Jay Leno tests the Venom GT

Five years ago, Hennessey Performance was locked in a high-horsepower battle with supercars from Germany, Italy and the United States. The car Hennessey brought was the Venom 1000 Twin Turbo Viper. After decimating the competition in 0-to-200-mph runs, John Hennessey thought if his company could just stuff the engine into a smaller car, it could go even faster.

“One day I joked about putting the Venom 1000 Twin Turbo engine in the back of a Lotus Exige,” Hennessey said. “Then I thought, let's do a sketch and see what that might look like. When I saw the sketch, I stopped laughing and really started to seriously think about this idea. We then had a few more detailed renderings made. And when I saw these drawings, I thought to myself, 'We can build this car with 1,000-plus hp and a weight well less than 3,000 pounds.'”

The Venom GT was born.

A 6.2-liter V8 sits in the back of the stretched Lotus with twin Garrett turbochargers and a Ricardo six-speed transmission. It has three adjustable settings for 800 hp, 1,000 hp and 1,200 hp. It accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in a motorcycle-like 2.5 seconds and up to the double-century mark in just 15.3 seconds.

Hennessey brought the car to Jay Leno's Garage a few months ago but at the time, it wasn't street legal. Leno challenged Hennessey to make it legal and said to bring it back when it was.

That brings us to today, when Hennessey again hands the keys to Leno to answer the question, “Will it do a burnout?”

Spoiler alert: It does. Jump to about 9:25 in the video if you just want the driving. Otherwise, enjoy this pavement-smoking episode of Jay Leno's Garage.

By Jake Lingeman