The Hennessey Venom F5 Is an Ultra-Rare $2 Million+ Hypercar

this is the new hennessey venom f5 and it's a hyper car from a place that isn't really known for making hyper cars texas it's created by hennessey which is famous for tuning cars for maximum performance everything from vipers to raptors well now they have their own hypercar it costs over 2 million dollars it has over 1800 horsepower and today i'm going to review it [Music] before i get started be sure to check out cars and bins which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era with free listings you can list your cool car for free and auction it on cars and bids and we've had some great sales recently including this mercedes sls amg roadster sold for just under a hundred and fifty thousand dollars this wonderful porsche 911 gts brought just under a hundred thousand dollars and this great bmw m2 cs sold for a hundred thousand dollars a very special car if you're looking to buy or sell a cool enthusiast car from the modern era the 1980s and up cars and bids is the place to do it with daily auctions and great selection at carsandbins.com so let's talk venom f5 like i said this car is made by hennessey who's famous for tuning fast cars to make them even faster vipers and raptors and trxs and a lot of other stuff you may also know hennessey from their last supercar the venom gt but that was based on a lotus chassis this the f5 is all hennessy created from the ground up with a new 6.6 liter twin turbo v8 that makes over horsepower this car is also limited to just 24 units for the entire world which makes it tremendously exclusive but today i'm going to show you everything first i'll take you on a thorough tour of the venom f5 and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a doug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features the venom f5 with the treasure chest the venom is cool but equally cool is seeing what you get when you get a venom and that means the treasure chest that's what hennessey calls this box which really does look like a treasure chest that comes with each car so let's take a look at what's in here okay so you open up the treasure chest and you can see it says venom f5 on the inside of the lid which is very cool and you have this box the hennessey logo right in the middle all carbon fiber trimmed and aluminum looks cool they refer to this as the jewelry box you pop it open and you can see the key to your car that is the presentation of the key it's not just handed to you by the sales person at the dealership it is placed in a jewelry box inside a treasure chest so let's talk about this jewelry box for a second you open it up like i said the key is there and also a little plaque that shows the serial number of your particular hennessy venom f5 which is pretty cool to see but the most important thing in this box is obviously the key and you can see it here it's heavy i can't show this to you on camera but it is a heavy key it feels weighty like something is happening which is kind of neat now one thing you'll quickly notice is the shape of this key is quite unorthodox doesn't look like any other car keys it's meant to mimic the shape of the headlight you can see that here the key next to the headlight roughly similar that's the reason for the keys strange shape but the key has more interesting quirks than just its shape the obvious stuff is on there the lock and unlock button nothing unusual about that but check around on the back side of the key and you have a little panel that's separate from the rest of the key if you open up that panel you pull out an actual physical key that key is responsible for opening up the fuel door we'll come back to that in a minute but also hidden in this panel area there is a separate piece that is a little allen wrench or a hex key that you can use to unbolt the little screws that are holding the engine cover in place i'll get back to that in a second as well by the way one very interesting quirk about the key if you haven't flipped over you can see there's a piece of metal at the bottom that doesn't match the rest of the metal on the key and if you look closer you can see it has the car's serial number on it this piece of metal comes from an unlikely source the space shuttle john hennessey the founder of this company hennessey he wanted to include a piece of space somewhere in the car he personally knows an astronaut who has been to space several times well it turns out that the little piece on the space shuttle that kind of joins it to the launching pad before it takes off that blows up when the shuttle takes off no surprise and then they give the remains to the astronauts as sort of a commemorative piece of their mission to space john hennessey's friend the astronaut had been to space several times so he had several pieces of this part of the shuttle and he gave one to john to use in this car and specifically john decided to break it into little tiny pieces and use it in the key so each hennessey venom f5 key has a little tiny piece from the space shuttle launch which is a pretty cool little touch and a little hidden thing that you might not realize but anyway back to the treasure chest that's merely your first level you lift off the key box and the foam surrounding it you get down to the second level which you can see includes two more pieces one is a tow hook you screw that into the car in order to tow it that's pretty standard and you also have a battery tender inside this bag again pretty standard nothing unusual there although one interesting thing worth pointing out with the battery tenor in this car kind of cool it's magnetized so you go to hook it up to the car and you can see it just magnets to the bottom you don't have to like open up some panel and stick something together or clamps or anything like that it just magnets and then keeps the battery charged when you're not using the car which is a pretty cool idea to make it so easy but anyway enough about the treasure chest now on to the quirks and features of the car so let's talk hennessy like i said based in texas and they're mainly known for being a tuning company they tune vipers and raptors and all sorts of other vehicles that are already fast to make them really fast and that's kind of their signature it's what they're known for people send cars from all over the country to hennessey to make them even faster hennessey is also known for its previous attempt at a supercar which was called the venom gt that was a tremendously fast car but it used a lotus chassis now hennessey told me the vast majority of parts for that car were completely new and not lotus based at all but it always had the cloud of being kind of a modified lotus as opposed to an actual purpose-built supercar so for hennessey's next effort they decided to create an actual purpose-built supercar which is what this is the chassis the design the styling not shared with any other manufacturer it's all hennessy and the venom f5 so the venom f5 this is the coupe model as you can see hennessey decided to make only 24 of these for the entire world making it tremendously exclusive and all of them have been sold they haven't all been built but they've been pre-sold already spoken for ahead of their production but don't feel like you've missed your opportunity just yet because hennessey told me they also plan to make a roadster version of the venom f5 and that's going to be 30 production units so more of these are coming in roadster form and the final production roadster will be unveiled later this summer now as for pricing this car had a sticker price of a little over two million dollars which is an enormous amount of money obviously but enough about the general overview of the car let's get into the quicks and features and let's start with powertrain which unfortunately you can't see because the engine cover is in place and there's no latch to open it like i mentioned included in the key is that little allen wrench and you have to undo each one of these little screws in order to pull off the engine cover for this car why is there no latch hennessy told me there was an all-out focus on weight savings in order to create this car and a latch would have added a mere three pounds which would have put this car just over three thousand pounds dry weight so they skipped the latch and the car came in at 29.97 pounds dry because of that now in case you're curious hennessy says that translates to a curb weight of about 3050 pounds so just over 3000 pounds with fluids in it which is really impressive for context a bugatti chiron is around 4 400 pounds obviously it's a luxury vehicle in addition to being ultra fast but it's also really heavy this is more on koenigsegg aguera level at just over 3 000 pounds a pretty impressive figure but as impressive as that is unfortunately what it means is i can't easily show you the engine cover without undoing all of the little screws to get in there fortunately i have a second venom f5 right next to me that has had the engine cover already removed this panel is carbon fiber of course and it is tremendously light you can see me lifting up maybe a couple pounds at most it is a really really lightweight engine cover you pull it off and then you can see the engine but anyway let's talk engine first thing just looking at the engine it looks cool it says hennessy on the very top and their traditional script looks neat it also says venom f5 on the sides and frankly it just looks nice it's exciting it's cool and you can see gold in the engine bay this is just like the mclaren f1 which used a little bit of gold in its engine bay for heat management you got the same thing going on here right up against the firewall between the engine and the passenger compartment and then a little bit more gold further back that is your engine gold for heat management very cool to see with the engine cover off now also with the engine cover off you can see a few fluid caps in here you pull the cover off and you can add some coolant and also some oil goes in these little caps nothing too interesting there but in case you're curious that's how you do it but anyway on to the engine now this is like i mentioned a twin turbo 6.6 liter v8 massive powertrain and it's essentially a modified version of a chevrolet or general motors lsx engine meaning that this car doesn't have its own individual purpose-built engine but one that's been heavily modified from a gm powertrain now i talked to hennessey about that they told me they did that for a few reasons availability is one but also serviceability some of these low production cars with their own purpose-built engines have more reliability problems than you hear about and so hennessey was hoping that by going with an lsx block it would make this powertrain a little bit easier to service and more reliable for customers and owners although it isn't exactly a standard lsx engine because this has been tuned to over 1800hp which is an absolutely unbelievable figure obviously and almost 1200 pound feet of torque so this engine even though it started life as an lsx powertrain has been significantly modified upgrade and improved for vastly vastly more power also worth pointing out this engine in this car is only mated to a seven-speed automatic transmission it's a single clutch automatic and it's only offered with rear-wheel drive not all-wheel drive like some of its rivals rear only for this car now as for performance tennessee says zero to sixty in the sub three second range which is fine but all supercars and hyper cars are that fast now nothing crazy the crazy part is the top speed hennessey is targeting over 300 miles an hour for a top speed with this car which would make it the world's fastest production car bugatti says they've gone faster but only in one direction and the thing about the fastest production car record is you got to do it both ways so you're not taking advantage of a favorable tailwind hennessey thinks they can average over 300 miles an hour in this car in both directions and they told me they've already hit 275 which is they said exactly where they hope to be at this point in the development and creation process they're going to edge it up higher and higher and continue to develop hoping to hit that 300 mile an hour top speed but one last thing worth pointing out with the engine it looks so cool and so exciting and it's such a shame to see it covered by that carbon fiber panel hennessey says a clear panel is coming soon it's going to be an option for existing cars or for new ones that are getting built and it will allow people to look in and see the engine and all its massive glory with its gold trim from the outside of the car but anyway next up onto the rest of the quirks and features of this car starting in back where you can see the rear has an absolutely massive panel of carbon fiber the whole rear end is basically carbon fiber and this is one giant piece in fact hennessy tells me this is the largest piece of carbon fiber currently used in any automotive application to create this piece they have this molded panel of carbon fiber and then they mill out all of the little holes that you can see which are necessary for heat dissipation coming off the engine so those all come out of this carbon fiber piece after it's formed and you have one especially interesting hole that would be the one in the middle of the brake light you can see the brake light here kind of goes around a large hole which is also there for heat dissipation and kind of a cool touch the brake light sharing space with that functional hole in back now also around back you can see the exhaust in this car quad exhaust mounted right in the middle and looking very cool and exciting and as you can imagine it sounds like an american v8 which is what it is take a listen to a startup from the venom f5 and then a couple of revs now also back here another thing you'll notice is the rear diffuser which is absolutely massive sort of the base of the rear of the car you can see a very huge very aggressive and very functional rear diffuser with this car i mentioned functional for a reason you can see if you look higher up the rear spoiler and you can also see it's just not all that tall or big and it's also not active meaning that as you go higher speeds it doesn't like deploy or change its angle like so many other supercars and hyper cars hennessy told me that's because they manage almost all of the airflow around this car on the bottom of the car which is why the diffuser's size and shape is so important and why they don't have active arrow or a bigger wing on the top side of course this car being an all-out high-performance world record speed contender you also have to make the top of the car pretty slippery and so you don't want some big wing getting involved and creating drag and slowing you down but hennessey did tell me they are working on a track version of this car with a big wing and some other upgrades to improve downforce and make it handle better and stick to a racetrack better but of course it won't have the same top speed now another important item to mention with this car is attention to detail which hennessey told me was a major priority creating this car and you can see it in a few interesting ways one is the seam in the carbon fiber panel in back goes directly down the center and all little carbon fiber pieces line up to that central seam which is a pretty cool touch if you're looking for it but anyway next up around back you can see there is a camera mounted back here this isn't just a backup camera although this car has one of those instead this is a mirror camera because if you think about it that carbon fiber engine panel is in place of a back window so you can't see behind you but this camera feeds a video image to a screen mounted where your rear view mirror would be as you can see here and then you can easily see behind you just like you actually had a rear view mirror which is a cool idea a lot of automakers are moving to these mirror cameras and a supercar is the perfect vehicle for it because it allows you so much more visibility and it lets designers play with the car styling a little bit more since you don't really need to have a good back window that you can see out of but anyway there is a lot to cover up here including the fact that it doesn't open there is no storage compartment in the front of this car in fact storage is basically zero throughout this car outside and in which i'll show you later but there is no front trunk like you do see in some cars doesn't happen and the front clam shell doesn't come off it's not intended to now you do have one little piece up front that does come off and that would be this carbon fiber panel here it's secured with the same hex screws that you had over the engine cover and so you can easily remove that with an allen wrench the one that comes in your key that sort of thing that comes off for serviceability some fluids can be added in there including your window washer fluid and so you do have a little panel that opens up there but nothing big and nothing for storage also worth pointing out that this little carbon fiber panel that comes off in the front is intentionally shaped like a longhorn which is the symbol of the university of texas and also kind of generally a texas symbol this is a texas-built car so there are a few little texas easter eggs like that one so you might be wondering what exactly do you have up front if you don't have storage in this area and there are a few things up here for one there is a massive carbon fiber front splitter which you can see very huge another large piece of carbon fiber important for the car's airflow and it sticks out in the front and it is large and it's up there so that's one thing you have in front but mostly you just have cooling up front you can see a venom f5 where the front clam is off and there are basically just radiators in here positioned anywhere air might flow inside in order to improve this car's cooling and you also have some cooling fans you can see over on the other side again to help cool down keep air going all the front of this car is basically designed for that heat management and cooling and by the way one other cool touch up here at the very front of this car you can see a little h which is of course the hennessey logo and so it's on the front of this car the interesting thing is what exactly that is it's not paint and it's also not a sticker instead it's an incredibly thin piece of metal hennessy told me thinner than a strand of human hair and they stick that on the front of each car and then the clear coat goes over it and you really can't even feel that it's there but it is a little extra piece of metal obviously very lightweight but it also is so thin it has no effect at all in this car's aerodynamics which is why they chose that instead of a sticker and frankly it's kind of a cool interesting story a very thin piece of metal for the logo but anyway next up still a little bit more to cover outside the venom f5 before i climb in for one thing the brakes carbon ceramic brakes for this car like you would imagine for a hyper car like this and the front rotors are about 16 inches in diameter which makes them absolutely huge but kind of what you'd want for a vehicle that can go these speeds also worth pointing out here is the gas cap and you can see the little keyhole right in the middle that's where you stick that gas cap key that comes built into your venom f5 key that i showed you earlier right there twist it and then you pull off the gas cap and you can fill up your venom f5 but anyway next let's climb inside the venom f5 and check out the interior quirks and features which means opening the door now you walk up and you don't see an immediately obvious door handle there's not one just like sticking out the side of the car instead it's hidden under this ridge in the door which is a common supercar trick you have a little button under there it's like a door popper you push it and then the door opens up and of course it opens literally upwards like you might expect from a supercar door it looks cool and then it's open and you can climb inside one thing to note though before you do the door hinge is this solid looking block of aluminum and it has f5 actually imprinted into the hinge which is a pretty cool little touch if you're looking for it also worth pointing out before getting inside the door sill is incredibly small which is very cool hennessy did that intentionally to make it easy to get in and out of the car and it works this is one of the easiest supercars that i've ever been in to get in and out you have a very small door sill there you can also see with the door up in this door cell the carbon fiber tub it's all carbon fiber surrounding the passenger compartment as you can see and you have the hennessy logo on the side greeting you when you open up the door but anyway next up now i'm inside the venom f5 and there are a lot of interesting quirks and features to show you in here i want to start with closing the door now you can just reach up grab the handle and pull it down and close it but this car actually has soft closed doors meaning you can get the door relatively close to where it needs to close and then a little motor will grab it and make it do the rest now you might be surprised to see that on a car where weight savings is a big priority but hennessey told me that soft closed doors don't actually really weigh all that much and more importantly they didn't necessarily want people to be slamming these carbon fiber doors all the time so they figured soft clothes would be a nice solution to make it easier to close the door simply without slamming it down but anyway next up maybe the first thing you notice when you get in here is the thing you're sitting on the seats which are these carbon fiber sport bucket seats one piece as you can see and hennessy tells me they are incredibly light only a few pounds each they said the mclaren senna was bragging about having the lightest seats in the car world but these end up actually being lighter than those tremendously lightweight seats now you can see there's some padding mounted on the seats themselves and that padding is adjustable based on the preference of the vehicle owner so they can make the padding smaller to accommodate someone larger or taller or they can add more padding to accommodate someone shorter or someone who just wants a little bit more comfort from their sport bucket seats but those are the seats in the venom f5 by the way it's also worth pointing out with these seats that you can see a hole in the top of the seat back and through there you can see a couple of bars mounted directly to the carbon fiber in this car that's obviously for a racing harness you can thread a racing harness through the seats and then you can also thread the bottom part through this hole in the bottom of the seats and then you have a racing harness that you can use on the race track when you're driving this car there but probably the most exciting thing in this interior is the steering wheel or more appropriately the yoke which is how we know it because of tesla although hennessey tells me they developed this and announced it before tesla did this is the yoke in the hennessey venom f5 and they decided to go with a yoke rather than a traditional steering wheel with a top for a couple of reasons one they wanted to make sure the driver's hands were kind of forced into the optimal position so the sides of the wheel gripping it with both hands as opposed to just resting one hand on top they also wanted to make sure visibility was always excellent this car's been doing 300 miles an hour i want to make sure you can see as much as possible so the top of the steering wheel is gone giving you a great look at your gauge cluster screen as you can see and a great look past that out the car through the windshield but anyway the hennessy venom f5 yoke is very different from the tesla yoke as you can see when you look at it because this one has an enormous amount of controls integrated in it basically anything you might be controlling as the driver is positioned on the steering wheel so you don't have to take your hand off the wheel in order to adjust something you can see for example your windshield wipers are located right here this little dial that you twist adjust the speed and intensity of the wipers same deal on the other side with the headlights you can turn them on here and then you also have a little button to press to flash the brights or the high beams this little dial in the bottom left part of the steering wheel controls the gauge cluster screen you can move that and make various adjustments on the screen and you also have a little back button here for that too on the other side you have a volume control for the stereo and also a phone button for your bluetooth phone that's been synced and you also have turn signals on here this little button on the left side left arrow is your left turn signal same deal over on the right side press this and your right turn signal comes on so even those have been integrated into the steering wheel but i've saved the coolest steering wheel controls for last for one thing the horn that would be the hennessy logo at the top of this pad you press that in the horn sounds which is kind of an interesting integration but that's what they've done at the bottom you have the ignition you push that put on the brake and the car turns on by pressing that central button in the steering wheel which is pretty cool but maybe the most important button here is this green switch in the center that adjusts your drive modes and this car is offered with five different drive modes when you turn it on it defaults to sport mode which is basically this car's kind of normal mode it's a hyper car so there's no regular mode you just have sport now you can also go into track if you want to for an even higher performance setting or into a drag mode in case you want to drag race this car it can do it it's got a lot of power and so drag mode is there you also have a wet mode in case you want to drive your venom f5 in a rain storm you can do a wet mode which probably limits your horsepower so you don't go crazy but the most important and craziest mode is called f5 which is of course the name of this car and also the name of the most powerful tornado on the tornado measuring scale that's why they named it that and that's the mode to go into to unlock the full horsepower over 1800 horsepower in this mode and that's the one you'll need to be in to do a top speed run now the cool thing about the f5 mode as you can see the gauge cluster changes to a star wars inspired cluster and it's more focused and it's more performancy and it's more exciting to match the most exciting drive mode that it offers now speaking of screens in this car there is also a center screen as you can see this is a touchscreen reasonably large size but fairly generic not some really nice automaker screen hennessy told me that was intentional for two reasons number one they didn't really have the money to develop a bespoke hennessy infotainment system like the major brands do porsha audi general motors ford whatever they couldn't do that but also they didn't want to develop a system and then have it become outdated very quickly so even though this is pretty generic it does sync to wireless android auto and wireless apple carplay hennessey figured most people will just pair their phones to the screen and then they can use whatever the latest apple carplay or android auto version is which kind of keeps this center screen relatively timeless at least as long as we're using android or apple phones instead of having some screen that's only modern right now but anyway next up another interesting interior quirk like i mentioned storage is pretty minimal in this interior you don't have a glove box as you can see just a carbon fiber panel here and you don't have any storage on the door panels either because the doors open up and anything you store there is just going to fly off so your only storage is limited to for one thing this little pocket between the door and the seat you can see it here enough for like a phone or some paperwork and you have that on the passenger side as well you also have a similar little storage rail in the center console which you can see here big enough for a phone and frankly not really all that much else but it does add a little bit more storage to this interior and you have a storage compartment between the seat backrest so you can see it here a little extra storage back here again obviously for smaller items but it's there the largest storage compartment in this car is actually in the passenger footwell which you can see here this little panel that says venom f5 and carbon fiber you can lift that out and reveal a small storage compartment in here not very large but big enough for some tiny items now hennessey told me that this storage compartment can actually be custom shaped to fit a certain item that a car buyer might want to put in there so if they have some small thing they always know they're going to be carrying around they can have that storage compartment tailored to fit it but that's pretty much the only storage you get inside the venom f5 but anyway next up let's move on to the middle of this interior i gave you a preview of it just a second ago showing you the storage and there is a lot to cover in here for one thing the climate vents you can see these two circular climate vents in the center that's all you get one you can aim to the driver one you can aim to the passenger and that's all there is now obviously you have some vents at the top of the dashboard to defog the windshield but that's basically it not much for climate vents in here but then again small interior you probably don't really need all that much now directly below the climate vents you have the climate control which is quite cool it's this tiny little circular screen and you can adjust it by swiping you swipe to one side and you can use the wheel around the screen to adjust the fan speed swipe to the other side and you can use the same wheel to adjust the temperature which is a pretty cool touch and it's worth pointing out that this little temperature controller feels fantastic it's like this wonderful aluminum feel perfectly weighted and hennessy told me that was a priority when they were developing this car the way things feel when you touch them so another good example is the shift paddles on the steering wheel they said they spent days weeks making those shift pedals feel perfect when you go to upshift and not like some crappy plastic thing like in some cars but anyway back to the center console a few more interesting items in here for one your gear selector you can see dnnr for drive neutral and reverse of course behind that you have your power window switches nothing unusual here next to that you have your vehicle lifter and i mentioned it's a vehicle lifter because it doesn't just lift the front axle because this car is so low and because that rear diffuser in back is so low and so expensive to replace if you lift up the venom f5 you lift up the entire car a couple of inches it happens very quickly but that will allow you to clear steeper driveways without any risk front or rear which is kind of a cool idea and of course if you press it the other direction then the car goes right back down to its normal ride height as you can see and then you can drive it around in its lowest setting and set some top speed record so that is your vehicle lift now directly behind that you get another button that's obviously your power locks nothing unusual and then your hazard lights nothing unusual there either and then you have your parking brake again nothing too unusual or strange now directly next to that you have a cool plaque which is kind of neat to see that is your venom f5 plaque that again tells you the chassis number of your car and it mirrors the one you found in the jewelry box when you got your key which is a pretty cool touch now one other item worth pointing out in this center area you can see the carbon fiber panel in the center is actually split into two pieces and hennessey was pretty proud in a lot of spots of having just one piece of whatever they could but there's two here i asked him about it and they said that's because the lower panel can be replaced with a cup holder if a vehicle owner so chooses there's an optional cup holder they can stick in there but so far nobody has actually selected the option but it's there in case you want a cup holder in your venom f5 now one other interesting thing to point out in the center of this interior behind the seat backs you can see a little window that actually looks into the engine bay so even though that carbon fiber engine cover makes it so you can't see in you can see in from the passenger compartment into that little window which is kind of a cool little thing and speaking of cool little things a few little easter eggs in this interior worth pointing out one over on the door panel the door pole you can see the american flag this is an american built car so they stick a flag in over on the other door panel you can see the texas flag because this is a texas built car so they stick that in too although hennessey did tell me that owners can choose to deviate the texas flag to something else if they so choose but something that can't be changed is this little texas flag on the seat you can see it here this little tag on the side of the seat is a texas flag to commemorate the fact that this car is built here in texas and same deal over on the passenger side it also has this little texas flag tag on the seat which is a nice little hidden easter egg touch by the way one other thing worth pointing out in here probably the only cheap looking control in this entire car is over on the steering column you can see the mirror control located right here and pulled out of like a general parts bin for mirror control i guess hennessey figures people aren't really going to use it all that often it's kind of hidden you don't need to make it look amazing or special and so it really doesn't just a fairly generic mirror control in here but next i want to talk about seats and driving position like i mentioned carbon fiber one piece bucket seats and they don't really move well you can move them forward or backwards which helps for driving position but other than that there's nothing you can't raise them up or down the backrest position doesn't change it's all one piece the seats are basically fixed except for being able to go forward or backwards if you want to change the driving position you got to move the steering wheel which you can do it tilts and telescopes to make it fit exactly where you want to put it to make it work with your seating position and so that works reasonably well and next up getting out of the venom f5 you don't have a traditional door handle mounted on the door panel as you can see instead you have this little button which is actually capacitive touch meaning you don't have to like press a button you just kind of tap your finger over it and the door opens up which is pretty cool now just in case you're worried that this button might break and then you're trapped inside your venom f5 you do have a manual release located here sort of the strap you could pull to manually release the door and then you can climb out in the event of like an electrical failure or just a button failure on that door panel and finally getting out of this car one more time i want to talk about the styling the design of this car hennessy told me it was designed with the idea in mind that they kind of wanted it to be timeless so when you look at this car it doesn't have quite the daring scoops and hooks and vents that some modern supercars do but hennessey said that was intentional they want this car to still look good and still look fresh in 20 30 40 years as it ages then by putting on a lot of scoops and hooks and vents they kind of run the risk of making something that's good looking now but sort of a flash in the pan that won't age well the goal was sort of a more simple cleaner design and it doesn't maybe look quite as aggressive or daring as some modern cars but instead we'll have sort of a timeless look as it ages which i think makes a lot of sense especially coming from me who's not a big fan of all the scoops and vents and hooks that some of these modern supercars have and so those are the quirks and features of the new hennessy venom f5 now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the hennessy venom f5 here we go a crazy crazy crazy hyper car i really don't know what to expect okay so first things first sitting in it good driving position seems pretty reasonable um good space in here actually that's one of the cool things about this car it's big enough for me i always tell people i like american supercars because they're big enough for americans like my ford gt and just cruising in this car you get an enormous amount of noise from the back the uh the engine makes a lot of noise that's pretty common in cars like this the bugatti chiron and veyron or mortem but um the koenigsegg is like this uh pagani wyruk kind of is like this you get a lot of noise that's pretty par for the course for the vehicle like this now the single clutch automatic transmission it would be nice to have a dual clutch or a manual transmission instead of the single clutch auto which is a little jerky uh john hennessey who runs the company he told me this is especially jerky at low speeds and they're still fine-tuning that and they're going to try to make it a little bit more calm and collected and reasonable at lower speeds it's it as you get going it's better but that's kind of the drawback in general of a single clutch automatic transmission now one benefit of a single clutch which has always kind of been a benefit of a single clutch is that it's it makes you feel like you're doing something like you're really you you put the next gear in it like really jerks you forward it's not as seamless as a dual clutch which is a shame because those are faster and smoother but there's something about like the mechanical feel of a single clutch that makes it kind of cool there's decent comfort in here i got the air conditioning on i'm just chilling in my hennessy venom now that's not to say that i think that this car would be a good daily driver and indeed hennessy told me look there's no cargo space they even joked we know we're going to get a low practicality doug score but that's not the point of the car and i told them you know more and more of these hyper cars i'm driving cargo room is becoming less and less of a thing in the past it was oh we still got to include a trunk whatever but now at this price point for this caliber of car people aren't really expecting it quite like they once were they have 10 other cars they can put luggage in this is a car for a purpose you take it out maybe once or twice a month to really do something with it and that's that now i will say one surprise about this car you know people think about top speed with this vehicle but the truth is steering and handling is excellent i'm not going incredibly fast but i'm going 50 60 around some sort of sweeping corners and it handles it no problem it uh it's great it's reasonably flat very predictable very precise good steering feel i'm actually pretty impressed with the steering handling of this car and frankly having the yoke or the you know airplane style steering wheel doesn't really change anything it's still it's fine feels quick all right let's go that was 150. so i want to point out i'm keeping the car in sport mode right now instead of having it in full f5 mode uh john anderson took me for a ride in the car a minute ago in f5 mode where it's really fast that's the full 1800 plus horsepower sport mode they told me is just a little over 1500 plus horsepower and so that's what i'm driving it at f5 mode is cool and it seems neat but 1500 is enough horsepower for a gun plus i still have an excellent way to judge the car and i gotta say when when john hennessy was in and i was in the passenger seat he floated in f5 mode that's the real deal that thing is fast and it's really fast even just in sport mode as well you get good uh the sound even just going from like 20 to 60 and giving it a little throttle is pretty nice all right here it go wow the car is really fast and it sounds amazing you know i recently drove the rim at navera which is awesome it's an amazingly cool very special part really is but you know you don't hear it and i i typically when i drive electric cars versus gas cars i like to talk about hey it doesn't matter that much the performance is still there the handling is still there you got this weight down low there's a lot of great benefits of electric cars there really is but sitting in this car today and listening to that big v8 rumble behind me i don't know i like that sound i'm into that i would be nice to continue having truth be told this car is quite quite impressive and there are a lot of neat benefits about it um i'm kind of impressed with a lot of things about it i i like the way that it steers and handles i like the way that it drives i like the way that it sounds and accelerates the single clutch automatic transmission is a drawback that some people are going to talk about and with good reason and brake pedal feel could also be improved but i would say generally speaking there's so much to like here i think this car looks good it has a lot of neat little pieces of detail and most importantly it's just really really really fast it's interesting i mean you think about it and you think yourself well there's no way a company from texas can make a two and a half million dollar car that's the fastest car in the world you know you think that's gotta come from europe ugadi with all this development dollars but the thing is konigseg and pagani are doing this also just in sweden and italy and as americans we look at europe and say oh they're so refined they must have these amazing processes i don't think that's true i think it's all the same sort of thing you have like a smallish company led by one you know headstrong person who's saying this is what we're gonna do and this is what they create and this is the american version of that and no it's not everything is bespoke like koenigsegg is but it's close and it's amazing and it's fast and it looks cool and i think there's a lot of great positives about this car it's really really special especially if they can set the world speed record for a production car that puts it over the top of being really really special particularly when you factor in the sheer exclusivity that this car offers and so that's the hennessey venom f5 this is quite a car maximum power maximum performance this may not have the brand name of ferrari or lamborghini or pagani but it delivers and now it's time to give the venom f5 a doug score and the doug score is here 69 out of 100 which places the venom f5 here against the craziest hyper cars i've tested it scores a little lower than some but that's in part because the venom is a bit more focused than some of these other cars it's all about top speed and overall performance so it's weekend score matches very special vehicles like the koenigsegg aguero or the bugatti chiron but the venom's daily score isn't quite on the same level which is no real surprise this is a car for performance not really daily driving and for performance it succeeds masterfully [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,682,182

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Id: z4YQeGeNdPk

Length: 42min 9sec (2529 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022