We’ve watched the Hennessey Performance Venom story for 14 years now. When the Lotus Elise-based Venom GT ran an unofficial 270.49 miles an hour at the Kennedy Space Center and that wasn’t enough to convince the Guinness Book of World Records, Hennessey decided to start over on a speedster built on an in-house platform. That turned into the Venom F5, the F5 designation taken from the Fujita Scale used U.S. from 1971 to 2007 to measure the strength of tornadoes. The strongest twisters were designated F5, with winds estimated at anywhere between 261 and 318 miles per hour. The one-word descriptive the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used for such phenomena applies equally to the weather and the car: Incredible.
Hennessey design director Nathan Malinick takes us on a tour of everything the Texas car builder has done with the F5 in an attempt to reach the speed of the fastest tornado winds. Without giving everything away, there are fine engineering details like the badge at the front of the car, a slice a aluminum just eight microns thick. There are aesthetic details like headlights designed to mimic the shape of an F. There are combined engineering and aesthetic flourishes like the rear spoiler, its sinuous bends a pleasure to behold at the same time as it channels air into the turbos and over the rear of the car. And there are engineering firsts like the rear bumper, which Malinick says is the largest single piece of molded and milled carbon fiber in the car industry.
There are plenty more whats and whys in the video, so check it out. All 24 examples of the Venom F5 planned for production have been sold, so this could be the closest you ever get to it.
