What’s it mean to be the fastest? It means setting your sights beyond the best. It means coming up with something crazy, and actually making it work. It means taking a chance and running with it. For John Hennessey, it meant building the Venom.

Based out of an enormous warehouse 45 minutes west of Houston, TX, Hennessey Performance regularly makes some of the most badass sports even faster. A third are from Ford,->ke31 a third are from GM,->ke1024 and the rest is a bit of everything else. However, the tuning shop is probably best known for creating the fastest production car on the planet.

The story of the Venom started in 2007, when Road&Track had a shootout to find the quickest car to 200 mph. One of the competitors in attendance was a 16.4 Bugatti Veyron,->ke1112 a favorite to win. But the Veyron was beaten by Hennessey’s twin-turbo Venom 1000 Viper,->ke1404 which took victory by four seconds. That left only one question.

“I thought, what’s next? What can we do to go faster?” Hennessey recollects. “And I thought, just adding horsepower isn’t always the answer. What can we do to build a lighter car?”

The answer was a joke – a Lotus->ke49 with more than 1,000 horsepower mounted in back. But it went into production, and as it turns out, it's no laughing matter.

Hearing Hennessey talk about his passion is great, but the real draw in this video is the record setting 270-mph run in the Venom. But the question remains – what’s next?

Hennessey Venom