I understand the etiquette. Build up slowly. Get a feel for the power delivery. Work through the modes gradually before pulling the pin in ‘F5’ mode. That’s F5 as in the highest designation on the Fujita scale for tornadoes. It’s reserved for the devastating, sweep away all before them kind with wind speeds measuring up to 318mph. The Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo generates up to 2,031bhp purely from a heavily turbocharged V8 engine and so more than justifies the dramatic billing.
The handle with care approach seems sensible then, but also somehow deeply inappropriate. In fact, diametrically opposed to the philosophy of a car conceived and built to push boundaries, shatter lap records, burst through 300mph and extend a Texan sized middle finger to the establishment. Not wishing to dishonour the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo’s core values, I get just out of sight of the support crew, twist the manettino style switch on the steering wheel until the digital dash displays ‘F5’, and push the throttle to its stop.
The 6.6-litre twin turbocharged V8’s fire hose style fuel rails blast E85 into the combustion chambers and as the motor trips over 5,000rpm, all hell breaks loose. Despite the tarmac grazing ride height and super stiff springs, the Venom squats at the rear, the steering goes light and the world gets very blurry. For a few seconds it feels like the engine’s faintly absurd 1,445lb ft might just be speeding up the Earth’s rotation. The forces at work are too big to simply be attributed to normal surface bound acceleration. In the frenzy any screams would be inaudible, but my throat is so dry I can’t utter a word, anyway. But my brain is screaming, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuu…..jiiiitaaaaa”.
No question, the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo hits like an avalanche. A highly detailed upgrade over the already super endowed Venom F5, the Evo is the world’s most powerful internal combustion powered road car. It produces 2,031bhp at 8,000rpm and 1,445lb ft at 5,200rpm on E85… and Hennessey claims it can record 0–200mph in 10.3 seconds. At some point in the future the low drag version, simply called F5 Venom Evolution, will gun to set a new outright top speed record of well over 300mph. Stupid? Of course. Irrelevant? Undoubtedly. Kind of cool though, right?
For those of you wondering if the Hennessey is just an American made dragster in a hypercar body, let me attempt to disabuse you of that notion. Yes, Hennessey’s core business is making huge pickups and sedans go very fast indeed – or very slow but trailing a thick fog of tyre smoke – but the ground up, bespoke side of the operation is doing just fine. Hennessey will build 99 Venom F5s and has already delivered 30 units. This Revolution Evo costs from $2.75 million and the Evo package is also available as a retrofit package for $285,000. The lower drag model starts at $2.5 million.
Ilmor’s thorough overhaul of the ‘Fury’ 6.6-litre twin turbocharged V8 sees the adoption of even bigger Precision 7680 turbochargers, oval billet aluminum pistons and connecting rods, titanium exhaust valves and higher flowing injectors. The engine is built in Northamptonshire, but sounds pure Americana and permeates the F5’s very being. Sitting in a mid-engined hypercar with a carbon tub and feeling it gently rock to the beat of a V8 engine like a 1960s muscle car is very cool indeed.
The seven speed, single clutch, paddle operated box gives a distinct thunk as it engages first gear – adding to the sense that there are serious forces at work – and the F5 rolls away rather grumpily. It will do low speed just fine as long as you have a sensitive right foot, but it’s apparent this isn’t really the Hennessey’s preferred way of going about the world. The yoke style steering wheel has lovely, low effort weighting, but the front tyres hunt around quite a bit and the ride quality is stiff even in the standard Sport mode. The Evo features new adaptive dampers by Tractive and they’re yearning for a smooth racetrack.
First impressions are slightly overwhelming, then. Yet there’s also familiarity from the strangest source. I’m in Texas but things feel oddly Norfolk. Hennessey’s first hypercar was the Venom GT and it was based on a Lotus Exige (albeit with a vastly extended footprint and stuffed with a V8). The F5’s DNA is very different but the shape of the dash and windscreen is similar and the narrow, carbon fibre seats must be based on Lotus’s old Probax chairs. Great claims for the comfort of these items were made when they were fitted to the Elise and Exige, but I always found them excruciating.
The F5’s are similarly tortuous for me, with the added bonus of violent acceleration to increase the pain. Obviously, customer seats can be tailored for a much better fit. That’s about where the Lotusness starts and ends. But the Evo does cherish that old adage about adding lightness and thanks to its pure ICE formula and an intensive focus on weight, it tips the scales at just 1,360kg dry. The Fury takes a lot of lubrication and cooling, so that figure is likely to increase quite a bit with fluids, but the power to weight ratio is still off the scale. For context, a Lotus Emira comes in at around 1,450kg ready to roll and we recently weighed a Valkyrie at 1,340kg including a full tank of fuel.
