New car news

05 May 2009 - 10:00

Tyre fighter

It was never going to take long. With Cadillac finally getting round to making a proper muscle car – the M5-rivalling CTS-V – the tuning houses and their greasy spanners were sure to be close behind it.

Enter, then, Hennessey Performance, the Texas-based tuning firm responsible for the mad ZR1-engined Camaro.

Evidently deciding that the CTS-V’s supercharged V8 was a bit, well, underpowered, they’ve treated the 6.2-litre unit to a brace of massive turbos, new camshafts, external wastegates and, er, lots of other big shiny things that make a sort of clanging noise when you hit them with a monkey wrench.

The result? An unhinged 596kW, good for a 0-100km/h time under three seconds (sweet lord) and a quarter-mile time under ten seconds. Sheesh.

Even better, the Hennessey CTS-V looks near-enough stock, save for a new set of 20-inch wheels.

OK, it’s still not much of a sleeper – the gaping front grille does for that – but it’s a hell of a lot subtler than, say, Satan’s own Cayenne…