The Hennessey Venom GT will get even cooler in 2013 with the option to go topless.

The 1200 horsepower ultra-exclusive sports car will sell for a cool $1.1 million, $150,000 more than the coupe version. Even if you have the cash to swing one of these, you probably won’t be able to get one. Hennessey is only building five Venom GTs this year and you can bet the Spyder will be made in the same fashion.

Details about the car haven’t been released yet, but there will probably be some changes in store to compensate for the removable top.

[Source: Left Lane News]

The Hennessey Venom GT is easily one of the craziest street-legal cars ever produced. It is based on the underpinnings of the lightweight Lotus Exige, but then beefed up in every conceivable way.

Instead of the Exige’s supercharged four-cylinder motor, the Venom GT has a twin-turbo charged LS9, displacing 6.2-liters and producing a barely believable 1200-hp and 1155 lb-ft of torque. All of that power is sent to the rear wheels through a Ricardo 6-speed gearbox.

Performance, as you’d imagine, is quite extraordinary. This 2,400 lb. machine can rocket from 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds and onto a proposed top speed of 267 mph. More impressively, it can sprint from 0-200 mph 15.9 seconds (a Bugatti Veyron covers that sprint in 24.2 seconds).

The Venom GT is truly an astonishing performance car, and the very first one ever made can be yours. Hennessey Performance has put the car up for sale, and are asking $1.3-million for it. So if you have the means, and have a neighbor who always beats you at the traffic lights with his Veyron, then this is the car for you.

[Source: DuPont Registry]

Ladies and gentlemen, your Veyron-killer is here. Today marks the delivery date of the first production Lotus Elise-based, ZR-1 powered supercar known as the Hennessey Venom GT. While several engine configurations are available, including 725-hp and 1000-hp versions, chassis #01 packs the full 1200-hp punch. All that twin turbocharged madness has only 2,800 pounds to move around, which results in a power to weight ratio about 70% better than a Bugatti Veyron. The Ricardo 6-speed transmission, the same unit used in the Ford GT, is geared to 260 mph.  It’s also cheaper and rarer than the Veyron.  And it actually looks good.

Any guesses as to where Venom # 01 is going? If you said the middle east, you win obvious points. Hopefully some crazy shiekh wants to go mess around in public and put it on YouTube. We’re going to go take our Veyron posters down now. Venom GT mega-gallery after the jump.

[Source: Hennessey]

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Initially thought to be a far-fetched fantasy, Hennessey Performance Engineering has announced that it will debut its Venom GT supercar at the Geneva Auto Show next year and AutoGuide has learned some important chassis and powertrain info about the vehicle. In a chat with company founder and CEO John Hennessy at the SEMA Show last week, he informed us that rather than a more obvious twin-turbo Viper V10 powerplant, the Venom GT will be powered by a version of the supercharged Chevrolet LS9 motor – the same one found under the hood of the Corvette ZR1. This also happens to be the very same engine used in Hennessey’s new HPE700 Camaro where it makes 725-hp.

As for the chassis, as the photos suggest, the Venom is very much a Lotus underneath. The car will be based on a modified Lotus Exige S platform. Hennessey says that his company has always worked with existing platforms and so they chose to do the same with the Venom GT. This project will be far more involved than “just” building a high-performance engine, however, Hennessey says that by using an existing chassis with many existing parts, licensing the vehicle will be much easier and without a donor platform the project would take much longer.

Hennessey also told us that this “all-American” supercar won’t be built in the U.S. Instead, Hennessey has chosen to create the vehicle in the U.K., near Lotus and surrounded by the “cottage-industry” of specialized high-performance shops that exist there as a part of the U.K.’s Formula 1 hub.

In the past, Hennessey has said the Venom GT would make as much as 1,200-hp, weigh just 2,400 lbs, have a 0-60 mph time of 2.4 seconds and a top speed of 272 mph!

We’ll have to wait for the Geneva Auto Show in March to find out more.

GALLERY: Hennessey Venom GT

We had all but relegated Hennessey’s Venom GT supercar to the concept car history books but it appears as though the 1,200hp monster is anything but a piece of fiction. Hennessey Performance Engineering, known best for tuning Dodge Vipers, has announced that it will build the car and unveil it at the Geneva Auto Show this winter.

Aiming to take on vehicles like the Bugatti Veyron and Koenigsegg CCX, the Venom GT will be powered by a V8 engine (likely twin-turbocharged) and capable of as much as 1,200hp. With a cub weight of just 2,400 lbs, Hennessey expects a 0-60 mph time of just 2.4 seconds and a top speed of 272 mph!

GALLERY: Hennessey Venom GT Concept

Full specifications after the jump:

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