HPE1200 Chevrolet Corvette: Hennessey's latest madness

Hennessey has unveiled the HPE1200, a beast based on the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 with 1,200 horsepower and more than 1,000 Nm of torque.

Hennessey Performance is a company made up of very sane madmen: mad because they choose the most extreme cars on the market to make them even more brutal, and sane because their creations end up working.

Their latest creation has been named HPE1200 Chevrolet Corvette and, as the figure suggests, it is a beast of more than 1,200 horsepower that sounds as if the gates of hell had been thrown wide open.

Hennessey already has residents of the 1,000 horsepower planet

Although seeing these stratospheric power figures no longer surprises us as much, there are still few cars with more than 1,000 horsepower: the Bugatti Veyron, Bugatti Chiron, and the Koenigsegg Jesko and Regera.

However, Hennessey has already entered this field several times thanks to models such as the Chevrolet Camaro Exorcist, the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat by Hennessey, the brutal Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, or its upcoming in-house hypercar: the Hennessey Venom F5. However, the tuner does not only work with American-market cars; Hennessey has also had fun with European cars such as the McLaren 600 LT.

The latest to join this family of atomic cars is the HPE1200 Chevrolet Corvette. The final results come as no surprise when you take a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, a car that already comes with 755 horsepower from the factory, and pump it full of steroids to make it even more brutal.

Well then, starting from that base: the company has managed to extract almost 450 more horsepower, bringing it to a formidable 1,200 horsepower and a brutal torque figure of 1,066 Nm. It is true that the company has considered that this version is too extreme for everyone, so it also offers two other, “less aggressive” power kits: the HPE850 (850 horsepower) and the HPE1000 (1,000 horsepower).

One of the unmistakable hallmarks of a Chevrolet Corvette is its rear-wheel drive, something Hennessey chose not to change. However, it is hard for a single axle to transfer such an amount of power without choking. For this reason, on the dyno the car manages to deliver 1,139 horsepower and 994 Nm of torque, a figure that is still an absolute barbarity.

Hennessey has made numerous modifications to reach 1,200 horsepower

To make the stock engine of the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 increase its power by 450 horsepower, a lot of “goodies” had to be fitted under the bonnet. Hennessey has installed a huge supercharger, a new camshaft signed by HPE, new intake and exhaust valves, stainless steel manifolds, a high-flow catalytic converter, and more.

Depending on whether the car is automatic or manual, the tuner must reinforce the transmission so it does not choke on such a power figure. If the car comes from the factory with the 8-speed automatic gearbox, Hennessey has to make some modifications, something the customer can avoid if their car is fitted with the 7-speed manual gearbox.

In addition, a beast of this calibre cannot run on just any petrol. That is why Hennessey states that the HPE1200 Chevrolet Corvette must have in its tank the fuel used by racing cars, that is, with a higher octane rating.

It would also be advisable that the tyres be changed if the driver wants to make full use of the power of this car on a quarter-mile track, for example. We doubt that any tyre not designed for drag cars could withstand a torque as high as that of Hennessey’s latest creation.

So there you have it, the Hennessey HPE1200 Chevrolet Corvette: Practical? Not at all. Sane? Even less so. Necessary? Not that either. Brutal? Yes, and very much so. Every creation from this tuner makes your hair stand on end, so it is good news to have people like these sane madmen capable of building cars of this calibre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7L6JtEsGq0