of the NASA folks. This means the people at Guinness weren't on hand to make this an official record.

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Still, that doesn't mean we can't celebrate this fairly amazing achievement. These boys and girls from Texas just pushed their home-built machine to 270 mph. If you think this is a shed-built custom Lotus Elise... think again. In fact, the car was apparently accelerating at the pace of 1 mph per second before they had to step on the brakes. Given enough room (a la what the Veyron gets to run on), it's not crazy to think that this machine is capable of hitting 280.

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