Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, once named the fastest street-legal production car in the world, has been stripped by the Guinness Book of World Records of its acclaimed title. Reuters

The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, once named the fastest street-legal production car in the world, has been stripped by the Guinness Book of World Records of its acclaimed title.

An investigation by the Guinness World Records revealed that the Veyron Super Sport breached the rules in its record-setting attempt, which recorded the car’s top speed at 267.856 mph.

Findings reportedly concluded that the driver of the vehicle deactivated a speed restrictor in an effort to achieve top speed. Accordingly, the Veyron Super Sport was erased from the record books, because the deactivated speed restrictor did not qualify the supercar as a production model.

“It has come to the attention of Guinness World Records that there was an oversight in its adjudication of the "fastest production car," which was set in 2010 by the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport,” Jaime Strang, PR director of the Guinness World Records, said in a statement.

As the car’s speed limiter was deactivated, this modification was against the official guidelines. Consequently, the vehicle’s record set at 431.072 km/h is no longer valid,” Strang added.

The statement went on suggest that “Guinness World Records is reviewing all ‘production car’ record categories with expert external consultants to ensure our records fairly reflect achievements in this field.”

“Guinness knew the Veyron’s speed limiter was deactivated, but that for safety reasons cars subsequently sold to customers would have their speed limiters activated [set at 258 mph],” a spokeswoman for Bugatti told TopSpeed.com.

“It’s not a hard blow if we lose this title. The Super Sport is more than just a world-record car,” she added.

While nothing is official as of yet, taking the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport’s place as the "fastest production car" will most likely be the Hennessey Venom GT, which recently hit 265.7 mph in a non-Guinness-record attempt.

The time, which was recorded on April 3, has not yet been verified by Guinness.

RELATED STORIES