Hennessey's Jeep Trackhawk just did 0-60mph in 2.3s

It takes a special kind of person to look at a Jeep Trackhawk and think “That’s nice. Shame it doesn’t have a bit more power”. John Hennessey – Top Gear’s favourite Texan – is one such person. As standard these things make 707bhp from a 6.2-litre supercharged V8 – good for 0-60mph in 3.5 seconds and a quarter-mile in the mid-elevens. John Hennessey’s Trackhawk is…faster. Much faster.

That’s thanks to something called the HPE1200 upgrade. It involves upgraded pistons, rods, ported cylinder heads, a camshaft upgrade, long tube stainless steel headers and a bigger 4.5-litre supercharger. Running on 109-octane fuel and 22psi of boost, Hennessey’s Trackhawk makes 1,003bhp and 892 lb-ft. At the wheels. At the crank, you’re looking at 1,200bhp and 1100 lb-ft. Or if you’d rather, enough to win a tug-of-war with a medium-sized aircraft carrier.

The result? 0-60mph in 2.3 SECONDS. That’s faster than, well, almost any car you’d care to mention. The quarter-mile is taken care of in 9.66 seconds at 145mph. A fair bit quicker than a McLaren 720S, which takes a little over 10 seconds. And those things are not slow. If you want to see exactly what that looks like, click here to watch (and hear) the HPE1200 very nearly out-accelerate its own gearbox.

That said, the 720S can do that on normal tyres. The Hennessey Trackhawk cannot. It’s fitted with four Nitto 555R 275/40R20 drag radials, and there’s even a special two-wheel drive mode (a la E63) that lets you pull smokey burnouts, warming the rears for maximum off-the-line traction. Then simply flip a switch, and you’re back in AWD.

Hennessey plans to build 24 of these things for $179,000 a pop. That’s a little under £140,000, which isn’t half bad if you think about it. Not for 1,200bhp. Can you think of a car that re-writes the laws of physics quite as much as this?