The sleek and super-expensive Hennessey Venom GT has just set a new speed record of 436 km/h at the Kennedy Space Centre.

The road car world speed record was previously held by the unrestricted Bugatti Veyron, which set its top speed of 435 km/h back in July 2010 at Volkswagen Groups Ehra-Lessien track near Wolfsburg, Germany.

However, because the Venom GT uses a modified chassis and other components from the Lotus Exige and it didn’t do two runs, one in either direction, and also because only 11 have been produced so far — the Guinness Book of Records has not recognised the Venom as ‘the fastest production car.’

An official Guinness record is established by doing an average of the top speeds achieved in those two runs. So since the Venom GT did only one run, the Veyron SS still holds the official top speed record for a production car.

“The Hennessey Venom GT attained a maximum speed of 435 km/h as measured by our VBOX 3i GPS system,” said Racelogic engineer Joe Lachovsky.

“The VBOX GPS data showed that the Venom GT was still accelerating at an average rate of 1 km/h per second as it took just 10.1 seconds to go from 418 to 435 km/h. The record run was made over a distance of 3.8 km, which allowed the Venom just eight-tenths of a mile to stop. Thankfully, its Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes were able to haul the car down from 435 km/h well before the end of the runway’s 304.8m threshold.”

Watch the world’s fastest car hit 435 km/h

Hennessey Venom GT gallery