Chevy’s Supercar-Slaying Corvette Just Set an Absolutely Absurd (and Festive) Record

Since its debut last year, Chevrolet’s C8 Corvette ZR1 has proven to be truly authoritative in its performance capabilities. 

From a quintuplet of fastest laps at circuits around the United States to a GTD-beating Nürburgring run, the American-bred hypercar has faced test after test without so much as batting an eye.

Ever an outfit to push the limits of performance, Texas-based tuner Hennessey has just returned from the latest successful ZR1 record run.

Hennessey Performance

While it’s no surprise that the Chevrolet Corvette has added yet another superlative to its growing count, the way in which the car did so is absolutely absurd, albeit fittingly merry. 

Jingle all the way

That’s because it comes in the form of a new 196-mph top speed record for Hennessey’s annual ‘Christmas Tree Run’. If you’re unfamiliar with the tradition, it’s exactly as it sounds — the tuner straps a festive fir to the roof of a car for a top speed run.

In the case of the Corvette, Hennessey professional driver Spencer Geswein took the hot seat, making his attempt on the runway at Chase Field, Beeville, Texas. Having driven the firm’s Venom F5 to over 270 mph and also set the previous record (192 mph) with a Hennessey Venom 1000 Ford Mustang, he’s a regular at this kind of thing.

Still, for this year’s run, Hennessey supposedly opted for one of its largest trees yet, mounting the ZR1 with a 5.5 feet of foliage decked out in more than 200 lights and holiday ribbons. As Geswein put it, “it makes the car a little unstable when you get above 180 mph.”

Hennessey Performance

Now, while there’s no denying that it takes quite the driver to get a tree up to that kind of top speed, this feat is especially impressive when you consider that the Corvette was bone stock (apart from some hardware on the roof, of course) and how little the cargo hampered its efforts.  

Even without Hennessey’s wizardry, the ZR1 makes 1,064 horsepower and 828 lb-ft of torque from its twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter flat-plane crank V8 engine. As such, even with the tree, it proved a strong performer.

Hennessey Performance

For perspective, Hennessey also tested a fully optioned C8 ZR1 ZTK track pack car without the tree and managed just 10 mph more — 206 mph — before running out of room on the runway.

Growing the treedition

While the Christmas Tree Run started as a lighthearted holiday-themed stunt with a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody back in 2017, Hennessey has grown more committed to the bit with each passing year.

Hennessey Performance

As such, even though the top speed for the first run clocked in at 174 mph, subsequent efforts over the seven years have only gotten faster.

More often than not, Hennessey has opted for one of its own performance-tuned options, be it the HPE1000 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, the Audi RS6 Avant or the Venom 1000 Mustang. When the tuner has employed stock vehicles (like Ford’s Mustang GT500 or Porsche’s 911 Turbo S), those records haven’t lasted for long.

Hennessey Performance

In any case, Hennessey has already managed to set what it believes to be the fastest ever speed achieved by a road-legal car carrying a Christmas tree — and that was with an unmodified example of the ZR1. Seeing as the tuner has nearly 365 days to hone the car’s performance even further, next year’s run should be even more memorable.

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