Every so often, something comes along that could’ve only been dreamt up in America. The In N’ Out 4×4 burger. The Ford F-650 Supertruck. Megadeth. We’re talking about going over the top, success in excess, and a new poster child just might’ve been born. This is the Hennessey Venom F5-M Roaster, and it pairs a gated manual transmission with a seemingly LS-derived V8 making 1,817 horsepower.
Make no mistake, 1,817 horsepower is a ludicrous number. It’s in an echelon where, if makers of cars unleash that sort of power on the general public, it’s almost surely held back from ravaging everything in its path with all-wheel-drive, the torque vectoring potential of electrification, or at the very least, a smart automatic transmission to reduce the possibility of driver error. The F5-M Roadster has none of that.
Instead, what you end up with is more than 1,800 horsepower fed into a six-speed gated manual transaxle, the whatever’s left after the gearbox takes its customary toll is sent exclusively to the rear wheels. Three Porsche Carrera GTs of power, or two Challenger SRT Demons of power, all being held back largely by the driver’s self-restraint. Better hope these things make it into responsible hands.
So how has Hennessey gone and done this? Well, it started with a roadster version of its F5 hypercar and then bolted up a six-speed, shift-it-yourself gearbox behind an LS-based V8. As for other alterations to this ludicrously potent targa-topped machine, it seems like its makers want to at least somewhat try to keep the shiny side up, so there’s a massive dorsal fin affixed to the bodywork. Sure, this thing features a carbon fiber tub like in many modern supercars, but otherwise, it almost seems like a throwback to the days of old, when supercars were super partly because they were scary. However, as we salivate over the output of three early Lamborghini Murcielagos hitched to a manual transmission, there are some potential points to keep in mind.
Firstly, how long must the gears be to lessen the likelihood of rolling burnouts in, say, third gear? Even the Porsche Carrera GT, a car that we previously mentioned had a third of the power of this Venom F5-M Roadster, could hit 84 mph in second and 116 mph in third partly because that’s what it took to harness the might of its engine. A new manual hypercar is all well and good, but I want to be shifting the bloody thing instead of just sticking it in second and hanging on.
Secondly, Hennessey has only released power figures for the Venom F5-M Roadster, so we don’t actually know how fast it will be. While the brand claims a theoretical top speed of more than 300 mph from the regular Venom F5, it hasn’t hit that target yet, and we don’t know what effect the manual gearbox of this variant has on top speed or acceleration. It should still be ludicrously quick, but it’s the sort of vehicle you just want more numbers on.
Anyway, the result is still objectively astonishing. It’s also damning to the sheer number of hypercars that have debuted when a 1,817-horsepower row-your-own machine doesn’t elicit hollers and maybe even the occasional hoot. Perhaps it’s the price tag of $2.65 million, the fact that you’ll probably never see a Venom F5-M Roadster out in the wild due to minuscule production volumes, or the way a new hypercar seems to launch every five or so minutes. Answers on a postcard …
(Photo credits: Hennessey)
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this would be my favorite way to die..
These eyeroll articles are hard on my binocular vision.
*goes back to looking at Morris Minor semaphores*
I wonder which demographic this POS is matketed to…hmmm
I know it’s already been raised, but even ignoring the meaningless performance claims is there literally any standard by which this could actually be considered a “production car?” The only car that Hennessey has actually “produced” so far was still titled as a Lotus when you took it to the DMV.
yeah it’s the fastest because it’s made of stolen parts! The only gated community Hennessey belongs in is prison.
So we’re calling re-badging someone else’s car, slapping some shitty fake carbon fiber on it and calling it yours “production” now? Okay.
And they say the Chinese car companies are notorious for stealing designs for cars and regurgitating them…
And yes, that flag definitely needs to go.
By my calculations this car is traction limited up to around 165 miles per hour. I’m all for the analog experience but I don’t know if I’d want a car that I couldn’t fully depress the gas pedal on, realistically, ever, unless I’m boiling the tires on purpose (and there are cheaper ways to get into that particular thrill)…
Bet it’s undrivable
I honestly don’t care anymore. I’ll never own or drive one, and, even if I had the opportunity, I wouldn’t want to. Completely impractical, cramped, and honestly they all look pretty much the same. I’d rather have a sleeper wagon or CarUV with 800HP.
The flag on this thing is just so cheesy.
I don’t understand the obsession with flags on everything.
They could just be making all these numbers up (and given their reputation, very well could be) and it would make as much difference. I’d get more creative, though, like claim that I’ve invented a way to capture and store the rapidly expended energy of an onboard matter/antimatter collider that then heated water that ran a steam turbine.
“Where do you get the antimatter from?”
“Mind your damn business! It’s, uh, proprietary. Next question!”
Just go full Marvel.
“How does it work?”
“Uhhh…Quantum”
I thought the ones I saw of the first series of those movies were entertaining enough popcorn films, but dropped off once they adopted the multiverse—the refuge of the lazy writer and those too fearful to commit to a storyline. And nobody involved seemed to hear of pacing and editing. Movies used to be able to tell clear, interesting, memorable stories in 1.5 hours, but now 3 hours isn’t enough to tell something coherent and logical with minimal plot holes that I don’t forget about 5 minutes after it’s over.
Guardians is the only one I ever enjoyed because I’m a sucker for anything set in space, but the last one had trouble keeping my attention.
I listen to an entertainment podcast by a couple of comic book nerds and they just can’t understand why the multiverse movies aren’t clicking with the general public. I keep yelling at my phone that it’s because non-comics fans hate multiverse stories (for the most part anyway – Everything Everywhere All At Once is delightful, but also a one-off) but for some reason they never hear me. 😉
I also think they’ve increasingly been taking shortcuts based on the assumption people are familiar with characters from the comics, which is weird because they were the ones who took a semi-obscure character like Iron Man and made him a household name. The whole reason they were successful was that they made comic stories approachable to the general public, and they’ve completely lost the plot on that as of late.
The first example I always think of is Wandavision. That story should have been told before Infinity War. In the movie we’re supposed to be emotionally invested in this couple that we’ve seen together for like 30 seconds in total, so the big scene when she has to destroy his infinity stone made me shrug and think, “Well, that sucks.” If I had seen Wandavision first it would have absolutely ripped my heart out, but they mistakenly assumed people would be invested in that relationship just from the comics and the scene didn’t land the way it should have.
Um, and to make this rant not completely off-topic I guess there are cars in the MCU too. 😀
I had a friend who was really into comics, so for one of those general public people, I at least heard of more than the average person probably did and they still lost my interest. Everything Everywhere All at Once was a good movie, so it’s not that a multiverse could never work, it just requires competent writers and people who actually care about what they are producing. What I don’t like about the Marvel multiverse is that it removes all jeopardy from the stories. There’s no emotional engagement when I know it can all be rendered meaningless and they can basically change whatever they want however they want. Character deaths essentially become a cheap jump scare that’s revealed to the audience ahead of time so that it falls flat. At its core, I just get a feeling from watching the movies that everyone was in it for a paycheck alone and didn’t really care about the result because, who cares—those dweebs will go see anything we put out!
“Hey, the fans hate that we killed off Zipper Man!/Hey, the new director really wants to use Zipper Man in the next installment, but we killed him.”
[Shrugs] “Just bring back an alternate universe version. Give him a blue codpiece, this time.”
“Wait, we’re making more of these? We had the Killer Rabbits blow up the world in our phase finale!”
[Shrugs] “That was a different Earth. Mul-ti-verse.”
My other problems with those movies are the same as with a lot of movies lately: bloated run times, reliance on (often bad even if it’s expensive) cgi, unlikeable characters that are supposed to be likable, and terrible writing from people who seem like they have no idea how stories are told, not just that they didn’t major in creative writing or similar, but that they’d seen few to no movies or read few to no books to have picked up the general idea on their own. That’s not even getting into everything being part of an existing IP that they bizarrely seem to care and know little about or understand why it’s beloved. I’m not even a huge fan of any franchises and can ignore bad, unnecessary sequels to great films, yet even I’m turned off, so I can imagine how frustrating it must seem for people who have an emotional investment in a character or story.
Clutch dumping 1800 hp… I can only imagine the mayhem that would ensue.
Pretty much the same thing as if you clutch dump 250hp.
I never understood the point of burnouts. Once the wheels are spinning it doesn’t take much to keep them that way. There’s cheaper ways to burn through a set of tires, if that’s your thing.
Is Hennessey even real? I feel like these cars are basically vaporware. Didn’t they claim some absurd top speed for their last car that was never proven? I want to say one of them ate shit when it was handed over for actual speed testing too. They’ve always felt like a bit of a grift to me once they branched out from tuning into building cars….
He’s been a grift long before that.
If I recall correctly the monocoque was designed and is built in the UK by some sports prototype race car company or something? And Hennessey adds the LS engine with two huge turbos and there you go.
Also yes I believe the last speed test didn’t go well, as the car ended up on its roof at nearly 300mph or so.
The folks who did the chassis must have done a decent job because reportedly the driver walked away from a 250mph crash. However the Kennedy Space Center did give them an 800 dollar bill for hazmat cleanup.
His cars exist, but they’re half-assed efforts that rich people who don’t know any better buy and drive once or twice. He pumps out these press releases on an almost weekly basis to make it seem like the company is a bigger deal than it actually is.
Given everything I’ve read about Hennessey this is probably a grift. Consumers put down money for cars that either don’t meet the stated specifications or never get delivered. They’re Elio Motors for the .1 percenters.
There’s an entire industry of “might be vaporware” hype-products that exist for very rich people. Half of the appeal is showing up at whatever rich-person gathering you’re attending in a product everyone else is sure doesn’t actually exist, because then you get to talk about your hype-product all night long.
I was inadvertently exposed to this phenomenon once, and it made me want to drive a bulldozer over everyone involved.
I mean, you can do pretty much anything with power numbers and stuff like this if you completely skip homologation and emissions testing, like Hennessey has always done.
I’m pretty sure my home state of Illinois would let you register a Top Fuel dragster, that’s how shockingly lax our “constructed vehicle” rules are. I presume the Venom is sold under such rules since no certifications exist for it.
For what it’s worth I guess this thing could be fun at the track, a place one can surmise one of these will never appear.
“Production” car?
Like an actual homologated, crash tested, emissions compliant car?
That’s surprising.
Definitely not.
It seems the headline needs changing then.
Or I guess tomorrow I send out a press release about my 1818bhp 7 speed manual production car and scoop up that most powerful manual production car ever title.
I would like to know why I should be expected to pay more for an overpowered glorified kit car assembled by a known thief than I should for a GMA T.50?
I don’t know, the smug superiority of telling everyone that you own* the most powerful manual transmission car on the market?
*Since it’s Hennessy owning the car means you put down a deposit a year ago and every time you call to ask about it they pretend there is static and hang up.
Assuming any of these are actually built (dubious), what percentage of the parts on each car are stolen from other customers’ vehicles?
It is disappointing that this site gives any publicity at all to this scamming crook and his fake cars.
I agree. It is irresponsible to not at least mention the numerous scandals Hennessey has been involved in and its abysmal reputation for stealing money and parts from unsuspecting customers.
Jason wrote the Jalopnik piece almost a decade ago about how bad this guy was/is!!! He already had a well-earned terrible reputation then! Why are we still doing this?
I really hope Hennessey actually pays the poor intern who does their press releases, because my God, they put out at least two per week. Sometimes they haven’t even built the car it’s talking about yet, like, “Hennessey hereby certifies that, at some point, we will probably modify one of these vehicles to have 2,000 horsepower and do nothing else to it”
Oh look, more pictures of a 5000-hp, $367,456,348.78 car.
You say they will only make three?
*yawn*
And if they do actually make three, the first two will go to idiots with more money than sense who will take them to Cars and Coffee or some similar event, and promptly spin out and roll them into a ditch. The third will be shipped to a wealthy collector in the Middle East, who will park it in a warehouse and never even start the engine. Ever.