The allure of holding the title of “Fastest Car on Earth” was enough for John Hennessy to create the Hennessy Venom F5, which made its debut at the SEMA show.
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, Hennessy officials proclaim. Whether or not it’s the fastest production car remains to be seen.
However, it is among the most exclusvie and expensive, coming in at $1.6 million for just one of the 24 models the company plans to build. With a new design, chassis and carbon fiber body, the new model boasts 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 John 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.
(Venom GT makes first run at speed record. Click Here for the story.)
“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 developed an all-new, twin turbo V8 engine that will deliver over 1,600 bhp, mated to a 7-speed single clutch paddle shift transmission and delivering power down to the rear tires. The Venom F5’s new light-weight chassis and all carbon fiber body tips the scaled at a curb weight of 2,950 lbs.
The F5’s combination of light weight, low drag and all-American horsepower will deliver a new level of hypercar performance. Acceleration from 0 to 186 mph (300 km/h) will be less than 10 seconds making the new Venom quicker than current Formula 1 race cars.
(Click Here for more about the phase out of the Bugatti Veyron.)
Zero to 249 mph (400 km/h) and back to rest will be under 30 seconds. The top speed of the Venom F5 is projected to exceed 300 mph.
The current record holder is the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport — sort of. Hennessey went after the record in 2014 with its Venom GT on a NASA landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The car did a 2.4-mile run at 270.49 mph, which did exceed the Veyron’s 267.86 mph sprint in 2010.
However, the Venom GT made only one pass on the strip — NASA officials wouldn’t let the car run back in the opposite direction — and Guiness requires two runs to account for any irregularities. So Bugatti retains the title.
(To get a look at the new Bugatti Chiron, Click Here.)
But the F5 is expected to blow past 300 mph and Bugatti’s Veyron replacement, the Chiron, isn’t quite as fast as its predecessor, coming in just shy of 262 mph so expect see more news from the folks at Hennessey when it comes to speed records.
