God Bless Texas. Land of the free, home of the batshit crazy. Crazy like John Hennessey who took his 1,226 VR1200 Cadillac CTS-V to test the 85 MPH highway's tag systems at higher speeds.
The Lone Star State's fastest carmaker on the western hemisphere's fastest highway, what could be better? Simple. He also brought a tuned Camaro.
Clear lanes, full tanks, can't lose.
John Hennessey tells Jalopnik he bumped into Texas Lt. Gov David Dewhurst and mentioned he'd maybe have a nice car or two that could be used to test the TxTag toll tag systems of the recently-opened high-speed section of SH-130.
As fellow Texans, the Lt. Gov and officials from the Texas Department of Transportation replied to this wonderful idea in the affirmative and the awesomeness you see here is the result.
The systems worked and captured both the front/rear license plants and the vehicle's toll tag at roughly 180 mph before topping out at 220.5 mph.
"This was a win-win for our company as well as the state and TxDOT. I was amazed at how much our state officials wanted to help us," said Hennessey. "And in turn, we helped them too. I am truly proud to be a Texan and from a state that has the best highway system in America. We also have some of the best people who work together to get things done!"
Hennessey's VR1200 manages to squeeze over 1,200 horsepower out of the 7.0-liter twin-turbo V8 (the same one in the Venom GT). The Camaro they brought out is a modified ZL1 Camaro they claim is now the "fastest" ZL1 in existence after hitting 203.9 MPH.
The road opened officially for the public yesterday. The tests were conducted while the roads were closed with the full supervision and coordination of state officials. The 220 MPH ticket from the state trooper, we hope, was a joke.
"Lt. Gov. Dewhurst was very complimentary to everyone at TxDOT and who helped pull together to build the safest and fastest road in America. To me, that's what a smart leader does — he gets the right people on board, equips them and let's them do the great job that they were given," Hennessey said.
When asked if this was the first time he'd taken one of his cars over 200 MPH on a state highway the legendary tuner replied with a joking "No comment."
Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks they can defeat the system just by going faster: if John Hennessey can't outrun the camera neither can you.