The holidays always arrive quicker and quicker each year, but not quick enough for the bad-Santas over at Hennessey Performance it seems. The Texas-based tuner and builder has a tradition of strapping a Christmas tree to the top of something powerful to see how fast it can go, and this year, Hennessey strapped the tree to the roof of a tuned Porsche 911 Turbo S. However, it’s not just any Porsche, it’s John Hennessey’s personal machine.
Details about the tuned Turbo S are elusive, though we know it makes 750 horsepower, which is a nice step up from the stock 641 hp. It’s plenty of power for the coupe to reach a staggering 175 miles per hour with the tree strapped to the roof. It’s impressive, though far below the car’s actual top speed. A second run around the tuner’s Pennzoil proving ground without the tree strapped to the roof reaches 206 mph. That’s a 30-mph difference.
Racing driver Spencer Geswein piloted the Porsche, and in the video, you can hear him say that removing the tree made the car feel entirely different. Removing the aerodynamically unfriendly tree reduced the car’s drag significantly and changed how the car handled at speed, which isn’t surprising. Something that large on the roof at those speeds will tremendously affect how a car operates and feels to the driver.
As fast as Hennessey’s 911 Turbo S may be, it’s not the fastest vehicle to attempt the annual challenge. That title still belongs to the modified Jeep Trackhawk that attempted the task back in 2019. That SUV, which has a heavily modified 6.2-liter Hemi V-8 that pumps out 1,012 hp under the hood, managed to hit a top speed of 181 mph, beating out the 911 Turbo S by 6 mph.
