Las Vegas, Nevada - When John Hennessey kicks butt he uses a big boot - and for this year's SEMA show his star car is a Venom GT that's been tweaked to deliver a ground-shaking 1070kW at 7200rpm.
That's 152kW more than the previous-generation Venom, which clocked a terminal velocity of 432km/h on the five-kilometre shuttle landing runway at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in 2014.
What Hennessey has done is actually quite straight forward; he re-mapped the car's engine management software so that it could run on E85 Flexfuel.
The nice thing about Flexfuel is that, although your fuel consumption is higher than when running on petrol, the engine runs significantly cooler. That meant he could screw down the wastegates on the seven-litre twin-turbo V8 far enough to increase maximum boost from 1.3 bar to almost 1.8 bar, without imploding the piston crowns.
GPS-BASED TRACTION CONTROL
Given that the Venom weighs in at only 1244kg fuelled up and ready to go, the show car's power-to-weight ratio is 860kW per ton - tantalisingly close to the 1:1 ratio superbike manufacturers love to boast about.
In another nod to NASA and the space programme, the Venom's traction control system is actually GPS-based, comparing wheel speed to over-the-ground speed in the same way that an aircraft does, so as to accurately measure and control wheelspin.
Provided the super-sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres will stand it, Hennessey has projected that the uprated Venom should be capable of blasting off from 0-100km/h in 2.4 seconds, to 160km/h in 4.4 seconds, to 300km/h in 10.9 and to 400 in 18.1 seconds.
He estimates that it will dispose of the standing quarter-mile in 9.4 seconds at 267km/h, and should top out at 'more than 450km/h'.
And yes, it's street legal and yes, you can buy one if you have enough money and you get in quick. Hennessey says he'll only be building a handful before the Venom GT is replaced by the even faster (especially around corners) Venon F5.