Hennessey’s Hypercar Made to Beat Formula 1 Cars

*See images in the photo gallery above

John Hennessey of Hennessey Special Vehicles was on hand at the SEMA Show to personally unveil the Venom F5.

The Venom F5 is an all-new hypercar designed and built from the ground up with one goal in mind: To be the absolute fastest road car on earth. Hennessey and team have developed a completely new design, chassis and carbon fiber body focused on aerodynamics to achieve the lowest possible drag. The new F5 design features active aero that will yield a coefficient of drag of just 0.33.

“We’ve designed F5 to be timeless so that in 25 years it will still have a level of performance and design that will be unmatched,” said Hennessey, company founder and CEO. “The F5 is an all-new car, designed and built from the ground up, from the engine to the chassis. We expect the Venom F5, named for the most powerful tornado speed winds on the Fujita scale, to be the first road car capable of achieving more than 300 mph and have worked closely with Pennzoil to get us across the finish line.”

The Hennessey team is developing a new twin turbo V-8 engine that will deliver over 1600 bhp. The Hennessey engine will be mated to a seven-speed single clutch paddle shift transmission and delivering power down to the rear tires. The Venom also will feature a new lightweight chassis and all carbon fiber body, which will give the F5 a curb weight of 2,950 pounds.

The F5’s combination of being lightweight, and offering low drag and all-American horsepower will deliver a new level of hypercar performance, according to Hennessey. Acceleration from zero to 186 mph will be less than 10 seconds, making the new Venom quicker than current Formula 1 race cars. Zero to 249 mph and back to rest will be under 30 seconds. The top speed of the Venom F5 is projected to exceed 300 mph.

The base price for the Venom F5 is $1.6 million, according to Hennessey. The company plans to build 24 examples.