US supercar smashes drop-top speed record

A supercar has smashed the record for the world's fastest convertible - after reaching 265mph.

The Hennessey Venom GT Spyder has a 7.0-litre twin-turbocharge V8 engine which has 1,451bhp.

And with 20 times the power of a Ford Fiesta, Hennessey Performance took the topless motor to the US Navy’s 2.9-mile long runway in Lemoore, California, to test it.

The car accelerated from 0-62mph in 2.4 seconds and went on to 265.6mph.

It beat the previous record held by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport Vitesse by more than 11mph.

John Hennessey, company founder, said: “I thought that this would be a special way to celebrate 25 years of making fast cars faster.

“I’ve wanted to test the top speed of our Venom GT Spyder, without the roof, ever since our coupe ran 270.4 mph on the Space Shuttle landing runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2014.

“This was a great way to validate the technical excellence of our car which includes high-speed stability with an open roof.”