Hennessey Venom F5, and How I View its Goals...

So recently, it was announced that Hennessey Performance Engineering is designing a new car called the Hennessey Venom F5. It is set to have over 1400 HP and a top speed of (get ready...) 290 MPH (467 km/h)!

Whoa.

I honestly believe that it may happen, as long as Hennessey finds a better place to test for Vmax (two miles doesn't cut it). But the main story for me is how I saw Hennessey coming up 6 years ago.

It was Summer of 2008. I got a magazine from the newsstand. Instead of Motor Trend (yes, I was into cars even back then), it was 0-60 Mag, the Spring 2008 issue. To this day, that was one of my favorite magazine issues ever. They covered a bunch of stuff, like their adventure to Tuktoyaktuk in two Subarus, testing a 9ff GT9, pitting a Nissan GT-R against a Porsche 997 Turbo, and also testing the world's fastest car at the time, the SSC Ultimate Aero (today, Koenigsegg amd Bugatti have both made faster cars). However, there was one page that stuck out to me. It was a full page ad (I guess) by Hennessey, advertising their Venom GT concept. The car looked like a stretched Lotus Exige. However, what stuck out more was how they were aiming for 270+ MPH (435 km/h). At that time, I was thinking, "270? No car has even hit 260 (418 km/h) yet!" Remember, the SSC Ultimate Aero had an official speed of about 256 MPH (412 km/h) after two-way runs.

Flash forward 6 years later, and Hennessey does it. And as many know, they had a very short facility to gun for Vmax, so the car could easily (and probably) be even faster. As soon as I read that bit of news, I went scrambling for the magazine, and I quickly found the page. That was pretty much my first time seeing some automotive concept come true. Many concept hypercars have hoped for speeds like 280 MPH. Most don't make it into production. The few that do underwhelm a little (9ff GT9, etc.). Hennessey has shown the world that they can make dreams come true, at the expense of VW engineers who need twice the amount of cylinders.  (Technically, the Veyron is two V8s joined together.  I know it gets more complicated than that though).

So 290 MPH may seem possible then...

http://www.hennesseyperformance.com/

http://www.venomgt.com/