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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