Hennessey Performance Engineering

Hennessey isn’t just interested in pushing cars to their limits. It wants to do the same for Christmas trees, apparently.

As it has done every year since 2017, the Texas performance shop has strapped a Christmas tree to a high-performance vehicle to see what just how fast it can go. So, what car was chosen to take on such an important task this holiday season? Company founder John Hennessey’s personal 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S.

This isn’t your standard 911 Turbo S, though. Hennessey decided to have some fun with the $207,000 vehicle, specifically its twin-turbocharged flat-six engine. The mill has been specially tuned so that it now pumps out a hair-raising 750 horses, 110 more than the stock model outputs. It’s unclear if any other changes were made to the car, but regardless, that’s a lot of extra oomph.

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The shop got to see how effective its tuning job was when it took the car for a spin with a Christmas tree tied down to its roof rack. In a video posted to YouTube, you can see the car, piloted by race car driver Spencer Geswein, hit a top speed of 175 mph. That’s an impressive feat, of course, but the car was—surprise—even faster without the extra drag of the tree. For the first time since its holiday tradition began four years ago, the shop decided to see how fast the car was sans-tree. The answer: 207 mph.

John Hennessey’s personal 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S 

Hennessey Performance Engineering

As fast as Hennessey’s 911 Turbo S may be, it’s not the fastest vehicle to attempt the annual challenge. That title still belongs to the modified Jeep Trackhawk that attempted the task back in 2019. That SUV, which has a heavily modified 6.2-liter Hemi V-8 that pumps out 1,012 hp under the hood, managed to hit a top speed of 181 mph, beating out the 911 Turbo S by 6 mph.

Texan tuner and, now, hypercar maker Hennessey has revealed the first sketches of its all-electric 2,400 hp, six-wheel-drive grand tourer, which it plans to put into production in 2026. And each example will likely be priced at over $3 million.

Codenamed Project Deep Space for now, the new car will feature a cabin that includes a “diamond” seating configuration with a central driving position, two flanking passenger seats and a fourth “VVIP” seat behind the driver that’s capable of folding completely flat.

Two long gullwing doors will provide access to all four seats, with the lower third of each door opening downwards. There will be space in the rear trunk for four sets of golf clubs, and in the front for four carry-on cases.

A sketch showing the diamond-shaped seating configuration planned for Hennessey’s all-electric hypercar. 

Photo: Courtesy of Hennessey Performance.

Hennessey‘s director of design, Nathan Malinick, previously worked for Embraer and aims to bring a private-jet aesthetic and spaciousness to the cabin, with customers able to specify their own bespoke interior trim.
The six wheels will each have their own motor, increasing mechanical grip, which limits the standing-start acceleration of current high-torque electric supercars. Hennessey claims that the new vehicle could be both the most expensive and fastest accelerating EV when it goes on sale.
“I just thought that if four electric motors are good, maybe six are better,” founder John Hennessey told Robb Report. “I guess it will get to 60 mph in under 2 seconds, but this isn’t intended to be a pure zero-to-60 mph or standing-quarter missile. Hennessey mentions that he has a “great respect for cars like the Rimac Nevera, but it’s hard to make a driver’s car from something that weighs 5,000 pounds.” Instead, his solution is “to go to a completely different category of car—the hyper GT—and make a virtue out of the long, low battery you need to deliver a range of over 600 miles.”

John Hennessey, founder of Hennessey Performance. 

Photo by Drew Phillips, courtesy of Hennessey Performance.

The new Hennessey will be built in Sealy, Tex., with an entirely carbon-fiber chassis and a power train from Delta in the UK, now owned by Hennessey’s existing partner Cosworth. Production will be capped at 105 examples over five years, and John Hennessey says he has already taken the first order; one from a current US-based client. His new car will rival the first all-electric Bugatti, which is due before 2030 and is likely to be a four-seat GT or SUV, to differentiate it from the two-seat GTs of its new partner Rimac.

“Bugatti-Rimac is likely to have something in the luxury four-seat EV category,” Hennessey told us, “but I’m pretty sure that this will be the only six-wheel-drive, 2,400 hp car with a diamond-seating pattern from an American company. That’s a pretty unique package. We’ve learned that exclusivity resonates with our customers, and we want to be more exclusive than anyone else in the space.”
Hennessey already offers six-wheel-drive conversions of trucks from Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge, and Mercedes offered a 6×6 pick-up version of its G63 SUV. However, only a handful of short-lived or aborted sports cars and racers have offered six wheels, and most have put four wheels at the front to cut drag and increase grip.

Nathan Malinick, director of design for Hennessey Performance. 

Photo by Drew Phillips, courtesy of Hennessey Performance.

Project Deep Space is the first element of Hennessey’s new ten-year product plan to be made public. Established in 1991 as a tuner, and best-known for its 1,000 hp twin-turbo Vipers, Hennessey is now seeking to establish itself as a carmaker, reducing its reliance on modifying internal combustion–engined cars from major marques as they switch to hybrids and EVs.
All 24 examples of Hennessey’s first hypercar, the Venom F5, have now been sold, with first customer deliveries early next year. At least two more variants of the F5 will follow, with the first being revealed early next year as well. It will stay in production until 2025, but Hennessey says fewer than 100 will be made in total.
Two more all-new models will follow Project Deep Space by 2031. But Hennessey isn’t giving up on gas completely: the last car in the plan, due by 2031, is expected to be powered by a pure internal combustion engine.

Learn more about Robb Report’s 2022 Car of the Year event taking place in Boca Raton here.

Back at the 2017 SEMA Show, when the world was given a first look at the forthcoming Venom F5 hypercar from Hennessey Performance, it was a stretch to believe the limited-production rocket would ever achieve its targeted top speed of more than 300 mph. Remember, it wasn’t until 2019 that Bugatti reached 304.77 mph with its modified Chiron Super Sport 300+ model.

With Bugatti’s run two years in the rearview mirror at this point, and SSC North America’s 1,750 hp SSC Tuatara officially clocking the average of two runs at 282.9 mph, having a production car eclipse 300 mph seems imminent. This is especially the case now that we’ve seen the Venom F5 get two-thirds of the way there.

Hennessey just released a video of the F5 surpassing 200 mph during aerodynamic testing at a former US Air Force base in Arkansas. What makes the result more impressive is that the Venom F5 reached that speed while tapping into only half of its potential power. The model carries a mid-mounted, 6.6-liter, twin-turbo “Fury” V-8 good for 1,817 hp and 1,193 ft lbs of torque, but the filmed 200 mph run was achieved with the engine dialed back to 900 hp.

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Hennessey is tackling the Venom F5’s development in three stages. According to the official announcement, the first phase began in February, as John Hennessey and his Texas-based team zeroed in on mechanical refinement, engine fine-tuning, steering and the real-world aerodynamic validation shown in the video. Hennessey is now embarking on the second stage of development, which involves calibrating the driving dynamics on Texas roads, as well as at storied racetracks like Weathertec Raceway Laguna Seca and Circuit of the Americas.

John Hennessey next to his Venom F5 hypercar. 

Photo by Drew Phillips, courtesy of Hennessey Performance.

The second development stage will continue through the summer, leading to the final stage in the fall. In the latter phase, engineers will further refine the F5’s full-power acceleration, high-speed stability and the crucial element of braking. As soon as everything on the punch list is checked off, Hennessey hopes to exceed a top speed of 311 mph.

Although the model’s 6.6-liter, twin-turbo V-8 was limited to 900 hp for the recent test, the engine is good for 1,817 hp and 1,193 ft lbs of torque. 

Photo by Drew Phillips, courtesy of Hennessey Performance.

The Venom F5 gets the last bit of its name from the most intense category of tornado on the Fujita scale. The F5 designation is associated with wind speeds between 261 mph and 318 mph. Blowing past the competition’s benchmarks and getting close to the latter end of that range would be monumental for Hennessey, as this is the first model it has developed from the ground up.

The aerodynamic evaluation was done at a former US Air Force base in Arkansas. 

Photo by Drew Phillips, courtesy of Hennessey Performance.

The production version of the Hennessey Venom F5 will make its global public debut at this year’s Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance on May 22 and 23, with deliveries for the $2.1 million missile expected toward the end of this year. If interested, you may have to set your own speed record in responding, since almost all of the 24 examples are spoken for.

The tuner plans to offer 200 examples of the truck, which is claimed to cover zero to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds.