Some manage to turn even a Christmas tradition into an extreme showcase of power and engineering. That’s exactly what Hennessey Performance has done, setting the fastest Christmas Tree Run ever by sending a Christmas tree to supercar speeds atop the new 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1.
The record was set on the runway at Chase Field Airport in Texas, where Hennessey pushed the 2026 Corvette C8 ZR1 to 196 mph with a 1.7-meter Christmas tree mounted on the roof. According to the Texas-based tuner, this is the highest speed ever achieved by a road-legal car carrying a Christmas tree, beating their own previous mark of 192 mph set in 2022 with the Venom 1000 Mustang.
The star of the feat is one of the most extreme Corvettes ever built, powered by a twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter flat-plane V8 producing 1,064 horsepower and 828 lb-ft of torque. Behind the wheel was test driver Spencer Geswein, a familiar face in Hennessey’s Christmas Tree Runs. Despite the aerodynamic penalty of the tree on the roof, the ZR1 came close to the 200-mph mark, underscoring the car’s immense potential.
Without the tree, a ZR1 equipped with the ZTK track package also reached 206 mph before running out of available space. Now in its seventh edition, the Christmas Tree Run has become a Hennessey tradition, starting in 2017 with a Dodge Challenger Hellcat and continuing over the years with models such as the Audi RS6 Avant and Porsche 911 Turbo S. It may have no official sporting value, but it vividly captures the brand’s philosophy: extreme performance, a passion for engines, and a deliberately unconventional approach.
